[mythtv-users] [Slightly OT] comcast moving to settop on Bay Area - goodbye analog

[Joe Votour]

This is my understanding of the situation.

Comcast wants to encrypt the non-local channels, but, there are two  
problems with this:
1. The FCC mandates that they must use a method acceptable to the FCC  
- at the moment, only CableCard qualifies,
2. The craptastic cable boxes that they supplying for their non-STB  
customers are not capable of accepting CableCards.

This means that Comcast is in a tough situation - they cannot legally  
encrypt the streams with the set-top boxes they are providing, and it  
would cost them a ton of money to deploy CableCard compliant set-top  
boxes to everybody.  Only their customers who had STBs prior to the  
mandatory deployment of CableCard are exempt.

I've read that Comcast is supposedly going to petition the FCC to  
waive the CableCard requirement because these STBs cannot support  
CableCard - if they receive that waiver, then they turn encryption on  
and have two encrypted streams - one for these STBs,and one for  
CableCards.  They could certainly do it with all of the bandwidth  
they'll save when they shut the analog off (I've heard reports of them  
doing 10:1 digital to analog, which explains the pixelisation I've  
been getting on some channels).

At the moment, Comcast is pushing for everybody to use a STB, because  
they fully expect the ClearQAM on their network to be temporary  
(except for the locals).  Saves them trouble later of technical people  
asking why their QAM TVs stopped working.

-- Joe

> On Sun, Mar 08, 2009 at 05:33:44PM -0700, Steve Heistand wrote:
>> }
>> } So that's the thing, they seem to have added those analog channels as
>> } unencrypted QAM256, and you can tune them with HD-HR, so it  
>> doesn't sound as
>> } bad as I was worried about initially.
>>
>> I was under the impression that the FCC was requiring them to broadcast
>> local channels unencrypted.
>
> Sure, but COMEDYP, SCIFIP or TLCP aren't considered local channels, those
> are the ones we're talking about :)
> For now, they seem to be unencrypted QAM256, so it won't be a big deal to
> switch.
>
<snip>

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