What is "Digital Cable TV"

[troyvcd1]

I have comcast cable tv. They keep sending me advertisements telling me to upgrade to "Digital Cable". What is this digital cable tv. Is it better than standard cable tv and will I see a difference. I got a good sony wega tv but it is not high definition and of course the signal coming in to it has to be analog right? So what is the deal with this digital cable???

[Tommyknocker]

I would call their customer service department if you do not get the "bubblrhead", ask them.

[Roundabout]

I have so-called "digital cable" here with Adelphia, but it's not what anyone would consider true digital. The analog signal is digitized before being sent down the coax line so they can squeeze more channels than would normally be possible into a smaller bandwidth, and you have to have a digital cable box to receive the signal, as opposed to the analog signal which is also sent on the same coax. By the time the digital box receives it, decodes it and converts it to RF or Composite output, there is a certain amount of signal degradation that takes place. The box is not capable of sending a digital signal output to a TV, so the only benefit of "digital cable" as far as I can see is that you can have several hundred channels available to you (normal analog cable has a maximum of 125 channels, IIRC). The quality IMO is no better than an analog signal from the same channel (sometimes worse, on HBO there is often macroblocks and clipping that appear, similar to what you get with bad video encoding to DivX).

[bode]

Here in the UK, they had a very aggressive campaign to get everyone onto digital tv. They will eventually turn off the analogue signal and we will have no choice but to use digital.

The quality is not better (digital radio is extremely poor) but you have more stations and some "digital tv only" stations.

[tigerman8u]

i have digital tv at my house. as stated above you get more channels. when watching an old movie i see no difference in video quality. on newer movies the picture looks better. mabe this is because of newer tecnology making and recording videos, ie dvd versus vhs

[fargoman]

"Digital Cable" sucks in my opinion, sometimes it will look pixely (worse than analog has ever been in the worst snowstorm. And the cable company will tell you it must be you tv or connection...yeah that's it.

[lordsmurf]

Some are digital signals. Some are digitally compressed analog.
In most cases, it is 300x480-500x480 resolutions (NTSC).

[fargoman]

I should also mention from time to time it is also very good, but in my mind you should never have pixilated images.

[obiron]

I have charter digital cable. The low end channels are poor in picture quality; the upper channels are better. They are still analog coming into the tv. I think the big advantage to digital cable is that you can get video on demand (VOD) in real time. That is, you don't have to wait for the next time a movie or special event is scheduled. You can get it at the time you ask for it. I've taken adantage of VOD maybe 3 or 4 times in the year or so I've had it. Obviously, not a big attraction for me. :P

[CubDukat]

Digital cable is, quite simply, a hoax. On some things, the picture quality is slightly better than analog, but the main thing is that they compress everything in order to be able to fit more channels, and most of what they add is crap. I mean, do you really need six HBO channels? What they ought to be doing is making room for the HDTV signals of local stations.

[dcsos]

Digital Cable systems were invented to be better than ANALOG

this hasn't happened

Instead, SUB DVD quality rules on the air

While the technology is there, CABLE OPERATORS prefer to make huge amounts of money instead

LEAVING US TO WATCH streams hardly better than a SUPER VCD

surveys have found that broadasters in DIGITAL SYATEMS typically limit the bit rate of even premium channels to three MILLION BITS OR LESS

check you local provider to see if he/she does better or worse than this
awful rate