The Time Warner Staten Island Project = loads of HD
By Matt Burns 
posted Apr 23rd 2007 9:50AM
posted Apr 23rd 2007 9:50AM
Quick quiz hot shot - What do you get if you take away analog stations? Headroom for a lot of HD stations of course. A 100% digital delivery system is the most efficient way for a cable provider to supply HD stations and that's just what the Staten Island Project is all about - kind of like what Comcast is doing in Chicago. TWC is stating that if they totally shutoff their analog stream, they can provide up to 100 high-def stations. This little experiment does require every analog subscriber to switch over to digital but TWC says only a "distinct minority" will be affected. Really? Only a small amount? Come to think of it, most or our readers probably have a digital box - or two - in their house, but what about the TV in the kitchen? Or in the garage? Do they have a box on 'em too? Also, how much is it goin' to cost subscribers to equip each TV with a digital box? We're thinking just a bit more then a "distinct minority" will be affected, but for a 100 HD stations, we might consider the payoff instead of the inconvenience.
Wow, I would love for them to do this in upstate NY as well. I need more HD including USA (The 4400)
Hmmm, I can't get a cable cared tuner for my PC, so I have to use analog only channels there (which is why I switched off the FIOS TV and went back to comcast) and now they think shutting off the analog channels is a good thing? How much do they charge to rent those boxes again?
Shut the analog off NOW and give me more HD channels!! That's my opinion. If you want D* or E* you need an STB on each TV so why can't cable cut the analog cord? A basic digital channel switcher box can't be that expensive to sell or rent?
In NYC (at least from my experience), Both Time Warner and Cablevision scramble all their analog signals, so a box was always required. When you put the coax cable into a cable-ready set, you got nothing. No premium channels, no Food Network, no WNBC 4 signal. TWC/Cablevision swapped out their analog boxes for digital boxes as well in most installs.
This little experiment is also the nail in the coffin for analog black boxes...
I have to chime in with Bklyn2ct. I've been a Time-Warner cable customer since 1989, and service with them has always required a tuner box -- we've never had the ability to just plug the cable into a cable-ready TV and watch programming. I can't imagine that TWC has any significant number of analog cable boxes out there. Even if I wanted just the analog tier of channels I'd have to take their Scientific Atlanta digital box to get them.
They all should shut the analogs off, everywhere, right now. Keep the basics/locals QAM-in-the-clear, put them in a frequency range separated so you can still block them with a filter outside in the green box if they got the basic basic (only locals package). Digital can re-map channel numbers so you don't have to make them actually consecutive on the listings.
This way you can have compatibility with all new TVs, and most of the really cheap boxes coming up to allow people OTA 8VSB on their old TV usually will have support for in the clear QAM.
New cable boxes will be required to leave out the security hardware, so essentially they'll just be QAM tuners with a cablecard slot. This hopefully will make the prices drop if things take off, Cablecard 2.0 FTW. I would like a CableCard 2.0, that can do multi-stream(with no limit-or something like 5), and that will support encryption on a stream other than MPEG-2.
I say do it now, and up the bandwidth on the current stations. Switch everything to MPEG-4, as well, better quality whatever the bandwidth.
In 2008, I want to buy a "bring your own SATA HD" LG DVR for $100 (so its got the bad-ass OTA tuner), with a cable-card 2.0 slot, feeding on MPEG-4 based digital cable. - supplied with guide information from a in-the-clear information stream from the cable company, and running some sort of commercialized version of MythTV, or a licensed copy of the Tivo OS.
no no no. This is bad (for me). Until PCs have an easy way of getting digital signals (read: easily available CableCard readers, for instance), I'm against this. I would definitely be in the "minority" affected by such a change.
Of course, the plus side of more HD channels (why, oh why do I still not have the CW in HD??) would be nice.
btw, I wonder if digital signals are ever going to be as easy to receive as analog. Seriously, even CableCard is a pain in the ass in comparison to just plugging a coax cable into your TV/TV tuner card, etc.
As a HD MythTVer in Chicago, I don't think I'm going to gain anything by a switch to an all-digital system. I'm limited to recording OTA HD and analog by "exploiting the analog hole", so this digital switchover won't do anything for me. Is this only going to benefit HD users with cablecards? This seems like yet another change for consumers without a noticeable improvement in service or a decrease in price.
We live in Staten Island and we were affected by the digital switchover. Digital boxes cost exactly the same as analog boxes ($7.80/mo) and their Digital Starter package provides exactly the same channels as Analog Preferred for exactly the same price.
In other words, our bill didn't change, but we wound up getting access to the extra HBO and Showtime channels, as well as a selection of HD services. Net win for us.
As Bklyn2ct mentioned, without an addressable cable box, the only analog channels we got were the OTA networks, Public Access, NY1 and TV Guide Channel.
uchendu the comments you make are very relevant. i remember back in boarding school in ireland we had 4 channels, and a stupid housemaster. how goes it?
best
Shola
So what happens in appartment complexes like mine where cable is provided as a part of my rent. Most people (about 1,000 of us) have jsut analog cable with a small minority paying for upgraded digital.
Wow, email me.
shola@unndunn.com