noneroy said:
Leading for now. I think cable is going to hit a much harder ceiling than D* when it comes to bandwidth issues. My local CO just added Espn2 and MTV HD, and they had to compress the heck out of a few channels to make it work. So D* isn't the only place dealing with HD Lite. Cable leads for now, but I don't think any cable CO will have room for 150 channels (if D* keeps it's promise).
Cable could add 150 HD channels, but it would have to eliminate its entire analog tier. The analog tier takes up 2/3 of cable's bandwidth. Unfortunately, a MAJOR segment of cable subscribers (I think about 40% for my cable company) are only analog subscribers.
Should cable alienate all of these people? I don't think they will.
My cable has been superior in every way to DirecTV. But now, I am starting to see over compression just like on D*. Things are getting worse. They must be making room for new HD channels.
It's really unfortunate. You take these beautiful digital channels and compress the hell out of them.
I swear, in my room with the shortest coax run, my analog picture beats both D* and Digital Cable, hands down, no contest.
What good is "crystal clear" digital TV when so compressed?
DirecTV is putting up more sats. That's why in the long run, I think they will win the battle.
Cable can't do that.
Cable is going to switched digital, which could likely free up enough space for maybe 20 HD channels. So they'll be alright for a while, but after that, they'll either have to start removing analog channels which will anger many, or start over compressing HD channels into HD-Lite and that will upset......... ME!!!!