I've always wondered when Comcast HD would make their move to exploit this huge marketing advantage over satellite HD Lite - or (more troubling) whether the reason they were holding back was simply to keep the future HD Lite option open.

Earlir today I heard a series of Comcast advertisements with the general theme: "Hi definition the way it was meant to be" - via RKO Radio in Boston this afternoon. They claim in a side by side test with satellite HD, viewers overwhelmingly chose Comcast HD.

This means they are finally making their marketing move.

This is good news, because it appears that COMCAST by exploiting the (non-HD Lite) qualitative advantage Comcast has over satellite HD - it is in effect taking the HD Lite option off the table for future broadcasts for their main HD lineup.

Obviously Comcast is playing this card now because Direct TV is about to offer a large quantity of alleged "HD" channels, which we know are going to be mostly HD Lite at most times -so Comcast is choosing quality over quantity

Comcast should be commended if this actually does mean that are willing to take this fight to the public, a public often a bit confused with HD itself - when they could (in theory) just HD Lite their entire HD spectrum to ratchet up the number of HD channels

As for Comcast VOD there has been some indication that dumbing down the signal is occurring - however its not the critical issue per se

Longer term Comcast should be able to have BOTH high quality and high quantity, because as technologist George Gilder predicted nearly a decade back - terrestrial based systems such as cable would ultimately defeat satellite systems because of inherent and intractable upside limitations (e.g. limited orbital slots) on bandwidth capacity - in a world where bandwidth demands geometrically increase every year

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=841935

Now I see the other thread. However I don't see any discussion there of this in the context of an HD Lite (save bandwidth) issue vs a regular (use whatever it takes) HD issue

Direct TV is in a catch-22 situation they cannot get out of - so they have to pretend their signal equals Comcast HD and hope few consumers notice. The problem they face will get increasingly worse as mega-screen size 90" diag plus displays become commonplace - which includes nearly all front projectors which already selling at rock bottom prices despite BEST BUY's ongoing de facto nationwide moratorium

George Gilder is about to proven correct once again, the satellite providers are in a very bad position relative to terrestrial cable in a world where bandwidth needs will be virtually unlimited and slots for geosynchronous orbit - are finite

This is good news, because it appears that COMCAST by exploiting the (non-HD Lite) qualitative advantage Comcast has over satellite HD - it is in effect taking the HD Lite option off the table for future broadcasts for their main HD lineup.When millions of dollars are involved, no options are ever off the table. While it may be unlikely that Comcast would down-rez HD content to HD-Lite, it's not out of the realm of possibility. The new marketing angle does make it a little harder to flip, but it has happened before in other industries.

For example, Apple had marketed the original Mac mini as being a better computer than bargain PCs. One of the main points that Apple touted was that the mini had a dedicated graphics card, whereas bargain PCs had integrated graphics with shared memory. Lo and behold, when the Intel minis came out, they had integrated graphics.

For Comcast, they may indeed go HD-Lite, but they'd probably do other things first. Like SDV or dropping analog to get some bandwidth back.

Longer term Comcast should be able to have BOTH high quality and high quantity, because as technologist George Gilder predicted nearly a decade back - terrestrial based systems such as cable would ultimately defeat satellite systems because of inherent and intractable upside limitations (e.g. limited orbital slots) on bandwidth capacity - in a world where bandwidth demands geometrically increase every yearGilder's reports have been interesting. I remember getting an excerpt from his report about 7 years ago. In it, he touted CDMA (cell phone tech) as having a huge advantage over TDMA. The take-home message was to invest in Qualcomm. QCOM stock took off like a rocket. WOW!

Personally, I feel that bandwidth will always remain important, but for TV transmissions, the limiting factor will be the current broadcast standards. The compression techniques will continue to improve and may get to a point where you can take a full ATSC 1080i signal and compress it to MPEG-X, squeeze it down the satellite beam, decode it at the STB, and have it look/sound like the original 1080i signal. When this happens, bandwidth won't mean as much.

Plus, the satellite guys are working other creative angles to compete with cable/fiber on the VOD end. I read where D* was going to use IP for some VOD content. So when a D* user calls up a VOD program, it would be getting it through broadband internet, potentially using the cable/fios connect that the D* user may have. It's kinda funny that the D* user would be using the competitor's "pipe" for this.

ft