Quote:
Originally posted by David McRoy
Thanks, Linda. That's probably what's going on. I haven't looked at every channel they get. |
Most systems offering "digital cable" (digitized NTSC quality stuff, sometimes as high quality as DIRECTV or DISH's non-HD programming), also have about 80 channels that remain analog, for the benefit of their customers who don't want to deal with a cable STB.
My experience with "digital cable" has been that the digital channels generally
are much higher quality (and more consistent) than the analog ones, but certainly far, far lower quality than HDTV. On my Time Warner system, the digital subscription movie channels have 5.1 channel sound, output through a coax connector (of course, since the S-Video output is connected to my Tivo, I have to switch to watching composite video to use this--trading video quality for audio quality--Tivo's buffered video is a second or so out of sync with realtime audio). Some of the earlier equipment had some serious problems--occasional break-ups with missing macro-blocks and inability to sync with a channel without tuning to another channel and tuning back. But those were the early boxes and headend equipment--recent products are pretty damn good.
Now, if they'd only put some HD channels on my system--there are pass-thru 1394 connectors on my Explorer 2000 (though they may or may not be hooked up to anything--I think its an option that the SO can order with the boxes).
-- Mike Scott