[Ken H]

From Broadcast Engineering


There may be doubts as to when over-the-air broadcasters will hit the magic 85 percent market penetration with DTV. But cable is a different story.


The cable television industry’s principal trade association has released new statistics that say its digital rollout is close to reaching a saturation point.


As many as 90 million of the 108 million U.S. TV homes (83 percent) are passed by a cable system that offers an HDTV programming package, according to statistics the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) released last month. Those numbers mark a 28 percent increase in just nine months.


Last December, 70 million homes had access to HD programming, the NCTA said. HDTV packages are available to 177 of the 210 designated market areas (84 percent), including each of the top 100 DMAs. Cable systems also increased their carriage of local digital broadcast stations to 454 from last December’s 304, a growth of nearly 50 percent.

 

[sregener]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ken H The cable television industry’s principal trade association has released new statistics that say its digital rollout is close to reaching a saturation point...

The devil, as they say, is in the details.


How many of those cable systems are carrying all broadcast DTV stations in their market? From the way their statement sounds, if they carry just *one*, they qualify.


And how many cable systems within each market offer an HDTV package? If just one cable system in a DMA carries an HD package, the entire market is considered "served" even though many people inside that area may not be able to get one.


And how many customers in these areas actually subscribe to the HD package? This is the real number they should be looking at. Everything else is just marketing.

 

[Karyk]

Quote:

Originally posted by sregener And how many customers in these areas actually subscribe to the HD package? This is the real number they should be looking at.

Not necessarily. If you have a QAM tuner I don't think you need to subscribe to an HD package.

 

[scolumbo]

Quote:

Originally posted by sregener The devil, as they say, is in the details.

You can quibble all you want, and statistics can certainly be misleading, but the bottom line is that the DTV and HD offerings on cable are increasing at a remarkable rate. No doubt this is largely in response to increased competition from satellite, but who cares, it's happening.