[LINK] US digital tv switch going ahead -- sort of

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Rick Welykochy <rick at praxis.com.au> wrote:

> <http://broadcastengineering.com/news/Cea-congress-tv-20050515/>
> in 2005 mentioned that less than 13% of American homes have no
> cable service and the number is declining rapidly, i.e. 87% of USA homes
> are hooked up over cable.


Not quite.  That article says that 87% have cable or DBS (ie, Satellite).
In fact, I suspect the amount using cable is actually decreasing as there's
been a huge increase in satellite customers over the past year or so.  The
87/13% number is also different to the 17.7% number which has been in the
press here over the past few days, so I'm not sure which is more correct.

What is broadcast over the cable systems in the USA? Digital or analogue?
> <http://www.cablelabs.com/news/newsletter/SPECS/NovDec_2005/story6.html>
> mentions that the US is a 40/60 mix of analogue and digital in 2005.


Satellite is 100% digital.  There is still some analog cable, but it's
shrinking, and in fact many cable companies in the US (mine included) have
used the digital cut-over for FTA TV as a driver to convert over to digital
as well - a year ago my cable was 100% analog, and over the period of about
6 months they moved groups of channels over to digital-only until about 3
months ago when it was 100% digital.  The real driver for this is not for
the consumers good, but to free up bandwidth on the cable to allow for more
things like on-demand TV and higher bandwidth Internet.

The reason for the low take up rate of cable here? It is an overpriced
> product that compares poorly with the North American equivalent. Also


Price is a part of it.  Mind-set is another.  As I mentioned in a previous
post my apartment doesn't have an antenna socket on the wall or a TV antenna
on the roof - but it does have a co-ax cable connection on the wall.
There's about 150 apartments in my block (low-rise - only 3 floors high),
and 7 other blocks in the complex so that's around 1000 units with no option
but to pay for cable.  Can you ever see that occurring in Australia?

Price-wise I probably get a similar line-up to Foxtel's basic service (A$40)
plus a scattering of other channels from their other packages, so
realistically a comparable price to what I get would be in the A$50-60
range.  For that I pay around US$48.  ie, price isn't really that much
different...

  Scott.