cable: uh oh

[forgotten_aria]

So recently RCN in somerville decided to abandon any of their customers that didn't want to have cablebox.

I just saw a comcast ad, talking about the dtv change over that said, "you're find if you're a comcast customer and your TVs are connected to a cable box." Does that mean they're planning on forcing people to have boxes too? My concern is that this will likely make my replay DVR unhappy and my little TV which I use often. Anyone have any real information?

Comments

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

I believe that pretty much every cable provider is moving towards all-digital. In fact, I think Comcast may have done it in this area before RCN did. So I don't think switching providers is going to help you at all.

All-digital doesn't necessarily mean that you need a cablebox; if you have a device which takes a CableCard (or two) then that device can act as the cable box. For instance, I have an HD TiVo and RCN service but I don't have an RCN cable box. Instead of renting a cablebox from RCN, I rent two CableCards from them, and they plug into my TiVo, which then serves the purpose of the cable box -- no need for an IR connection between the TiVo and a cable box, which never worked right anyway.

If your DVR supports CableCards, then you're fine, switch to that. If not, then switching to another provider is unlikely to help. I believe that your options are to rent the provider's DVR or get your own DVR that supports CableCards.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I never mentioned switching to another provider. I'm currenly a comcast customer with no cable box. Things right now work great. I was just using RCN as a example of a possible future for comcast, given the omen in that commercial.

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry! Anyway, my assertion still stands that I bet Comcast will be going all digit at some point. I tried to do a web search to get some concrete info about Somerville, but I'm not having any luck. Plenty of bloggers claiming the same thing, but nothing official from Comcast (other than that they went all digital in Chicago as early as 2007) and certainly no mention of a date. Article in the Globe (http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/06/14/rcn_dropping_analog_channels/) just indicates that Comcast is still offering analog in Somerville for now.

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

Oh, USA Today article (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-06-12-cable-digital_N.htm) from June suggests that Comcast is "leading the charge" to digital, specifically to convert 20% of their markets by the end of 2008 and achieving 100% through 2010.