response 69 of 290:

Jan 24 04:34 UTC 2006

Yup, more money for no improvement is a pretty good example of how not
to deploy things.  Re #67, I've seen occasional audio dropouts for a
couple of seconds but haven't experienced what you describe.  Sounds
lousy.

Cable companies are kinda stuck.  On the one hand, they have early
adopters whose main priorities are digital transmission (way better for
DVR) and lots of high-quality HD content.  They are willing to pay a
premium price but they expect a premium product, and when they're forced
to watch a crappy analog static-filled feed of the SciFi channel they're
not happy.

On the other hand, you have foot-draggers who still use analog cable
with old cable-ready TVs.  They enjoy watching whatever their favorite
channels are, CNN or ESPN or whatever.  They don't particularly care
about picture quality as long as it doesn't totally suck, and they're
not particularly interested in new services.  Their main priority is not
seeing their bill go up; they already feel like they pay too much for
the service they get.

I don't particularly envy the kinds of decisions that cable companies
are forced to make in figuring out how to service both crowds.  Soon
DirecTV will roll out local feeds in HD, and a ton of new HD channels
will launch (National Geographic-HD, MTV-HD, HGTV-HD, and so on.)  Early
adopters will expect their cable systems to make at least some of them
available.  Foot-draggers will expect nothing to change.  Not sure it's
possible to meet both expectations.