Shaw: analogue SD channels also in digital late November, er December, er 2007?

[ta-kid]

Just had a service tech here in Maple ridge(vancouver area) come over to check my signal strength,which is ok,but as I was complaining to him about the SD picture quality and maybe going satelite he says notice just came out that all the analogue channels will be changing to digital in my area by the end of November because of complaints of SD quality.He also mentioned as long as my secondary line on my street is digital capable I should see some improvment soon.I sure hope so.One less step for my 6416 to go through.

[jabo]

I sure hope they come out with all digital this month for digital customers. Some of the analog channels like Fox, channel 22 in Calgary I avoid since it is fairly fuzzy and the reds are too high, everyone looks slightly sunburnt.

Hopefully they also get rid of that annoying ad at the bottom of the interactive guide that pops up pretty much every evening.

[mike24]

So what does that mean for the Analog Customers? does that mean that the Analoge Customers are basically going to have "All" Digital Channel? Does this mean the Analog Customers are going be finally be able to get Channels 1 -125 or what? I sure hope that Shaw give the Analoge Customers More Channels including the Movie Channels like Movie Central and such that you can get on Digital Cable right now only. I sure hope that Shaw will finally give the Analoge Customers more choice meaning the Digital Channels that you can only get with a Digital Cable Box because it sucks not being able to watch Movie Central in my basement without a cable box and then having to go to my living room to watch Movie Central that has a cable box. Shaw should really consider give channel 1-125 to the Analoge Customer and then 126 and up to the Digital Customer because it make alot more sense because now a days most TV have channels up to 125 already built in to the TV Tuner and a lot of the Channels that Shaw offer such as Life Network, Showcase, MTV and such are digital Speciality Channels. so it would be nice to get channels that you can get on Digital Cable on Analoge also if Shaw does that.

[57]

Any cable company that has gone "all channels digital" simply means that the analogue channels are brought to you in parallel with the digital channels.

If you have a digital STB you can tune the digital channels. If you have an NTSC tuner in your TV/VCR/DVD recorder, you tune the analogue channels just like before.

This requires additional bandwidth (roughly the equivalent of 6-7 analogue channels) and sometimes some of the analogue channels may "disappear" into the digital tier to compensate.

[bigoranget]

Mike24,

You will never ever have 125 analog channels on your TV set. If anything, you will continue to receive less channels through analog as years go buy.

All of the digital signals that are on Shaw are delivered through channels that are below 125. For example channels 55-69 are likely just snow on your basement TV but there actually is digital signals being sent through those channels but your analog tunner cannot "see" that.

Cable companies are only capible of carrying a certain amount of bandwidth. These are the most common systems for Shaw

550 Mhz (This is where Analog 78 is)
600 Mhz (This is where Analog 87 is)
700 Mhz (This is where Analog 108 is)
750 Mhz (This is where Analog 117 is)
860 Mhz (This is where Analog 135 is)

An 860 Mhz system is very rare for Shaw so "Technically" it would be impossible to even offer 125 analog channels on most systems.

[57]

As bigorantet states, as cable companies go "all channels digital", the number of analogue channels available to analogue only customers either stays the same, or goes down. In order to receive channels "above" the analogue channels, you will need to become a digital customer and you will need a digital STB for any TV where you want to receive these digital channels.

Analogue devices will perform as before for the time being.

[farfromover]

Hopefully, they eventually get rid of all analogue channels to give themselves more bandwidth for HD channels and more digital SD channels....

[57]

Although that will eventually happen, it's not likely to happen in the near future (like in the next couple of years). More likely is that better technology will allow delivery of more channels to each home and perhaps some analogue channels will "disappear" into the digital tier as previously mentioned to provide some additional bandwidth.

The "better technology" has been discussed in other threads. The way it works is that the infrastructure is upgraded to fibre everywhere but "the last mile". This provodes a huge amount of bandwidth to the "Node" in your area.

This Node then becomes a "smart node" sensing what digital channels are being used by the houses on the node. Those channels not being used are not sent, thereby reducing the bandwidth requirement going out from the node, effectively doubling the bandwidth available, or more.

[spitoon]

That's a great explanation 57, thanks for that.

[dawks]

This is great news for me since I actually avoid watching shows on the analogue channels since they are often fuzzy and have crosstalk (I see other channels ghosting over the one im watching).

I set my Windows MCE PRV to record at later times from other channels just to get them in digital.

As for what 57 was saying, another nice option would be for them to go MPEG-4 in the future, which of course wont happen for a very long time (by the time it does, there will probably be an even better codec available). Or going to switched digital (which would proabably go hand-in-hand with MPEG-4), where only the channel currently being watched is sent to the user. Right now all the channels are streamed to the user 24/7.

[cellarboy]

Originally Posted by dawks

As for what 57 was saying, another nice option would be for them to go MPEG-4 in the future, which of course wont happen for a very long time (by the time it does, there will probably be an even better codec available).

Unfortunately it's highly unlikely that the current digital boxes are capable of MPEG-4 decoding. It's a CODEC that requires significantly higher processing power than MPEG-2. It would almost certainly require a complete swap-out of all current boxes (or some kind of sidecar arrangement).

[big_hitter44]

It would be great if SportsNet Pacific (analog ch22 in Van.) were available in digital SD. Canucks hockey looks like hell in SD analog.

[Nanuuk]

The smart node that 57 is referring to sounds very much like IPTV tachnology that the Telcos are rolling out now. But back to the topic at hand, when I last spoke to a CSR about perhaps removing the Shaw STB from my Dad's apartment (he's a senior and gets confused by technology), the CSR replied that within the next year Shaw would be going all digital and all subscribers would need a box. Needless to say Dad kept his box and not surprisingly, has learned how to use it. This also flanges well with other threads on these boards about some new Motorola boxes without anlaogue tuners.

[magnet]

Originally Posted by big_hitter44

It would be great if SportsNet Pacific (analog ch22 in Van.) were available in digital SD. Canucks hockey looks like hell in SD analog.

If you subscribe to the NHL Network or watch the NHL on a timeshifted NBC Detroit (Channel 133), you'd see that hockey looks worse in compressed SD digital than analog.

[kold]

Originally Posted by Nanuuk

The smart node that 57 is referring to sounds very much like IPTV tachnology that the Telcos are rolling out now. But back to the topic at hand, when I last spoke to a CSR about perhaps removing the Shaw STB from my Dad's apartment (he's a senior and gets confused by technology), the CSR replied that within the next year Shaw would be going all digital and all subscribers would need a box. Needless to say Dad kept his box and not surprisingly, has learned how to use it. This also flanges well with other threads on these boards about some new Motorola boxes without anlaogue tuners.

Shaw will not be getting rid of analog tv for a long time, as it accounts for over 2/3 of their overall subscriber base. However, there will be a $98 DCT that tunes digital only, and a $398 SD PVR which will come out Nov 28/06. This should increase the penetration of digital TV in Shaw households.

All analog channels will be simulcast in digital. When someone with a regular TV/NTSC tuner tunes to channel 2, they will see channel 2 in regular analog format. When someone with any DCT hits channel 2, the DCT will automatically pick up the digital stream of that channel and display it. This will give a slightly better PQ on most channels as of Nov 28.