ot-DTV Small town cable

Anonymous-0 · Feb 5, 2009

I was reading the other day that the local cable tv company will be turning off there signal this month. Saying that the cost to convert the channels where to expensive. Was wondering if others cable companies where going to close around the contry?

Chuck NH · Feb 5, 2009

Happening to us here in northern New Hampshire in two different towns. The town i live in had an agreement with Time Warner untill 2017, but sold out to Windjammer Communications based in Florida. We received a letter two weeks ago today telling us that as of Feb 17, they were discontinuing cable service for the whole town. Now that the changeover to digital has been pushed back untill June, they're still pullin the service....

Jon Hagen · Feb 5, 2009

HMMM, I wonder what that is about ?
The cable channels are satellite delivered, so the change to DTV should not affect them.
If the cable system also supplies off antenna local channels like my local one does, all that should be necessary to convert those to DTV would be a $50 converter box per local channel.
Same as you would do on your home set to convert DTV signals to analog.

Dieselrider · Feb 6, 2009

Just to interject a thought here. In some areas where cable tv has come to be because of analog systems, they may be finding that with the changeover to digital broadcasting, they may be unnecessary anymore.In places where there are several digital signals present, a good digital antenna and digital tv might pick those stations up, without a cable service. It would be worth checking into.

Tramway Guy · Feb 6, 2009

Could be that they do not want to carry all the sub-channels that the stations will be running, there might be a requirement to carry them and they don't have the bandwidth or don't want to add it. Could be that Dish and DirecTv have taken too many customers away.

Anonymous-0 · Feb 6, 2009

Several factors that come to mind -

- Most big content providers won't deal with small cable systems - need 10000 customers or more to be up to "small".

- Mandatory anti-pirating software can cost $50k per head end (the ground dish and electronics)

- Updating a head-end to digital runs $500k to $1M

So it's not suprising may of the small folks are quitting. Rural telephone cooperatives have taken the lead in unifying head end equipment (NET-INS in Iowa is an example) and customer count but still many old Bell rural areas are struggling.

You can learn more about it this link. NTCA is a rural advocacy and technical resource group for communicaitons cooperatives.
NTCA

Bill Shafer · Feb 7, 2009

From what I was told in this small town. They were told cable would be shut off two days.No warning was given except the two day notice.

ot-DTV Small town cable

Anonymous-0

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Chuck NH

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Jon Hagen

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Dieselrider

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Tramway Guy

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Anonymous-0

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Bill Shafer

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