How much longer will analog cable hang on
 

We currently have Time Warner digital cable but they still offer the basic analog service in my neighborhood. I use it but suspect I'm one of the last ones who still does... We also have Verizon but not for t.v. and they quit providing analog tv service in 2008.
I hope the cable will continue to offer the plain analog channels but I feel like they're gonna axe it soon... Thoughts?
It's nice to use the tv's internal tuning ... without analog cable i will never really be able to use them again besides on CH 3/4 ...

Just like over-the-air TV, the cable companies face a finite amount of spectrum. Going QAM-256 allows up to six decent quality (by my standards) 480i channels to fit in the same spectrum of one NTSC analog channel. And, since few cable systems are willing to experience the pain and agony of going switched digital (which preserves quality while conserving spectrum), you’ll see the digital channels get progressively compressed beyond death as the demand grows for more channels. I expect analog cable to be history by 2020...

Such a shame. I like analog because it takes up more spectrum

Time Warner Cable in my area, near Cleveland, already has switched to digital; they made a big deal of it when it happened several years ago. The system still carries 64 analog channels; the digital channels are mostly the Cleveland network affiliates, MeTV and Antenna TV, etc. The day will come, however, when even those 64 analog channels will either go digital or will disappear completely -- I have no idea what Time Warner's plans are for them.

I can't help wondering in the back of my mind if or when I may need a cable box to get anything, even with my FP that has an ATSC/NTSC/clear-QAM tuner. I was under the impression that today's digital FPs do not need cable boxes under any circumstances, except to receive movie channels, pay per view and other specialty channels such as Travel Channel, ShopNBC, etc., for which subscribers pay extra over and above their regular cable bills. (Travel Channel and ShopNBC, et al. were formerly on TW's standard cable lineup here until about a year or so ago.)

For standard cable until you get to digital and/or HD (the latter operating on channels in the 1000+ range, at least on TW's northern Ohio/western Pennsylvania systems), I would think today's flat-panel sets would continue to operate perfectly well with the cable connected directly to the set via the RF antenna port. Or is this just another way cable companies have figured out to get more money from subscribers, through forced rental of cable boxes in order to receive anything, including local broadcast channels? :scratch2:

I realize digital cable and satellite are the future of TV, but to drag subscribers kicking and screaming into the digital age like this, even when they already may have a FP TV with a full-digital tuner, IMHO, is too much. There is also something else the cable/satellite companies may not realize (and in all honesty may not care beans about if they do realize it): the fact that some people simply cannot afford digital cable or satellite, and may not be able to receive their area's local channels OTA. If Time Warner and other cable operators drop analog cable, this will leave hundreds or thousands, even tens of thousands, of people with a FP TV they cannot use, except with a DVD player or VCR. In this case, people may well just give up TV and take up reading, in which case the television industry could find itself in real trouble.

Time Warner here in the Milwaukee area still caries around 60 analog channels (down from around 100 channels a few years back). When it goes I'll miss being able to test the tuners of my vintage sets, and be very annoyed when I loose the ability to use the tuners on my SVHS-ET decks and my DVD recorder.

I'll also be pissed that I'll require more than one cable box to recieve multiple channels on my sets. I currently have 4 of my color sets and 3 of my monochrome sets hooked to a couple of four input-three output RF video switchers that are fed the RF output from over 4 different VCR's and a bunch of other things that are connected to the AV inputs on them, and will miss being able to watch multiple shows at once. I don't do it often as there is not often more than 1 show I want to watch at a time, but it is awesome not to need to choose, and damn impressive when I can get as many sets as the breaker will tolerate going at once going all playing different things.

Some info here:

http://www.ezdigitaltv.com/Cable_Television.html

Since this is Feb 2012, we may indeed see many cable companies dropping analog. I suspect that economic considerations will drive this... a trade off between the cost of the cable company installing some new equipment vs revenue gained by cable box lease vs potential customer loss. There may also be agreements with various local government agencies that govern the necessity of providing either analog or "in the clear" digital signals for the lowest tier customers in a given area.
In short, there will be considerable variation in this transition of cable services... Perhaps it would be worth making a call to your local cable provider and asking about these changes?

jr

More like, I'll call them and tell them to terminate my service , and go all-verizon at that point.
I hate using quality older tv sets with these POS chinese set top boxes that exude crapiness.:thumbsdn:

Well, that's progress. Time marches on, even for those of us with old pre-DTV sets. If you want to continue to use these sets, you only have three options: use an OTA converter box ("Chinese crappiness" or not), a digital cable box if you want to continue using cable, or nothing, as analog cable is being phased out. For now, we can simply connect the cable directly from the wall jack to the RF antenna port in back of the TV (using a matching transformer, if necessary) and use it just as we always have, but one of these days, sooner (much sooner) rather than later, this being February 2012 (by the end of which cable systems must and will discontinue standard cable service in favor of digital), analog cable will disappear forever. Those of you with old knob-tuned NTSC analog TVs may not and apparently (from what I've been reading in this forum) don't like it, but that's the way of it. Did you expect the knob-tuned NTSC analog TV era to last forever? :scratch2:

NO! There is no "must discontinue" date... the document that I linked as I read it shows that the cable companies "must provide" analog (or an inexpensive digital option) UNTIL at least Feb 2012. What happens after that date likely will depend on other factors as I outlined in my post.

jr

Our basic cable still offers 70 analog channels. Beaucoups of channels if you go digital.
They claim they have no plans to do away with them, but I have a hard time believing that.

I feel somewhat inclined to send my provider a message inquiring about their plans.

Wonder if I'd even get a decent reply...

It's a good thing I got a digital flat-screen TV when I did. I am not concerned about movie channels or pay-per-view (I can get movies on AMC and TCM on cable and have a subscription to Netflix, as well as a bunch of my own DVDs and videotapes), so I probably won't need a cable box. I had HBO for exactly one month in the mid-1980s, but discontinued it when I found out that they didn't have that many films to begin with; those they did have, they showed over and over again for a week at a time.

jr_tech's response to my last post set me straight on the FCC's position regarding the hard date for the discontinuation of analog cable service; turns out there is none, at least not as far as the FCC is concerned. I read the FCC article myself and found that it is not their decision to end analog cable service; rather, it is a business decision made by individual cable companies. As I have mentioned, Time Warner Cable in my area (northeastern Ohio/western Pennsylvania) has already converted their systems to digital, but for now they are still carrying analog cable channels such as CNN, ESPN, TBS, TNT, et al.

I have not yet read anything online or in mail communications from TW, however, indicating that the company has any plans to drop analog cable any time soon, although they have moved several channels from analog to digital already, so this may just be the tip of the iceberg; we'll just have to wait and see what happens from this point on.

I had digital cable from 2007 until 2010 (Cox) and went through at least six Motorola converter boxes. For all their Chinese crappiness, I haven't had issue one with either the Zenith or Digitalstream DTV converter boxes in the three years they've been in use.

(I've been strictly OTA for a year and a half with about 13 channels offering English programing of a non-ethnic or evangelical nature.)

My mother has Cox analog cable and we haven't heard of any plans to discontinue it yet.

We have Comcast in my area and they dropped most of the analog channels last spring. The only channels that remain analog are channels 2-12; which, can be tuned with a standard knob style VHF tuner on an old TV. How long will these channels be available is anyone's guess; but, it probably won't be for very much longer.

Comcast offers two types of digital boxes. The first type is the big full blown Motorola box. The second box is a small POS called a digital transport adapter. This is a bare bones box that does nothing more than receive the digital channels and outputs an RF signal on either channel 3 or 4. This box has no A/V output jacks and if something goes wrong with the remote, you are screwed b/c there are no channel buttons on the box.

When they went digital, they said that each subscriber could have either one big box plus two small boxes or three small boxes at no extra charge. I think they charge something like $2/month extra for each additional small box.

In my house, the kitchen TV (a '90's 13" BPC Sharp) and my bedroom TV (an '84 knob tuned 13" Zenith) are connected directly to the cable. The other 3 TV's are connected to those POS DTA boxes. And, those boxes can be a headache. Sometimes, the picture will break up and/or drop out. Other times, the wrong channel will appear on the screen. And, I've had to call the cable company to "re activate" one of the boxes when it lost all reception. We didn't have those problems with the old analog system.

If they convert channels 2-12 to digital, I will simply install DTV converters on the effected TV's. The cable bill is too high as it is. I don't want to make it higher by renting extra boxes just to see trash programming that we care nothing about.

BTW, my analog line-up is as follows:
2 - mynetworkTV (also available OTA)
3 - WGN America
4 - Home Shopping Network
5 - CBS (also available OTA)
6 - ABC (also available OTA)
7 - NBC (also available OTA)
8 - CW - (also available OTA)
9 - PBS - (also available OTA)
10. FOX - (also available OTA)
11. QVC
12. Local access channel that airs the city council meetings, board of supervisors meeting, a few local church services, and announcements/programming having to do with the local community college.

I miss the early '80's when the quality of programming was better and the cable bill was something like $17/month. Now, they try to justify the cost by the number of channels they have. What good are all those channels if there's nothing worth watching on them?

Oh, and one other thing. I wish these modern POS boxes had a switched outlet on the back of them, like the older analog cable boxes. I think the older Motorola digital boxes had the switched outlet; but, I don't think the current Motorola big boxes have them. I guess so few people are using non-remote TV's anymore that they didn't figure a switched outlet was necessary.

Somewhere around here, I have one of those old late '70's-early '80's Jerrold cable boxes with a row of mechanical click-style buttons for channel changing. I think those boxes would go to channel 37 and I don't recall actually seeing one in use since around '86. Since then, most people had the digital readout boxes that would turn the TV on and off, as well as change channels with the remote. Some of the fancier boxes would even control the volume.

That Jerrold box you're thinking of was likely the "JSX". with a three position switch on the left and a fine-tuning control on the right. Jerry also had a "remote" version called the "JRX".

Talk about crap! They were among the prototypes!!!

That's the one.

I also remember seeing some cable boxes that had a single mechanical knob tuner, similar to the single knob varactor tuners in some TV's.

IIRC, that Jerrold box had dirty switches in it when I got it. It worked OK after I cleaned; but, of course, it's now only good for a paperweight, since everything above channel 12 is digital.

There was discussion at a convention for cable system owners/operators that they needed to drop analog.

With increasing pressure from all digital systems, as well as additional space needed for more internet and HD...analog cable is going the way of analog OTA.

Sent from my SPH-M910 using Tapatalk

Think I got one of those non remote Jerold cable boxes stashed away somewhere. If it went a bit higher I'd use it on one of my vintage sets.

I live in Lake County, Ohio. When cable arrived here in 1982, we had Jerrold converter boxes for our TVs like the one being described (one for the living room set and another for my Zenith 13" color portable in my bedroom). The cable in our area at the time only carried something on the order of 40 channels, all analog. Today, such boxes are obsolete several times over (as radiotvnut and anyone else trying to use analog cable boxes has discovered), since of course they do not work with digital TV.

Edit: I did not realize Jerrold also made a remote-control version of this box. Would have been nice if they had kept it around awhile, updated of course for DTV. I wonder how difficult it would have been to update the JSX/JRX versions for digital TV. Would it have been a major job to upgrade these boxes, or did Jerrold just give up on this series when DTV arrived?:scratch2:

One of these classic boxes?

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1329526711

Gotta love that simulated wood grain finish.

For those expecting a large lineup using a QAM tuner, good luck. Most cable systems have encrypted everything except for the OTA stations, which federal law requires to be transmitted in the clear.

My box is similar, but the wood grain top extends farther back form the controls and the grain is darker though.

Something else I wonder is how long will the cable companies provide boxes that output an NTSC RF signal on channel 3/4?

Probably as long as there are older NTSC CRT TVs. Once these old sets are completely out of service and have been replaced by flat panels (that day is coming, if it hasn't arrived already), the need for cable boxes will disappear, as will the boxes themselves. Eventually, the only uses for the old-style boxes that convert digital ATSC to analog NTSC will be as tuners for very old NTSC CRT sets such as are owned by VK members in their collections, or as paperweights.

Bear in mind, however, that many if not most or all of the older ATSC->NTSC cable boxes, removed from cable company service, may not and likely will not work as-is because these boxes must be activated with a special code to which only the cable company's technicians have access. Once boxes are removed from service, they may well be permanently locked so that they cannot be used for free cable service. There may be an FCC rule which requires cable operators to disable old, obsolete cable boxes in this way when new ones are phased in.

I don't see cable boxes going away; rather, I see the NTSC RF output connector going away from future boxes. As long as the cable company is sending out it's signal as "non-clear", there will be a need for some sort of decoder between the cable line and the TV.

And, yes, the current digital cable boxes must be activated. When we got our boxes and connected them, there was a message on the screen with instructions to call a phone number. When the number was called, I was directed to an automated system (no surprise). After entering the serial numbers of the boxes and after the system pulled up my account, a signal was sent down the line to activate the boxes and enable them to receive the level of service that I was paying for. I suspect the new way of doing it will prevent a lot of cable theft. In the old days, a crook could climb the pole, connect his cable, and he was in business (until they caught up with him). Back then, cable boxes could be purchased at many electronics stores and they required no sort of activation.

The way they used to prevent viewing of certain channels was to install a trap in the line. Many times, I've heard of people bypassing the trap and were able to watch the premium channels. Someone told me that they were once able to watch a PPV movie by fine tuning one TV to receive the sound and fine tuning another TV to view the picture. I've also heard of people, back in the early days of cable, wrapping a piece of aluminum foil around the cable and sliding the foil up and down the cable in order to receive HBO. At one point, I remember some of the premium channels could be clearly heard; but, the picture would be scrambled. IIRC, HBO was the only premium channel in my area that had both the picture and sound scrambled.

Back in the late '80's, someone was bragging to me about how he climbed the pole in the middle of the night, connected his cable, managed to get an "under the table" cable descrambler box, and was able to watch everything the cable company offered (for free). I warned him that they'd eventually catch up to him; and, they did. After that, I think he realized that he should have just gone ahead and paid for the service.

What exactly is the difference between clear and non-clear QAM cable TV signals? :scratch2: My flat-screen TV gets 50 digital cable channels and 64 analog ones without a cable box; I guess the 50 digital channels I'm getting must be clear QAM.

BTW, if tomorrow's cable boxes will be made without RF output ports to connect to the antenna input of the television, how on earth would one connect such a box to the set, or would the box be physically connected to the television at all? I'm thinking that if the RF connector is done away with, the box will get its signal input either wirelessly or through a hard-wired Internet connection, but that still leaves the question of how the box would connect to the TV. I am not presently aware of any way to wirelessly connect a television set to today's cable or satellite services, particularly the former.

YES! the 50 or so digital channels that you are seeing are indeed "clear QAM" ... the hundreds of digital channels that you are not seeing are "scrambled QAM". This Wikipedia quote perhaps explains it better than I can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_%28television%29

BTW, In general QAM is the only modulation scheme used on cable for digital channels (scrambled or not) ... ATSC is used for Over The Air transmission. ATSC is more robust for OTA, while QAM allows more channels in a given bandwidth, which cable providers like.

Most modern sets have a variety of inputs that provide higher quality viewing than the old fashioned ch3/4 NTSC connection. In order of increasing quality; Composite Video, Component Video and HDMI inputs are usually provided . Check the back of your set... should be lots of inputs.

ADD: WIFI TVs do exist for wireless connection to the internet and other hosts, such as this example:

http://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-XVT323SV...9861357&sr=8-2

Not affiliated,
jr

Something here that may shed some light on the subject...

http://broadcastengineering.com/RF/D...-FCC-02162012/

Yes and its a shame they are wasting it on all this new crap!

HDTV,etc.......

I could care less for any of that crap..... All i want is basic STANDARD DEF (And if possible IN ANALOGUE as it looks and sounds MUCH BETTER)

I remember this type of cable box from the 80's. my family had one when i was younger, we also had a black box type with a dial click tuner type knob on the front....that one also went to 36 or 37, in my parents room they had a kinda cool box where the 'box' was just an unpainted metal box with the cable in/out and a looooong wire coming out of it going to a beige box with a slide-type selector along the front and fine tuning knob at the end. the channel numbers were listed along the front above the slider and they would illuminate when you positioned the slider behinde them, indicating the channel. these all were from about 84-87 id say. the wire on the one in my parents room was too short for my dad to change the channels from his bed to he spliced in a length of telephone wire to it so it's reach.

We had that type of Jerrold box (with the 13 buttons, a fine tuning control, and a switch to select one of three ranges of channels) when Lake County, Ohio got cable service in the early 1980s -- 1982, if memory serves. There was one on the living room TV and one on my Zenith 13" portable in my bedroom, but we never had remote control cable boxes. These Jerrold boxes received up to, IIRC, 39 channels and worked well on the cable systems of the time, but of course they will not work with today's digital cable systems. I wonder if Jerrold has since developed cable boxes that will receive digital channels, and which look almost exactly like the old analog ones. I know Motorola's DTV box is a fancy, computer-controlled affair (I had one when I had digital cable some years ago), but am not sure if Jerrold, et al. have come out with such boxes for digital cable as well.

I would think they have, since all cable systems are or soon will be all digital. I just read online an article (from Broadcasting and Cable.com) that stated the FCC will end, shortly, its must-carry regulations which now require all cable companies to carry analog as well as digital channels. The analog service is now used mostly by cable subscribers with old NTSC TVs who want those channels but do not want a cable box (i.e. they want to connect the cable directly to the TV). When this rule is eliminated, however, everyone, regardless of what kind of TV they own (I assume this will also include flat screens), will have to rent a cable box to get anything other than broadcast channels on their sets. Time Warner Cable is one cable operator that may be exempt from this, as every channel they carry is now in digital format, even if the user's TV shows "NTSC" in the info box which appears when one changes channels.

The FCC forbids cable operators from scrambling, or otherwise rendering unwatchable, broadcast channels; however, since TW's service (across all tiers, including, if memory serves, standard cable) is now and has been for some time all digital, I do not think any change in the agency's (FCC) regulations will affect them to any great extent.

BTW, in my area and across all other systems in northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania, Time Warner Cable moved the TV Guide Channel from analog channel 13 to digital channel 230, effective today, June 13 (!), 2012. I can't help but wonder what other channels and/or services may be next in line to be eliminated from standard cable. :scratch2:

I say "June 13 (!)" because of the date of this change, which is today, June...yup, you guessed it...13th. I wonder if Time Warner purposely planned it this way, i.e. to have the date of the change coincide with the TV Guide Channel's former analog channel position. :scratch2:

After today's FCC ruling... I give analog cable six months, but little more.

Yep the end days are near for analog cable...

http://broadcastengineering.com/ott/...nset_06132012/

Time Warner dropped analog TBS a few weeks back .
So, by Jan, 1, 2014, I won't have analog 2-13 fed by the cable co.?

Big loss.. the feeds are often skewed in the digital realm, as in a local news affiliate having dialog sync issues with visible pixelation, or channel 2 losing all sound for a few days.
The drop feed is over the course of a few blocks here, and the runs are all new RG6 with 3 split lines off my drop.

Well techinally THERE IS NO ANALOG CABLE ANYMORE..... (All they do is feed the digital channels onto an analog channel (Which is not true analog))

Sadly, you are correct. There is very little all-analog content available nowadays. Unless you have a tape library or produce live video, it is all digitized somewhere along the line.
I'm not saying that this is inherently bad; But it is what it is.
Sort of how audiophiles listen to FM stereo on quality tuners, when most(or all) stations are broadcasting music from digital source files.

Digital this, digital that; I have a two-word explanation for it all: cash grab.

Well I would say it is bad!!

They are slowly destroying all analog media AND ITS VERY SAD...... There is nothing better in my opinion!!

Update:
Cable bill this quarter had a statement regarding their ceasing analog cable service.
Free digital converters available til Dec. 2014, and then 99cents per month per converter as of Jan 2015.
Change occurs .."on or around June 18 2013"....guess that means 2014?(since it still works fine )

There goes free 2 through 13 in the garage and attic !!!!
I rather liked my 'vinyl records of TV service' haha

If those bandits at T-W cable discontinue analog cable, a vintage TV collector like me, has absolutely no further use for cable. I like to run my old sets through the channels, using the tuners and remote controls.
Even the Porta-Color I just acquired, gets channels on all positions of the tuner, even a few on UHF. :thmbsp: