DTV station identification; are local TV stations still analog on digital cable?

[Jeffhs]

Time-Warner Cable is already digital; has been for months, probably close to a year (I'm not sure when they actually switched). I am not sure, either, of how they convert broadcast channels from ATSC to NTSC, although a customer service representative told me over the phone about six months ago that the conversion is done via a box on the roof of, say, an apartment building. The same conversion unit is probably used in private homes as well.

I also asked the TW installer who downgraded my cable from expanded basic to basic earlier this year what types of signals I am actually receiving. His answer (paraphrased) was that the signals at the cable headend are the digital feeds directly from the TV stations (not OTA signals picked up via antennas), fed to the cable companies via coaxial cables or fiber optic lines (in this day and age they are probably using the latter); these signals are distributed over the cable system as such (digital) and are converted by the rooftop box to NTSC before reaching the subscribers' analog TVs.

To receive full digital (channels above 99, at least on TW's systems) a converter must be rented from the cable operator, which, yup, you guessed it, adds to the subscriber's monthly cable bill. It is because of this that I disagree with a previous poster over his remark that Comcast will "give" you the converter in exchange for the four analog channels they are moving to digital.

This is not so. Comcast, Time Warner or any other cable company does not "give" subscribers anything; we pay, often through the nose, for everything we get from them, like everything else these days. The old expression "there is no free lunch" applies here, in spades--and then some. Cable companies are like any other business these days; they are out to get as much money from their subscribers as they can. Their bottom line is all they care about, which is why basic, X-basic (expanded basic) and digital cable rates keep going up and up. I have basic cable that carries only local channels plus C-SPAN, WGN America, and a couple others, but I am seriously considering dropping cable and getting a converter box for my analog RCA CTC185 19" set in my living room. When that set finally goes belly-up, I will not have it repaired, as it is nine years old; I will get a flat-panel, probably a 15" Magnavox (Philips). I know I've said in some of my previous posts that I would never have a flat-panel TV with a picture not much larger than an oversized postage stamp, but considering that I live in a small apartment, a 15" set would probably work out just fine. I was thinking earlier this morning about one of my great-aunts, now deceased, who lived in an apartment in suburban Cleveland. In all the years she lived there, she had 19" and larger B&W TVs, but the first color TV she ever had was a 12" Sony portable (might have been an early Trinitron). It suited her to a T. It was replaced after some 20 years by a 19" Sony, which she used until she went into a nursing home in the late '80s or early '90s.

I got to thinking. If my great-aunt could get along for 20+ years with a 12" analog portable color TV in a small apartment (her place was probably not a lot larger than mine, and I live in a one-bedroom unit in which almost every square inch of space is occupied by something), I could learn to live with a 15" flat-panel.

I've been thinking as well about the much clearer picture I'll probably get with a FP, although the picture I get now on my analog RCA is amazingly clear and sharp as it is, owing to its inline dark-tint CRT. The only quarrel I have with FPs is the short lifespan of these sets; if it weren't for that, I would have replaced my analog set by now. I don't want to have to get a new set after only one or two years; as I live on a fixed income, I couldn't afford it.

Are FPs any more reliable today than they were, say, five years ago? I am referring to, among other things, the video-driver IC's molded into the cable that connects an FP's display panel to the chassis (when these go bad it renders the set useless), as well as to the life of the backlight. Are the smaller sets (for example, the Philips-Magnavox 15" sets I see in my Sunday paper's ad flyers every week) worth the low price they sell for, or are they junk--would I have to put such a set out for the trash (or have it recycled, as Best Buy and most other electronics retailers selling FPs will do when they install a new FP in a customer's home) after only a year or less? I know we live in a throwaway society nowadays, but for crying out loud, this is ridiculous.