Comcast going all-digital soon

This weekend's tech post.

It was reported yesterday that Comcast is going all digital on July 1, 2007...

Ready or not, Comcast's Chicago customers on older analog services are going digital by July 1.

Eric Schaefer, Comcast vice president of sales and marketing in Schaumburg, said, "Analog TV is going away, and digital TV is coming. People are going to have clearer pictures and better sound. They will have interactive guides, and 40 free channels of Music Choice and a special universal remote control."

At the customer's choice, the cable giant will either send the customer a new Motorola digital cable box in the mail or the consumer can pick up a device at Comcast's offices.

The change doesn't affect the vast majority of Comcast's 2 million Chicago area customers because they already receive digital services.

Comcast is aiming to prepare its customers for the federally mandated migration from analog to high-definition/digital services by Feb. 17, 2009, Schaefer said.

Now this only begs the question. What does this mean? What is this digital cable?

Digital cable is used by cable distributors to increase the variety of programming available on their networks, using video compression to transfer more channels through their cable networks already in place. The use of the digital technology also adds the functionality of the cable box to have two-way communication, allowing for the purchasing of pay-per-view programming without use of a phone line, in addition to video on demand services.

Hmm very cool. You know I've been places with digital cable. It seems very nifty to be able to watch the channels that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to watch at home. Of course I hope that price won't become a problem as Comcast makes their conversion by July 1.

Oh yeah for as long as I have the ability to enrich and or talk about technology especially things that we use at home. I intend to talk about that frequently here.