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Author Topic: GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....  (Read 3198 times)

weaklink75

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« on: August 14, 2006, 01:52:13 PM »
Because of the new MASN sports network (and a condition that it has to be on expanded basic), some of the Baltimore/Washington area Comcast providers will be bumping GSN to the digital tier in the next month or so (The channel getting bumped, if any, is varying from location to location; some systems will just be doing a simple reshuffle, others will bump channels such as Oxygen and ESPN Classic)...

I for one am going to be ticked if my Comcast is one of those that bumps it (and if it does, I know exactly what I'm giving the family for Christmas- money to do the upgrade to digital if we can get it). And to top that off, they're raising rates by $2 a month because of the new MASN....some people say that the only reason they're putting MASN at all is because they were forced to do so to get the Adelphia purchase approved- the fight between the owners of MASN (Peter Angelos of the Orioles, who got the network as part of a settlement so he wouldn't sue when the Nationals came to DC) and Comcast (who are losing the rights to the Orioles on their sports network next year to MASN, and who sued Angelos because of it) were well known in the DC/MD area over the past two years...

davemackey

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2006, 02:13:12 PM »
This has already happened in parts of New Jersey, where Comcast has taken GSN off its analog tier already and relegated it to Channel 179. So I am thinking it's eventually going to happen everywhere Comcast is.

KWJCDon

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #2 on: August 14, 2006, 03:13:37 PM »
We have Comcast here in Key West. For about a month, GSN was available on both 179 and 49. Last week, it was pulled from the analog. I must say that the quality is much better. The only problem is that I now have to rearrange my cables to tape from the converter instead of tuning through the DVR.  LOL

Don

Particleman

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2006, 04:00:00 PM »
I think the quality of most digital channels is worse.  That's the whole purpose of standard definition digital cable, to squeeze more channels using as little bandwidth as possible.  The cable companies can designate how much bandwidth a channel can take but in most cases, the quality isn't really that good.  This combined with the upscaling of my HDTV gives me a picture with noticable artifacts and gritty appearance.

I would like to also say that my cable company, Time-Warner of Raleigh/Durham does have excellent digital HDTV channels.  The bandwidth has to go somewhere, I suppose.  :-)

mystery7

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2006, 07:44:35 PM »
Agreed-o-mundo. People are falling for the "more is better" ploy, not realizing how much quality they're sacrificing for the sake of more channels. I can't win with Cablevision. My analog cable is soft and grainy on my analog set, and my digital, whch is where GSN is, is compressed to near - but not quite -  VHS-quality. HD is decent, I guess, based on what little I watch of it.

Joe Mello

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2006, 01:16:04 AM »
Actually, GSN just recently moved DOWN the channels from 99 (still expanded basic, but it's the thought that counts) to 68 here in Bensalem.  In Pittsburgh, it's 67.  Both are Comcast outlets.

EDIT: Oops.  67 is G4.  52 is GSN in Pittsburgh.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2006, 10:18:02 AM by Joe Mello »
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LocalH

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2006, 02:49:30 PM »
[quote name=\'Particleman\' post=\'127389\' date=\'Aug 14 2006, 04:00 PM\']
I think the quality of most digital channels is worse.  That's the whole purpose of standard definition digital cable, to squeeze more channels using as little bandwidth as possible.  The cable companies can designate how much bandwidth a channel can take but in most cases, the quality isn't really that good.  This combined with the upscaling of my HDTV gives me a picture with noticable artifacts and gritty appearance.

I would like to also say that my cable company, Time-Warner of Raleigh/Durham does have excellent digital HDTV channels.  The bandwidth has to go somewhere, I suppose.  :-)
[/quote]
It really depends on the specific MSO. Done properly, an SD digital cable channel will be much cleaner than an equivalent analog channel. Plus, at least in my area, the MSO receives GSN from a digital satellite feed and then transmits it as analog, so I get the worst of both worlds - an over-compressed digital signal with all the noise, interference, and crosstalk of an analog RF signal.

Also, many MSOs take their signal directly from the HITS, without reencoding it. Thus, it's not necessarily the MSO's fault that a particular digital station is low-bitrate. Here, channels like Biography and History International are high-bitrate and sourced from what appears to be either an S-Video or component interconnect (so the image quality is superb), but channels like Nick GAS are much lower-bitrate (and appear to be taken from a composite interconnect, which means that the encoder now has to deal with crosstalk as well as the actual image itself).

My opinion is that MSOs should completely do away with the analog tier, distribute boxes to subscribers at a rate of $1/mo, and then bump the bitrates up on everything (they'd still save on capacity, seeing as you can definitely get 2, maybe even 3 high-quality SD stations into a single 6MHz slot, at a rate of about 7-9Mbps for each stream). Sure, you'd remove the capability for most people to just hook up a cable directly to their TV, but at a rate of $1/mo for a converter, they'd still profit, while the converters would be "cheaper" to the average person (right now, my MSO charges $3.95/mo for a digital converter, and I assume that's roughly average, although I'm not sure). Additionally, image quality would be tend to be much cleaner (especially on channels traditionally found on analog tiers, such as locals), since the channels wouldn't be transmitted to the home via an analog video signal. Sure, this is a pipe dream, but I think it would be feasible.
Scott Jones

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Former Newscast Director

Particleman

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GSN being bumped to digital in portions of MD/DC area....
« Reply #7 on: August 15, 2006, 05:25:35 PM »
That is some good information, most of it I wasn't aware of.  I have a friend who works for Charter Communications and I have to admit most of what he says goes totally over my head.  :)  But enough has sunk in that I understand at least some of the basics of digital cable.

It will be interesting to see what will happen when we eventually do make the transition to all digital channels.  Maybe your pipe dream will come true.