Bad news for Lancaster, PA...

[tvmitch]

Comcast of Lancaster, PA, has decided to move GSN from analog to digital effective November 1, which means it'll cost me $10+ a month to watch GSN. But I'll get GAS (Finders Keepers!) and BBC America (Weakest Link! Without Prejudice!) too, and everything GSN will be in all-digital quality, so not all is lost. (Dish is not an option: our house has no clear view of the birdies.)

Found out this from a blurb at the bottom of my (actually my girlfriend's) cable bill.

Anyone else who has Comcast and GSN Analog get the same bad news?

[That Don Guy]

[quote name=\'mitchgroff\' date=\'Sep 26 2004, 01:53 PM\'] Comcast of Lancaster, PA, has decided to move GSN from analog to digital effective November 1, which means it'll cost me $10+ a month to watch GSN. But I'll get GAS (Finders Keepers!) and BBC America (Weakest Link! Without Prejudice!) too, and everything GSN will be in all-digital quality, so not all is lost. [/quote]
Er, digital cable is not digital because it increases the quality; assuming you get Fox Sports World, turn on any soccer match and watch the field turn into a chessboard.  Digital cable is digital so they can decrease the quality - seriously, it is so they can compress the signal to fit more channels into the existing cable lines.

(And be glad you had GSN on analog; it's always been digital where I've lived.  It wasn't even available until just before the end of the "dead period".)

And I can't find Without Prejudice on the current BBC America schedule, although they do say Dog Eat Dog runs on Sunday mornings starting October 3.

-- Don

[tvmitch]

BBCA did air Prejudice until recently. They're adding the real Dog Eat Dog and The Enemy Within (a fantastic show) this week.

The picture quality on the digital tier of Comcast's digital cable, which we had for a brief period of time last year, is very much comparable to satellite. The signal might be compressed, but it's because the signal isn't running over 25-year old technology.

And Comcast didn't give us GSN until mid-2002. Never got to see daily Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, or Go.

[Particleman]

I'm not really all that impressed with digital TV.  You can sometimes really see the artifacts left over from the video compression.  And if you ever get a little drop in signal, it's like watching a DVD with dust all over it.

[ClockGameJohn]

I'm not sure if I'm getting the same feed as you guys in Lancaster or not, but I do get WGAL8 so I'm assuming it's possible.

Luckily, I have Dish Network currently, but at various places I do get to watch, this could be a significant change.  Interesting!

BTW:  How many Lancaster area Comcast folks are here?  I know Aaron Sica should get the same feed judging from his location...

[aaron sica]

Mitch's reply sent me running to my cable bill;

I'm with Comcast out of Harrisburg and no such announcement on my bill. I wonder what Lancaster will fill that channel with?

Mitch, please check your email as well, I've sent you something.

[inturnaround]

[quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Sep 26 2004, 09:05 PM\'] Mitch's reply sent me running to my cable bill;

I'm with Comcast out of Harrisburg and no such announcement on my bill. I wonder what Lancaster will fill that channel with?
 [/quote]
 Probably nothing as it opens up bandwidth for a few digital channels or a HD channel.

[tvmitch]

Right...I suspect they'll leave it with snow for digital channels and whatnot. We have several snow channels smack in the middle of the analog lineup which seem to be there to expand the digital lineup.

Going to get my box tomorrow...Enemy Within, here I come!

[mparrish11]

Think of watching a video file on the PC in, say, 640x480 resolution.  Now expand that image to full-screen.  That is about the video quality of Digital Cable and Satellite.
And if you watch a channel that is ALREADY compressed by the network and re-compressed for broadcast on Digital Cable/Satellite, the quality is A LOT worse.  Watching GAS on my Dish Network is like watching a 4th generation copy of a VHS tape.

Matthew

[rugrats1]

I suspect they'll leave it with snow for digital channels and whatnot. We have several snow channels smack in the middle of the analog lineup which seem to be there to expand the digital lineup.

Where I live, this was not the case -- on my system, channels that moved from analog to digital were replaced with another channel. This mainly affected premium channels, which all moved to digital, but affected only one regular channel. Unfortunately, that channel was Goodlife, which was moved to digital to make room for Telefutura. (We never had GSN on analog.)

[trainman]

[quote name=\'mparrish11\' date=\'Oct 3 2004, 09:21 AM\']Think of watching a video file on the PC in, say, 640x480 resolution.  Now expand that image to full-screen.  That is about the video quality of Digital Cable and Satellite.

[snapback]59420[/snapback]

[/quote]

As always, your mileage may vary.  I have no problem with the quality of my DirecTV signal.  (I also used to have no problem with the quality of the digital channels on the Adelphia system here, but the quality of their analog channels left a little to be desired.)