shelto13 said:
After the conversion to digital, does Charter compare better to Dish or Direct quality?
In the very small comcast served area in the Tampa Bay Area that has gone all digital for digital cable customers I can say that analog channels are actually better than anything I've seen on both D* and Dish and Voom for that matter. Also I noticed a big increase in quality of the VOD and HDTV channels when they made the change. Also the channels above 100 look just as good as the analog ones and that is saying something because the analogs in digital have better picture quality than the old digital channels before the switch.
So with this review in mind I can say that at least this system gave much more bandwidth back to all channels when they made this switch but that doesn't mean every market will do the "right thing".
They also upgraded their internet speeds to 20Mbps down and 5Mbps UP as well. I'm thinking about buying a house in this area just for those speeds alone for cryin out load.
I'm saying this because I hope it gives you an idea of what this can do for us and also keep in mind that even with all these new upgrades they still offer the full analog lineup to customers without needing a box. I know this because of my co-workers lives in this area. He is also testing this cheap motorola box that a user on AVS was talking about and its very cool.
It seems that Comcast in this market will be rolling this out to all non digital customers within the next several months. The customers bills won't be increased at all unless they need more than 2 of these boxes in which they will be charged a rental of 1 buck per month per box beyond the 2nd one.
This box has a remote control with it and has these features below. For one its a two-way box as well.
It has the cable companies branded program guide which happens to be Moxi guide software and they will be rolling out Tivo software as soon as they get it from Tivo.
The box has a standard coax jack and s-video, composite and a coax digital audio port.
This box can access all digital cable channels the customers subscribes to and can access all VOD content as well. This includes Starz On Demand type VOD. Once they roll this box out they will get rid of the analog lineup for good and the system will be all digital.