That's according to an article by Multichannel News.
The publication reports that Comcast will use the digital converter boxes to eliminate the need to transmit analog signals. The converter boxes will be issued to customers who now own analog sets and, therefore, still require analog signals.
With the converter boxes, the digital signals, which require less system space, can be displayed on the analog sets. With fewer analog channels, Comcast will have more space for services in greater demand, such as High-Definition TV. (High-def channels take up as much seven times the amount of space as an analog channel.)
Multichannel News reports that Comcast hopes to switch over 20 percent of its entire subscriber base to all-digital in 2008. Next year, the cable operator will likely order another 12 million converter boxes to continue its phasing out of analog signals.
Like other cable operators, Comcast is desperately seeking more system space to add more High-Definition channels to keep pace with satcasters DIRECTV and Dish Network. In some Comcast markets, the satcasters offer three times as many national HD channels, putting the cable operator at a major disadvantage.
Multichannel News writes that Comcast's analog reclamation project might indicate that it's leaning to using it to create more system space rather than resorting to a new technology called Switched Digital Video.
The publication said Comcast declined to comment for the article.
But Comcast COO Steve Burke said recently that the cable operator wants to eliminate analog channels to “clear more capacity for high-def...Right now even though we say we have 1,000 high-def options on demand, the fact that DIRECTV can say, ‘We have 100 HD channels and no one else does’ -- that’s not a place we want to stay in,” Burke said.
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