New Technology TV

For a number of years now, cable TV has been the underdog. There are a variety of reasons for this, but it really comes down to the fact that when satellite TV underwent a technological revolution back in the nineteen nineties, it suddenly became much more affordable and attractive for more people. It basically offered a larger selection of channels and a crisper picture than cable TV could provide at that time. Since then though, Comcast has taken the initiative to upgrade its technology to the point where it can be much more competitive with the satellite TV companies, and in many ways is now superior to those satellite TV companies. The first upgrade that Comcast Cable providers made was to convert their entire system over to digital TV transmissions. Digital TV has a number of advantages over the older analog signal. The obvious ones are the crisp, clear picture that analog TV can't produce and the ability to offer an on screen program guide. Having access to an on screen program guide is especially valuable because of its ability to let viewers read up on each TV program to see if it's something that they may or may not want to watch. Basically, an on screen program guide takes the guesswork out of deciding what to watch and therefore saves a lot of time.

The less obvious benefits of digital TV are equally advantageous. For example, one of the main disadvantages that cable TV had when compared to satellite TV was the number of channels it offered. The number of channels that any TV service provider can offer is limited by its bandwidth, and since a digital TV signal can be compressed, it's possible to transmit more channels using digital TV technology than it is using analog TV technology over the same amount of bandwidth. In this sense, Comcast's upgrades have really paid off as it's now capable of providing over two hundred and seventy five channels in a single programming package with more soon to come. This number of channels clearly makes Comcast competitive with any other kind of TV service provider currently in existence.

One way in which cable TV technology is superior to satellite TV technology is in its ability to offer video on demand technology. Video on demand technology allows viewers to select the programming that they want from an archive of TV shows, movies, and short format videos in order to watch them on a moment's notice. In fact, Comcast is a leader when it comes to this new kind of technology. It provides an ever increasing amount of video on demand content both on a continuing subscription and a pay per view basis.

There's another new technological development that is sure to make Comcast even more competitive in the near future and its called Switched Digital Video technology. Switched Digital Video provides an ingenious way to take better advantage of the cable network's existing bandwidth in order to offer hundreds, if not thousands of channels. Best of all, Switched Digital Video puts standard definition and HDTV programming on nearly equal footing. This means that Comcast will be able to offer more HDTV channels as they come on line and as the demand for them continues to grow.

In all of these ways, Comcast has used an inconvenient situation as motivation to become a superior service in the TV service provider industry.