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We have Comcast in my area and they dropped most of the analog channels last spring. The only channels that remain analog are channels 2-12; which, can be tuned with a standard knob style VHF tuner on an old TV. How long will these channels be available is anyone's guess; but, it probably won't be for very much longer.
Comcast offers two types of digital boxes. The first type is the big full blown Motorola box. The second box is a small POS called a digital transport adapter. This is a bare bones box that does nothing more than receive the digital channels and outputs an RF signal on either channel 3 or 4. This box has no A/V output jacks and if something goes wrong with the remote, you are screwed b/c there are no channel buttons on the box.
When they went digital, they said that each subscriber could have either one big box plus two small boxes or three small boxes at no extra charge. I think they charge something like $2/month extra for each additional small box.
In my house, the kitchen TV (a '90's 13" BPC Sharp) and my bedroom TV (an '84 knob tuned 13" Zenith) are connected directly to the cable. The other 3 TV's are connected to those POS DTA boxes. And, those boxes can be a headache. Sometimes, the picture will break up and/or drop out. Other times, the wrong channel will appear on the screen. And, I've had to call the cable company to "re activate" one of the boxes when it lost all reception. We didn't have those problems with the old analog system.
If they convert channels 2-12 to digital, I will simply install DTV converters on the effected TV's. The cable bill is too high as it is. I don't want to make it higher by renting extra boxes just to see trash programming that we care nothing about.
BTW, my analog line-up is as follows:
2 - mynetworkTV (also available OTA)
3 - WGN America
4 - Home Shopping Network
5 - CBS (also available OTA)
6 - ABC (also available OTA)
7 - NBC (also available OTA)
8 - CW - (also available OTA)
9 - PBS - (also available OTA)
10. FOX - (also available OTA)
11. QVC
12. Local access channel that airs the city council meetings, board of supervisors meeting, a few local church services, and announcements/programming having to do with the local community college.
I miss the early '80's when the quality of programming was better and the cable bill was something like $17/month. Now, they try to justify the cost by the number of channels they have. What good are all those channels if there's nothing worth watching on them?
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