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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Comcast Signals Change
By Rick Nathanson
Journal Staff Writer
Comcast this summer will require virtually all Albuquerque-area customers to get set-top boxes for all TVs in their home — even cable-ready sets — because it will begin encrypting its signal.
Three boxes for each home will be free and allow each TV access to hundreds of hours of Video on Demand offerings, including plenty that are not free.
Only the Comcast Albuquerque metro area system will be affected initially, later followed by Santa Fe and Las Cruces, said Chris Dunkeson, the company's public affairs director.
The exact timeline for the switch is still to be set, "but we'll be communicating with our customers early and often prior to the change," he told the Journal.
The digital transition won't result in higher monthly service fees and there will be no cost to customers for the digital receiver boxes, he said.
People who have a single TV connected to a TiVo or Comcast digital video recorder won't be affected because those units are essentially digital receivers and have the capacity to decipher the encrypted signal. Additional TVs in the home will need a digital receiver of some kind, Dunkeson said.
All Comcast DVRs are already video-on-demand capable, as are the latest generation of TiVo DVRs, he said.
Customers will be able to pick up the boxes at the company's service counters, 4611 Montbell NE and 475 Coors NW, or will be able to call 344-0690 to request that a service technician install the boxes. The charge for installation has yet to be determined, Dunkeson said.
"Three digital receivers should certainly cover the majority of our customers. The great thing is that it will result in customers getting a superior picture and giving them access to video on demand. There are literally hundreds of hours of free programming in addition to pay content for such things as the latest movies."
Comcast will continue to carry the analog broadcast of the local network affiliates, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox, for customers who get Limited Basic service, the lowest tier of cable programming. That service includes channels 2 through 28 with the exception of channels 8, 9 and 10, which are sports channels included in the Expanded Basic service. Each of the local network affiliate stations has a simultaneous high-definition digital channel available to those higher tier customers, Dunkeson said.
"This is absolutely a big deal, but the majority of our customers already have digital service at some level, and many customers will have to do nothing at all," he said.
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