Analog is Dead. Long Live Analog

ANALOG IS DEAD. LONG LIVE ANALOG
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Todd Spangler]
Is analog TV an albatross for cable? Or -- with just 365 days to go until over-the-air broadcasts from local stations go wholly digital -- is it a critical near-term asset? The short answer: It’s both. Analog service, which has formed the foundation of the cable-TV industry since its inception, chews up an inordinate amount of space on its wires. A single analog channel requires a 6 Megahertz slice of spectrum. The same slice can carry 10 or more standard-definition channels delivered digitally. And the future, in an increasingly high-definition world, is all-digital. In fact, cable operators are moving to eliminate fat analog signals to “reclaim” bandwidth, so they can introduce new high-definition channels, offer faster Internet access and expand video-on-demand services. The industry would seem to have the motivation to make the break, exactly one year from now. At midnight on Feb. 17, 2009, the 1,760 full-power broadcast television stations in the United States are going all-digital. By law, they will be required to relinquish the spectrum they've used for decades to transmit analog TV signals over the air. Starting at 12:01 a.m. on Feb. 18, all stations must be all-digital, all the time. But just a handful of smaller cable systems, such as RCN Chicago and Bend Broadband in Bend, Ore., plan to be delivering 100% of the channels they supply customers in digital form by next February. And their reasons for doing so are only indirectly related to the transition to digital broadcasting by TV stations.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6533127.html?nid=4262