[Discuss] Comcast gets rid of the remaining analog channels

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:01 AM, David Blank-Edelman <dnb at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> On Feb 9, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Shirley M?rquez D?lcey wrote:
>
>> How can piracy be a consideration for channels that are already available at higher quality (the versions carried on cable are re-encoded at lower bitrates than the broadcasts) for free?
>
> I'm not a cable person, but let me hazard a guess. I'm guessing that the company has a license with those providers to broadcast them only in a certain region. If you were to be able to capture the bits and stream/redistribute them (and there a number of different places where people actually do this), that would be a problem for them.

The "limited basic" channels, I'm talking about are almost all
available as a digital signal over the air with no (enforceable)
protection.   If there are such provisions in Comcast's "must carry"
agreements with local broadcast stations, they aren't worth the paper
they are printed on.

Bill Bogstad