Anyone know if all of Comcast is going digital Friday?

[alkemyst]

Most of my local broadcast channels are all in analog still, some have HD versions.

Anyone know if Comcast is going to go 100% digital on Friday? Cable companies and those that rebroadcast have until 2012 to make a full change.

I did a full recabling of my house (5 runs) and the picture quality improved tremendously...not only was the old cable RG59, but also overly split and had very loose terminations (most came right off pulling the new cable through).

If any of you bought a new TV and still dont have the picture quality you thought you'd have, I'd do some new cabling or pay someone off craigslist to do it.

 

[TheVrolok]

People don't realize how much redoing the in house cabling can help. Updated coax can really improve picture quality these days.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: TheVrolok
People don't realize how much redoing the in house cabling can help. Updated coax can really improve picture quality these days.

Indeed. I'm re-running the cable for my parents antenna (yeah, just broadcast), and also replacing their POTS cable w/ CAT5e... things are already much better, and I'm not even done yet.

 

[evident]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: TheVrolok
People don't realize how much redoing the in house cabling can help. Updated coax can really improve picture quality these days.

Indeed. I'm re-running the cable for my parents antenna (yeah, just broadcast), and also replacing their POTS cable w/ CAT5e... things are already much better, and I'm not even done yet.

how do you replace the POTS cable w/ CAT5e?

 

[Demo24]

Originally posted by: evident

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: TheVrolok
People don't realize how much redoing the in house cabling can help. Updated coax can really improve picture quality these days.

Indeed. I'm re-running the cable for my parents antenna (yeah, just broadcast), and also replacing their POTS cable w/ CAT5e... things are already much better, and I'm not even done yet.

how do you replace the POTS cable w/ CAT5e?

I'm guessing he only uses two wires of the cat5 cable. I can't imagine that would be a very noticeable upgrade, but probably is a slight increase in quality.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Originally posted by: TheVrolok
People don't realize how much redoing the in house cabling can help. Updated coax can really improve picture quality these days.

QFT

<-- rewired virtually his entire house and garage. Expensive and a lot of work, but now I have a 1960 house with 2009 wiring.

 

[TheTony]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
Cable companies and those that rebroadcast have until 2012 to make a full change.

This is not true. The only requirement in place for cable companies regarding the analog transition for OTA broadcasts is that cable companies must make the digital "must-carry" broadcasts available to their customers with analog televisions, through 2012. This can be done by broadcasting them on their systems via analog, or broadcasting them digitally and making set-top-boxes available with which to receieve the broadcasts.

After 2012, cable companies are free to do as they please, including continuing analog transmission.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: DEMO24

Originally posted by: evident

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: TheVrolok
People don't realize how much redoing the in house cabling can help. Updated coax can really improve picture quality these days.

Indeed. I'm re-running the cable for my parents antenna (yeah, just broadcast), and also replacing their POTS cable w/ CAT5e... things are already much better, and I'm not even done yet.

how do you replace the POTS cable w/ CAT5e?

I'm guessing he only uses two wires of the cat5 cable. I can't imagine that would be a very noticeable upgrade, but probably is a slight increase in quality.

I'm sure that the benefit is (at least mostly) a result of the re-installation, rather than the cable replacement. Some of the POTS lines were wrapped around power wiring (no, not just run in parallel, actually wrapped around as they traveled in parallel). The wire was a mix of stranded and solid, and there was a mix of daisy chain and star topology. I also enjoyed how some jacks had multiple wires twisted together on the same phone jack port, and the other end of the incorrect wires were just sitting unused but bare at the other end... covered by spider webs and dirt.

Once I'm done, all jacks will be home-run, and punched down onto some phone line distribution panel made by On-Q (available at Lowe's). I'm leaving plenty of cable on the MDF-side to pull back and punch the cables down onto something else at some point. I'm also running two cables to each location (one for phone, one for future data or whatever). All jacks will be RJ45-type, and Lowe's also sells a phone line splitter that makes it exceptionally easy to connect 4 independent phone lines using the same RJ45 jack, because I'm actually punching down all 4 pairs.

The "improvement" that I mentioned earlier is because there was a *ton* of noise on the line. Moving the wiring at least a few inches away from power, and getting rid of some of the worst junction boxes (so far) has eliminated most of it.

I replaced the phone jacks (and added data jacks) at my house (which I rent) a couple of months ago. The landlord said OK, and it was worth it to me, to have infrastructure that I don't have to worry about failing. 😉 4 drops behind the TV, and 2 behind my desk... and I'm thinking about putting in 6 more in various places eventually.

 

[Demo24]

Ah, well in that case I can easily see your reasoning in doing that and I suspect it does drastically improve the quality.