Cable Switched Digital

Here's a little oddity which may escape some of you.

Not only does my T-W provide free HD {as well as digital subchannels, IF your TV has a QAM tuner} from local stations without cable box, it's providing digital std def of some lower tier {1 to 80} channels.
I noticed on Saturday morning, that some of the cable mainstays showed "Contact Customer Service' when I tuned them on cable box but were still there on direct cable connection on my tv.
So I unplugged the cable box to reload it and voila, the channels showed up but were less 'lossy' looking. Switching my tv input source confirms: The display through the cable box is notably higher -near dvd- quality.

And when I scan the cable channels with my HD TV, I see a LOT of encrypted subchannels.. of course I dont know what they are but that wasnt happening a few weeks ago.

Switched Digital? I wont go into it because I am not sure exactly how it works but I do know that all programming sent switched digital is NOT cable broadcast per-se, but is sort of like streaming video, or real-time on-demand. And they are doing it to increase usable cable bandwidth. I dont uderstand how THAT works but that's what I glean from my resources.
I have the feeling that many of the basic {no box needed} tier channels will soon be moved to the 'digital tier'. And Basic Tier will essentially fall back to the original 'CATV' paradigm.

 

Not sure if it the same thing you mean but at work we have a HDTV and no cable box, through Comcast. When we first got it all we got was basic cable on it. After a few months someone was changing the channel using the up button to go from Ch 5 to 6, and all of a sudden it went from Ch 5 to Ch 5.1 and 5.1 was the HD feed of Ch 5, he then changed it to Ch 6. After a little playing we found that all stations that also had a HD feed had used *.1 as their HD station. We also found that Ch 7 was standard broadcast, 7.1 was the HD feed, but Ch 7.3 was all weather from that station. The local PBS stations all have multiple subchannels as well, usually showing different shows then the main channel.

 

No, that's different... it's 'broadcast', meaning it always occupies bandwdith.
I mentioned THAT...

What I refer to is the programming of the cable box to pull digital 480 to replace the analog 480 content for channels such as USA, TBS, etc...
I'm wondering if that is the first step toward elimination of the top of the standard analog tier.

 

Must have been those dang {}'s cause me to overlook what was inside Or my lack of short term memory made me forget what was written above when I got to the second paragraph.

Oh, did I mention it may have been a short term memory thing?