Digital Cable

[5.1 DTS guy]

Anyone have experience with Adelphia digital cable? Finally, we ordered digital cable after years of basic cable. Is the picture quality better even without an HD signal? Do alot of channels take advantage of DD 5.1? Also, is digital cable just as good or better than satellite as far as channel line-up, picture quality, and audio quality? Does anyone have experience with Adelphia and their digital cable, and if so, were they good? All in all, its quite exciting to upgrade from analogue. Thanks for any help.

 

[Hi Ho]

I know nothing about Adephia but I can tell you that all of the analog channels that you receive with basic cable will still be analog. The new ones will be digital. That is, unless Adephia has one-upped the rest of the cable industry and provides all digital channels.

 

[Mort Corey]

The channels, generally above 90, are digital and the lower ones still analog. Sometimes there are 5.1 offerings (movies mostly) but it's not across the board. In my area, Adelphia has two different boxes. One has composite output and the other S-video. The S-video box will give you the best picture on all channels. IIRC, the S-video box is also the only one with optical audio output so you'd need that for 5.1 sound as well.

Twere me, I'd opt for for their HD box which is only an additional five bucks a month. Even if you don't access the HD stations, they're there if you want them in the future and the box itself has more output options.

Mort

 

[MDS]

From what I've read, 'digital' cable varies from company to company and location to location.

I have Time Warner in TX and the first 71 channels are analog, everything above 100 is digital. The catch is that the channels in the lower analog tier are duplicated in the 'digital' tier (and are still analog audio). The digital channels that are not duplicated from the analog tier are mostly DD 2.0, with the movie channels most often being DD 5.1. There are a handful of channels that broadcast 48 kHz PCM. In the digital tier, the video is always digital - mpeg2 - but unless you have a box with DVI or HDMI outputs, the set top box does the decoding.

Comcast in FL is slightly different. There are no analog audio channels - every channel is at least 48 kHz PCM. They have the same mix of DD 2.0 and DD 5.1 for the music and movie channels.

It would be best if you could find someone that has Adelphia and can tell you exactly what type of digital audio most of the stations use.