[Chat] Re: [Discussion] RE: Comcast rates

[Emil Volcheck]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 17:57, Sandra Sparks wrote:
...
> I really hate to think how much money I have wasted over the years on cable.
> I started out with cable when Charles Village was the first neighborhood in
> the City to be wired--$14/mo in the early 1980s.  I guess I've come full
> circle.

Kathleen and I were hold-outs, not subscribing to cable
for many years.  But when the Science Fiction program
"Babylon 5" went to cable, we had to finally break down
and subscribe.  That might have been around 1996?
As I recall, in 1995-96, Maryland Public Television
had only channel 22, which we received only weakly in the
Saint Paul Court Apartments.  I believe there is now
a Baltimore Channel 67 for MPT.

We're seriously thinking about switching to satellite.
DirecTV Satellite is not more expensive than Expanded Basic
cable.  Furthermore, it's an all digital signal, so
an "apples to apples" comparison would compare DirecTV
to Comcast Digital, which is significantly more
expensive.

Plus with satellite, you can see Lisa Simeone's TV show!

I've toyed with the idea of subscribing to the German
TV service (www.germantv.info).

I think the most interesting trend of all is the growing
availability of streaming video, allowing you to receive
TV programs over a broadband connection.  The popularity of
TiVO, ReplayTV, SnapStation, etc. shows that computers
handling video is economically feasible.  There's not
much difference to a user whether the signal into their
TiVO comes from a Comcast cable or from a big pipe off
the Internet.  The "Internet 2" is already available
at many universities, with massively larger bandwidth
than the present Internet.  I wouldn't be at all
surprised if in 20 years, Internet 2 access becomes
available to the general public.  By then, we'll
probably have all migrated to Internet Protocol (IP)
version 6, from the present-day IP version 4...

Big changes are still coming...

--Emil