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From: lauren@rand-unix.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Subject: Re: Loss of freedom
Message-ID: <1274@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 00:18:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1274
Posted: Fri Sep  6 00:18:35 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 10:31:37 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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Sorry, I gotta disagree even with your clarified comment.

I see no evidence that the conventional cable satellite services
have any desire to convert to digital systems.  Perhaps a premium
service or two may play with high-resolution systems, but even
that is questionable in terms of economic viability.

Remember that once scrambling is in place and people are buying
descramblers, those millions of TVRO stations represent a significant
commercial market for the carriers and their advertisers/operations.
I don't expect to see digital TV transmission make signficant inroads
except possibly in international traffic, where the number of 
transmit/receive points is fairly small.  

Another issue is the extreme unwillingness of most cable systems
to make new capital purchases for their systems (say, for digital
TV equipment) unless it has immense immediate profit.

Digital TV may leak into the marketplace over time.  But given
the inertia and marketplace (and even political!) pressure of
the 10's of millions of people (and cable companies) with 
conventional equipment, I expect the process to be extremely
slow except in very specialized situations.  The time scale?
Maybe 10-15 years.  Maybe longer.

--Lauren--