Now Playing on Cable: HDTV Catch-Up

NOW PLAYING ON CABLE: HDTV CATCH-UP
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sara Silver]
Satellite TV operators offer between 55 and 100 channels of high-definition television; the largest cable operators offer just 20 to 30 HDTV channels. The gap is becoming more important as more households buy the HDTV sets. They are now in one-third of U.S. homes, and are expected to be in half of U.S. households by 2009. The average price of a 42-inch flat-panel TV set is now $1,856, compared with $3,855 in 2004. Some smaller HDTV sets sell for under $1,000. Cable operators are determined not to give DirecTV an HDTV advantage, especially since cable has gained an edge over satellite recently by bundling phone and high-speed Internet service with cable TV. Also, cable operators have to defend themselves against a growing threat from telephone companies that are adding television service. Cable operators are coming up with a number of creative ways to make up for the bandwidth constraints in traditional cable systems that limit the number of HDTV channels. A few are simply increasing the capacity of their systems. Many are moving channels from analog tiers of service to digital tiers, which use bandwidth more efficiently. Some operators also are adding high-definition programming to their video-on-demand services, a feature that satellite can't offer because it's broadcast only. To save bandwidth, large cable operators also are installing a new technology known as "switched digital video."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119206092122955361.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
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