bicker

1) Your local stations (the ones associated with the DMA you live in), and your town's local public access channels, will be provided to you in-the-clear, in some format. For the next few years, that'll probably still be analog. You may also have one or two digital formats available to you (SD and HD) however as long as the cable company is providing one to you unencrypted, they are in compliance... they can encrypt the other two. Operationally, however, most cable companies are presenting both analog and HD in-the-clear now. The exceptions are very few, and even the exceptions may have gone away recently. Note, however, that the very useful SD digital, "ADS", versions of the channel may still be encrypted. (If folks want to talk about ADS, we can do that.)

Any of these most basic services will be broadcast in-the-clear, meaning that you do not need a converter box from Comcast to receive them. You'll, of course, need an analog tuner to receive the channels when broadcast in analog, and a digital (QAM) tuner to receive the channels when broadcast in digital. My QAM tuner in my laptop has no problem tuning in in-the-clear QAM channels from Comcast. It is, though, your own responsibility to know how to do this. Comcast's technical support isn't there to help you hook up and use your own QAM tuners. They're there to help you hook up and use the ones they rent.

2) Anything beyond your local stations and public access channels will likely become digital-only channels, to help make room for new services that customers are demanding.

3) Also, these advanced services may or may not be encrypted. The determining factor seems to be the extent to which cable theft is a problem in your area, and the extent to which the cable company finds that it can save substantial costs by switching to 100% addressable service protection, rather than a mixture of addressable service protection and manually installed and de-installed physical traps.

Once a service is encrypted, you lose the ability to use just any QAM tuner to receive that service. Instead, as per the law, you would have to use a CableCARD-compatible QAM tuner (such as the one in my TiVo S3), and rent a CableCARD from the cable company for a nominal (regulatory-reviewed) fee.

Note that while Comcast and other cable companies are required to leave this open door for subscribers, satellite services currently are exempt from that requirement. This is a reflection of the overriding FCC bias against cable and for satellite services. And the satellite services vigorously prosecute this advantage given to them, going all-digital very early on, and encrypting practically their entire set of services, and not supporting any open-access to their encryption keys forcing their customers to purchase receivers directly from them.

4) One thing that we shouldn't lose sight of, from the article: All of Comcast's competitors have already done this. We have five subscription television services offering service here in Burlington, and Comcast is the only one that still provides cable networks in analog. That will change, here, on October 20. Also, Comcast is the only competitor that doesn't encrypt Expanded Basic. Presumably that will also change soon. Comcast has been the most consumer-friendly supplier when it comes to this issue, something for which the baseless, overriding anti-cable sentiment in this country doesn't give them credit for.