Comcast’s plan to transition to digital is well on it’s way in Seattle/Tacoma. Infrastructure is being upgraded in many areas to increase HDTV capacity, which mostly involves upgrading old systems to an 860Mhz system. In some areas, analog channels are already in the process of being shut off. They’re not shut off yet; currently they display a screen with a phone number to call to order a digital cable box, but they’re sure to be shut off in the near future.

The space freed by the analog channels will be used primarily for HDTV. This is something Comcast desperately needs in order to compete with DirecTV and Verizon FiOS. Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times, posted a blog entry that explains which areas are expected to have their analog shut off.

The Versus / Golf split is complete. For Comcast, in Seattle / Tacoma, the new channels are:

• 625 Golf HD
• 626 Versus HD 

The former hybrid channel Versus/Golf, is pending removal.

Also I read an interesting article about Comcast shutting off analog in Seattle / Tacoma (link). Basically, it says channels 2-29 will remain broadcasting in analog for the time being, but everything over 29 will be phased out over the next year. They could start the transition as soon as sometime this month, around the time they roll out their new Wideband Internet service. They are also lowering the price of their Digital Cable service, to the price of the current Extended-Basic service (the analog package, which is being phased out).

If you’re wondering why there’s nothing on MOJO HD, it’s because MOJO HD has been cancelled (iN DEMAND confirms). Now the question is, what will it be replaced with.

In the Seattle/Tacoma area, Comcast has been shuffling channels around.

• MHD has been renamed to Palladia.
• ESPN HD is now being mapped to both 173 (old) and 623 (new), the old channel presumably pending removal.
• ESPN2 HD is now being mapped to both 174 (old) and 624 (new), the old channel presumably pending removal.
• FSN HD has been rolled out (using the space freed by MOJO???). It’s channel 627.
• The hybrid channel, VS/Golf, is going to be split into two separate channels (VS and Golf). Whether or not both (or which, if any) will be carried in this area, is unconfirmed at this point.
• King-5 Weather Plus (channel 115) is pending removal, scheduled to be removed on 12-31-2008. The reason is, the parent company has decided to pull the plug on it.

Comcast PowerBoost is useless. They ramble on about how Comcast Internet is so much faster than DSL, with PowerBoost giving you speeds up to 12mbit. Read the fine print, you’ll notice that PowerBoost only works for the first 10MB of a file (attached), and even that isn’t guaranteed. To put this into perspective, if I downloaded a 10MB file on my 7mbit DSL, and did the same on Comcast Internet with PowerBoost, Comcast would be a whopping 5 seconds faster, assuming both services work as advertised. Now if I were to download a 700MB iso with my 7mbit DSL, that would take ~14 minutes. If I did the same with 6mbit Comcast, compensating for PowerBoost, it would take ~16 minutes, DSL being about 2 minutes faster. Even if you had 8mbit Comcast Internet, the speed difference with DSL would still only be about 2 minutes.

Comcast relies on trickery to try and win over customers, by saying their internet service is way faster than DSL. In reality, PowerBoost does nothing to make downloads faster, there’s almost no difference between DSL and Cable download speeds (assuming that both services deliver exactly what they advertise), and Comcast’s methods of advertising are shady, to say the least.

I’ve setup some pages for Comcast HD stuff. They are works in progress, since channel lineup and picture quality has been changing fairly frequently.

• Comcast HD Quality In Tacoma/Seattle (By Channel)
  
• List Of Available HD Channels For Comcast (Tacoma/Seattle)

Comcast silently rolled out three new HD channels in the Seattle/Tacoma area last night. The new channels are:

• Disney HD
• ABC Family HD
• Science Channel HD

Unfortunately, Comcast has started re-encoding HD channels to squeeze three channels to a single QAM, and picture quality is very noticeably degraded on several channels, as I’ve reported before. Channels with poor picture/sound include:

• Discovery Channel HD
• USA HD
• SciFi HD
• Universal HD (only for certain content)
• MHD (only for certain content)

I’m not sure exactly what is causing this, but the picture on USA HD absolutely sucks. Even with shows like Monk or House, with little to no action sequences, there’s severe macro-blocking, artifacts, video/audio corruption, audio cutouts, and frame-dropping. This really seems like crappy/overloaded hardware to me (or possibly a bandwidth issue), rather than a re-compression problem. Normally if there’s a re-compression/compression issue, you will notice macro blocking, but not audio/video cutouts or corruption.

Here’s some examples from the movie Final Destination 2 (scaled to ~1/3 the actual size).

In this first frame, it just looks like macro-blocking.

However, in the following frames, there’s clearly corruption going on. Also, note that the audio cut out for about a second shortly after this part.

Some possibilities are:

1. The hardware Comcast is using for USA and Sci-Fi is either overloaded, or really crappy. I’ve heard Comcast has been using Imagine Communication hardware to triple-load three channels on to a single QAM frequency, and there’s been some issues with that setup.
2. USA’s encoding hardware is really crappy. That would make sense, since both USA and Sci-Fi are owned by the same company, and both have horrible picture.

Comcast quietly rolled out new HD channels in Tacoma and Seattle. The new channels are:

• Animal Planet HD
• TLC HD
• Discovery HD
• Food HD
• SciFi HD
• HGTV HD

Unfortunately, they’re still way behind DirectTV.