City takes steps to shift more cable TV channels from analog to digital
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 — A vote Tuesday night by the Bardstown City Council begins a process that will eventually shift channels 23 to 72 of the city-owned Cable TV system from its current analog signals to high-definition digital signals.
City electrical engineer Jeff Mills explains the need to move the city's Expanded Basic channels from analog to digital at Tuesday's Bardstown City Council meeting. Click to enlarge.
Moving this group of channels — the city’s Extended Basic channels — to HD will free bandwidth in the Cable TV system. More bandwidth is necessary to allow the addition of more HD channels, increased cable modem Internet speeds, and make room for video on demand (VOD) services.
The council approved a sole service procurement declaration to purchase from a headend server from Evolution Digital to enable the transition of the Extended Basic channels from analog to HD.
How will the transition of these channels affect Bardstown Cable TV customers?
Subscribers with a modern, flat-panel TV will notice no difference, other than an improvement in quality of the Extended Basic channels. Analog signals can degrade, which can create a snowy, poor-quality images, city electrical engineer Jeff Mills explained. Digital signals lock in, Mills said, and they are either visible in perfect quality, or they disappear completely. There is no in-between with digital TV signal quality, he explained.
Councilman Bobby Simpson listens to Jeff Mills explain the proposed purchase of set-top boxes at a savings of 45 percent off the usual price. Click to enlarge.
Cable TV subscribers who have older TVs — and don’t already subscribe to the cable systems digital offerings — will need to rent a digital-to-analog set top converter box. Without the converter box, regular TVs will not be able to receive channels 23 through 74.
The cost of the rental of the converter box is anticipated to be 75 cents per month, Mills said. If the TV is replaced with a newer digital-ready set, the converter box is no longer needed and can be returned to the city cable TV department, he said.
Mills estimated the city will need 18,000 converter boxes when the city transitions the Extended Basic channels from analog to digital.
In a memo distributed to the mayor and council, Mills reported the city has the opportunity to purchase 6,000 converter boxes from the Frankfort cable TV board for $25 each — a 45 percent discount from the list price of about $46 per unit.
Mills told the council the converters were were new-in-the box and surplus to Frankfort’s needs. The deal offered the city substantial savings for the purchase of one-third of the converters that may be needed with transition to digital.
After discussing the impact of the analog-to-digital transition on customers, the council voted unanimously to approve the purchase of the new headend server for $23,928 from Evolution Digital and the 6,000 surplus Evolution Digital converter boxes from the Frankfort cable TV board.
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