And lo On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:42:10 -0000, Patrick Elliott  
<sel### [at] npgcablecom> did spake thusly:

> On 3/8/2010 9:18 AM, scott wrote:
>>>> (And that of course is the other undesirable thing about digital TV.

<snip snip>

> Hate to tell you, but with some exceptions, most of those channels  
> **did** exists, you just had to be bloody stinking rich, or have an  
> illegal satellite unit, to watch them. Most of the stuff added *since*  
> have been duplicates. I.e., 4 different ESPN ones, instead of 1, 3-4  
> different ones for every movie broadcaster, instead of just 1 (or 2 in  
> some cases), Disney used to have 1, now its 3, at least, etc. Heck, you  
> can find ABC, CBS, NBS, etc. on 3-4 channels now, where they all only  
> had *one* previously. Then.. with digital you now have about 5% of them  
> with specialized HD versions.
>
> Nope. What is on the cable line up today is pretty much what was there  
> 10-15 years ago, if you where in a large city, with the exception of  
> maybe less than a half dozen added since. The only major difference is  
> that now you a) have them all bundled as packages, so you can't pick the  
> ones you want, instead of buying the whole mess of crap with it, and b)  
> you can get more of them, in places you would be lucky to get 10  
> channels 15 years back.

As Orphi and Scott infer and state the majority of people in this country  
received the free broadcasts only. Those I know who did have satellite got  
those four/five channels plus others not affiliated with those  
broadcasters and complained about how crap it was.

Now those same broadcasters are trying to take a lower budget (due to the  
current economic situation) and pad it out amongst more channels. The BBC  
used to just have BBC1 and BBC2 plus the radio stations, now it's also got  
BBC3, BBC4, CBeebies, CBBC, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, and the shifting  
multi-channel Red Button. ITV runs to five channels, Channel 4 has five,  
and "Five" has three; and that's not counting regional variations.

Yes some of these were coming into force during the satellite and cable  
pick-up times; but it was the digital switchover that really started to  
spread things thinly for the UK.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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