Introduction

Digital cable is being heralded by many as the second coming of television.  The salesmen rave about the picture, the sound, the number of channels, but when you look beyond the hype, what do you really get?  I've had digital cable for a couple of years now with Shaw Cable using a Motorola DCT-2000 cable box, and I'm going to tell you.

The Good

Digital cable certainly has some nice features to offer the television viewer.

Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is probably the dealmaker for movie aficionados.  This is the same kind of audio as is offered on DVD movies and is a recent addition to Shaw digital cable.  We were promised 5.1 sound as far back as when I subscribed (one of the main reasons I did actually) a couple of years ago, but it took until this October for the cable box software to be updated to actually support it.  However if you have subscribed to one of the channels currently offering 5.1 audio (Movie Central's 6 channels) and you catch a program that is transmitted with it (not all are) you are in for DVD-quality audio.  The difference between stereo/Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital 5.1 is dramatic.  Digital channels also offer 48KHz PCM stereo and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio which is clearer than standard analog audio.  You'll need additional cables and a receiver capable of decoding digital audio signals to hear any of these.

A really great plus for digital cable is the onscreen guide.  This is way better than that scrolling list of shows you'll see on channel 2.  You can see what is going to be on several days in advance, set reminders that will pop up on the screen to remind you of something you wanted to watch, see descriptions of programs, movie run times, and even ratings for parents.  The guide has pretty much replaced TV Guide for me.  The one minus of the guide is that the descriptions and reviews are pretty condescending for most shows. 

And the biggest reason for getting digital cable?  You can subscribe to additional channels that aren't offered with regular analog cable.  I wanted the movie channels and Tech TV.  There are around 30 inexpensive channels for a wide variety of interests plus movie channels and pornography which are more expensive.  In addition to channels that you pay extra to subscribe to, there are a number of channels that you get with the basic digital cable package, these include Star TV, a number of sports channels, eastern network feeds (handy for watching a show if you want to see it three hours earlier than usual) plus Pay Per View.   One really nice feature is that if you change you mind on what extra channels you want, Shaw will change them for you while you wait when you call them.  I subscribed to a bundle of five of the inexpensive channels, and have changed my selections a few times at no extra charge.

Pay Per View is good if you don't like the drive to the video store.  Select your movie, then sit down and watch, all in all, pretty simple.  Truth be told, I got two PPV coupons for free movies when I first got digital cable and I've only ever used one.  My sister does use PPV quite a bit and likes it.  If (and only if) you have Shaw Internet service, you can also pause, rewind and fast forward your PPV movies using Shaw On Demand.  As I am happy with Telus high speed internet, I've never tried this.  You can best compare PPV to renting VHS, if you get DVD's, plan on continuing to go to the video store for best picture quality, big sound and the extra features.

40 Music Channels are also available through digital cable.  They have a decent variety of genres and it is commercial free, but I have never listened to any of them for more than 5 minutes.

HDTV is also now available on shaw digital, however you will need a $700 cable box and an HD compatible TV to view it, and so far I only see 4 channels of programming.

The Bad

I'm not sure what the people who rave about the picture quality of digital cable are talking about.  I appreciate that the colors on digital channels are better (reds bleed less) and the usual TV picture grain and herringbone patterns are mostly gone, but there are a number of nasty video compression artifacts that you will notice on most digital channels.  Any scene with lots of motion, like water, invariably breaks into very noticeable blocky chunks.  Anything with smooth gradations of color breaks into bands of colors with distinct edges. Watching a widescreen movie with black bars is awful since distracting blocks of various shades of gray pop in and out of the black bars constantly the whole time the movie is on.   Motion smears the picture.  Sometimes the frame rate drops and people move all jerky.  Other than color, the picture quality on analog channels is ALWAYS better.

To be fair, some digital channels have a noticeably better picture than others.  I used to get "Men TV" which had a consistently terrible picture.  Movie Central's movie channels are usually pretty good.

I have read that the reason for picture quality problems is that cable companies pack as many as six digital channels in the same space as one analog channel takes up.  They can make the picture quality better if they choose, but it is at the expense of additional channels.  I should note that Shaw offers both digital and analog channels with the digital cable package.  Any channels you can get without the cable box are analog, the rest (particularly the additional fee services) are digital.  The picture on the analog channels will be on-par with what you see without the cable box.  The analog channel tuner in the DCT-2000 is alright, but not the best I've seen.

A major disappointment of the DCT-2000 is channel changing speed, if you've seen Toy Story 2, there'll be no coming around the horn for DCT-2000 owners.  Plan on investing about 5 seconds to get both picture and digital audio when you change the channel (3 seconds for analog audio.)  Apparently the new DCT-2500 has improved the speed of channel changes. 

Also slow is the onscreen guide.   Scrolling through the guide is very slow.  A page change takes a few seconds, and just going to the next channel in the list often takes a second or more. 

The S-Video connector on the back of the cable box should be a plus, but many people have complained of picture problems using this connection.  While the picture is noticeably clearer than the composite connection offers, like many others, I occasionally get a rolling white bar on the picture when using S-Video.

I wasn't very impressed with Shaw's handling of 5.1 audio.  I read their promotional literature, then bought the cable box and additional cables and equipment to support 5.1, but it took a lot of calls to Shaw's baffled tech support before I found out that they didn't actually have 5.1 on digital cable yet.  

The biggest downside for most people wanting digital cable is the cost.  You pay for the cable box, you pay for digital service, and you pay for any extra channels you want.  That adds up fast.  My bill has gone up $7/month (about 11%) in the last 14 months.  I haven't noticed (or subscribed to) any new services.

The Competition

I've also spent some time looking at various satellite TV services.  DirectTV offers the best picture, features, and channel selection I've seen bar none, but it isn't available in Canada.  Bell ExpressVu also offers good picture quality and reasonable prices.  StarChoice's picture wasn't as good to my eye but is comparable.   The downside of satellite of course is that you lose the picture in bad weather.  StarChoice is the least susceptible to this since you pick up the signal from multiple satellites at once, but it still goes out sometimes.  All of the services offer similar onscreen guide and PPV services.  DirectTV has the best guide since it is fast and puts the channel you are looking at in the guide in a tiny window in the corner of the screen while you are scrolling through.  I wasn't able to get satellite because I don't have the requisite unobstructed view of the southern horizon.

Summary

If you want the extra channels only available through digital cable,  then I recommend it for you.  Otherwise, stick with analog and a TV Guide subscription, you'll probably be just as happy and you'll certainly have more money to spend on other things.

Update August 21, 2004

Shaw cable recently upgraded their onscreen guide with new software.  The difference the new software has made is remarkable.  You can now change channels fast enough that I'm actually watching most of the channels I pay for, not just my preprogrammed "favourites" anymore.  It's not as fast as I'd like, but it is a big improvement.  The onscreen TV guide is now very quick, plus it shows an hour and a half of programming, not just the current half hour.  It would be nice if it showed an even 2 hours, but I can live with it.  Another big improvement is that it now automatically switches to 5.1 audio if the show offers it, you don't have to select Dolby Digital audio manually every time.  I have noticed however that occasionally when you switch from analog to digital (or back) channels that the audio doesn't come on - doing the switch again usually fixes the problem.   I'd also like Shaw to get rid of their logo that takes up the top third of the guide screen and show me another 4 channels of listings.