• agrohimgjt
• 06 Jan 2025
• Акустические системы, динамики, усилители...
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Cable Rates on the Rise

Despite the dodgy economy, cable TV operators are raising their rates. Cablevision has announced a 3.5-percent rate hike for this year, Cox wants 3.7 percent more for bundled services, and other cable ops will likely follow suit.

Consumers Union (CU) sent a letter of protest to Congress, which noted that its survey found “a significant number of cable customers who were either paying for less service or being forced to pay more for the same service.” CU accuses the cable industry of “leveraging content to strong-arm confused consumers into paying much more every month for cable programming that they have previously received at no extra fee. We believe the timing of this rate hike is deceptive.”

Kevin Martin, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), agrees with CU’s analysis and adds: “Over the last decade, average cable rates have more than doubled. This is an unfortunate trend for families facing increasingly difficult economic times.”

The FCC currently has no power to regulate cable rates. But legislative action on cable rates would not be unprecedented. Congress last addressed the issue with the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992. Government regulation is coming back into fashion, and it may just strike the cable industry.

Dolby Digital Plus Hits French HD Channels

With all the hubbub over Dolby TrueHD, the latest thing in lossless surround, its lossy cousin Dolby Digital Plus doesn’t get much attention. But Dolby Digital Plus is now hitting the French airwaves. Along with old- style Dolby Digital, it’s being used in France’s Television Numerique Terrestre HD platform, which includes five channels: TF1 HD, France 2 HD, ARTE HD, Canal+ HD, and M6 HD. As a lossy codec that uses perceptual coding to discard less significant audio data, Dolby Digital Plus is more efficient than TrueHD.

Hence its use in a bandwidth-constricted broadcast application. It also aims to provide better sound quality than the now-aging Dolby Digital. Let’s hope Plus comes to the U.S. airwaves soon.

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