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Confused about cable?(VIEWPOINT)
SHOULD THEY SIT DOWN now to watch the Animal Planet channel, Heather Shorr and her daughters would no longer see snow leopards--just snow. Shorr, a Connecticut homemaker, says their cable provider has moved the channel onto a digital tier. She'd have to rent a set-top box for each TV set. The cable company is scrambling some stations, and the TVs can't descramble them on their own.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
What Consumers Union is doing
We've been getting complaints from across the country as cable providers shift channels to the digital-only realm. It seems that cable companies are using confusion about the forthcoming digital TV transition--which applies only to TVs with antennas, not to TVs with cable--as a chance to boost the bills of cable customers.
The cable companies say the changes are needed to free up bandwidth, but we believe that when consumers pay more for the same channels, it's a rate hike. Customers must rent a digital cable box for each TV set to see channels that used to be available without one. At up to $10 per box per month, the increase isn't minor.
Since 2005 when Congress mandated a switch to all-digital broadcasts as of February 2009 it's been clear that millions of households with ...
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...And without enough digital TVs in U.S. homes, broadcasters...put expiration dates on analog TVs, requiring Americans to spend...handle only analog signals. Consumers Union, among other groups, remains...buyers to be sweating whether TVs are digitally compatible...
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- News wire article from: AScribe Business & Economics News Service October 3, 2005 700+ words
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- Newspaper article from: The Washington Times November 14, 2005 700+ words
...so that it can be displayed by analog TVs. Televisions hooked up to cable or satellite...Group, Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union joined together in a letter urging a broader...Consumers paid good money for their TVs with the reasonable expectation that they...
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- Newspaper article from: Washington Times (Washington, D.C.) November 27, 2004 700+ words
...quality picture and sound and can cost as much as $15,000, according to Consumer Reports, published by the nonprofit Consumers Union advocacy group. "You're talking about a couple of hundred dollars at the very least, unless you go for a flat panel...
