Media Experiences 2 Go

Get ready for a slew of DTV transition posts as we approach the one-year countdown. (I’ll have my own up soon enough.) In the meantime, however, there’s word out of Cox that the operator will continue offering analog signals until February 2012, three years after the official transition date in 2009. That’s good news for analog customers, but what does it mean for Cox cable?

Here’s a look at some of the pros and cons of the decision.

Pros:

• Cox doesn’t have to spend money on DTV converter boxes for all of its analog customers
• There’s no need for a large wave of truck rolls next January
• There won’t be a mass of customer complaints from folks wondering why TV doesn’t just work like it used to

Cons:

• Three-year delay on reclaiming bandwidth from analog channels (somewhat mitigated by Cox’s move to 1 GHz)
• No switched digital video for analog
• Maintains the hurdle of migrating customers to digital before they can subscribe to premium services like on-demand video