The nation's largest cable operators gave Congress their assurance today that they'll pass along broadcasters' digital TV signals, and without any loss in picture and sound quality.
"Cable will not be -- as some have falsely asserted -- a bottleneck to digital," Tele-Communications Inc. president Leo Hindery told a House Commerce telecommunications subcommittee hearing.
Those who buy the pricey digital TV sets when they debut this fall will need the cable companies' future set-top boxes to receive broadcasters' signals. But the cable execs promised not to stand in the way.
As Time Warner Cable chairman Joseph Collins said, "After all, those customers who are willing to invest in a high-definition television receiver probably are some of our best customers."
TCI's current digital set-top boxes aren't compatible with broadcasters' high-definition signals, Hindery told reporters after the hearing. But he said TCI has some 15 million high-definition-compatible boxes on order, and some could be in homes by March 1999.
The president of the National Cable Television Association said this week that cable companies were negotiating with broadcast networks concerning digital programming. While broadcasters are considering a variety of formats for digital programming, Decker Anstrom said, new cable set-top boxes being installed would be capable of displaying all the possibilities.
TCI already is offering digital cable in some markets (customers must rent a digital set-top box from their local cable operator), and Time Warner plans to roll out service this year.
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association, said the compatibility issue would jeopardize digital TV sales, and told today's hearing that "if cable companies are allowed to dilute HDTV signals, the result will likely be a widespread consumer backlash."
But Hindery said that "TCI will be able to pass through all -- I repeat all -- broadcasting HDTV formats to new digital TVs and convert certain of these formats for display on existing analog TVs."
Meanwhile today, executives from ABC, CBC, NBC, and Fox said their plans to begin digital broadcasts in the top 10 markets by May 1999 are on track.
