News written by Rich Fiscus (September, 2008)

With the US DTV transition just months away and competition from all-digital services like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse increasing, one change that's finally coming to the cable industry is the disappearance of analog signals. Although the FCC is requiring cable companies to support analog customers until 2012, that mandate still allows them to do so through the use of digital converter boxes of the type used since digital cable was introduced. Now one cable TV provider in New York, RCN, has decided to go all-digital within the next few months.

The advantage to cable companies is substantial. There's actually been a lot of interest in such a move for years, but the conversion of OTA signals to digital makes it much easier to manage. As long as any analog signal is present, even digital cable and high speed internet signals must also be converted to analog to be transmitted on the same cables.

By switching to pure digital signals cable companies can do a better job of long range transmission since they can be repeated losslessly. Analog signals, on the other hand, must be amplified for transmission across longer distances. The more times a signal is amplified the lower the quality becomes.

A new Broadcom chip, the BCM7440, will allow consumer electronics manufacturers to support DivX video in their Blu-ray players by adding DivX Certification.

"There is strong consumer demand for DivX and so we are pleased to extend support for DivX on our BCM7440 Blu-ray chipset," said Dan Eiref, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Consumer Electronics Group. "Broadcom is dedicated to designing differentiated products for our customers. We believe that the addition of DivX to our product portfolio opens up a compelling new source of content for consumers who increasingly rely on digital solutions for their entertainment experience."