Multicast and Cable

[picopir8]

I am probably in the minority but I really like multicast, especially for things like march madness (unless a local team is playing in which case I think they should disable the multicast and broadcast HD).

Given the OTA bandwidth limitation, I can see why they cant multicast HD on all subchannels.  However, dont all the locals send their programming to the cable company over a fiber connection?  If thats true, they should be able to sent a lot more data to the cable company.  So why dont the stations send HD content to the cable company for all subchannels?

[mrmike]

There's no upside for them to do so.  It costs them more in bandwidth, and as you have proven most people just don't care.  It's a shame, but I'm guessing that we're stuck with postage stamp lo-res multicast for a long long time now.

[Joseph S]

However, dont all the locals send their programming to the cable company over a fiber connection?

Nope. That's the same old tired reason why we have the crapcast on 58. There is no fiber transfer of 58-1 or 58-2. There is some other transmission for Univision. That's why often your reception of 58 doesn't have blips, while TWC's antenna can't receive them as well. You will most likely get superior resolution on the actual NCAA Webcast than you can get from 58 or TWC because both will be below analog resolution of 640x480. Other companies are far more creative and are doing as you mentioned in the original post.