[vidiot1985]

Clear QAM is already a thing of the past (or a thing that never was) for most channels on my Time-Warner Cable service. I get locals in HD + some SD secondary channels, and some garbage shopping channels via Clear QAM.

With less and less interesting stuff on the rest of "standard cable" via analog that isn't also available streaming elsewhere, I'm less and less inclined to stick with cable if I can get OTA reception going.

My "dream" is still for the cable company to:

- drop analog for "standard cable"
- reuse the analog channel frequencies to provide digital equivalents in clear QAM
- continue to use whatever technology they currently use to keep the tiny minority of "basic cable" and "internet only" customers from getting the current "standard cable" analog channel frequencies (but in the future clear QAM channel frequencies) for free
- use whatever extra bandwidth is left over to provide more premium services for folks who care about those so the cable companies don't end up destroying their own customer base with their unfriendly policies (like internet service metering)