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- THE WEEK, Page 22BUSINESS500 Channels and Nothing to Watch
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- The U.S.'s largest cable operator is switching to compressed-
- digital TV
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- The cable companies that fill our homes with more TV
- channels than we know what to do with have been threatening for
- years to adopt technology that could compound the problem
- tenfold. Now one of them is poised to actually do it. Tele-
- Communications Inc., which provides cable TV to 9 million U.S.
- households, announced plans to install equipment that could, in
- theory, deliver more than 500 channels by early 1994. TCI's
- announcement represents the first major consumer application of
- compressed-digital TV, which can squeeze 10 channels in the
- space currently occupied by only one. Not to be outdone,
- officials at rival Time Warner point out that by applying the
- same technology to the fiber-optic lines in its Quantum system,
- the 150 channels it delivers to customers in Queens, New York,
- could multiply to 1,500.
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