I've had digital cable. Here's the skinny:
Digital cable is a costly technology, and the cable company's business plan involves delivering more content at increased customer cost.
How much content?
Well, okay -- it comes through the same cable as everything else. So there's no sense reduplicating the analog channels. The stuff on the "bottom 63" or however many analog channels you currently can get with your cable box will remain the same.
Then there are the digital channels, with some cool features, like audio compression applied (or not) by the cable box, not by the transmitter. So if you've got a home theater, that's neat.
Every digital cable box communicates with the central office (some units have a phone jack for this purpose). The central office can then turn on or off individual digital channels.
Usually, this means that, for your basic digital fee, you get a few more channels, mostly crap you wouldn't want. Then you can spend extra money a month on "packages" that give you additional channels and maybe a premium service like HBO. If you want to spend $7 for one of four movies of the sort they have 40 copies of down at blockbuster, but without all that worrying about rewinding (or pausing, or watching again), you can look at pay per view (sucker!).
The box itself is usually owned by the cable company; so like a satellite system, you need a receiver to get the digital channels.
remember that cable companies also offer a "broadcast basic" service (That's what I "stepped down" from digital cable to). Where I am, I pay $16/month and get the broadcast channels, plus C-spans and crappy home shopping and public access channels (and WGN). And I suspect my local cable company believes the extra $30 they charge for the other analog channels goes directly to the cable networks, and thus no profit for them. I suspect this because when I shifted down -- a year and a half ago -- they didn't think it profitable to put a filter on the other cable channels.
Speaking to the guy who cuts my hair (and who has satellite), it turns out I'm not the only broadcast basic subscriber with this "feature": throughout this city, apparently, the cable company is giving us $16/month losers the fifty dollar package.
Still, if I had to pay for it, I'd go broadcast basic and satellite.
And I'd get the one with football and baseball dammit. DirectTV is the only one out there with the NFL contract (and presumably the only one with the MLB contract).
