Cable and Satellite Television services are in a heated competition to provide more and more HD channels to their subscribers. However, as demand for HD programming grows, and more HD channels come online, both cable and satellite providers are encountering the issue of limited bandwidth space to carry it all. Satellite providers can counter this state of affairs by launching more satellites. However, expanding bandwidth capacity to carry more channels is a more expensive proposition for Cable TV providers, as they must literally dig up the street in an entire city and lay more cable, which is far more expensive that launching a satellite or two.

In an effort to deal with the increased need for bandwidth, without sacrificing quality, some cable providers are beginning to implement a technology dubbed "Switched Digital Video". To put it simply, in order to increase the capability of the current cable infrastructure to accommodate more channels and more HD offerings, instead of sending out all the available channels to a customer at a given time, the cable service only sends out the most popular channels at any given time.

However, if the consumer then wants to access a less viewed channel, the cable box simply searches out the feed from the cable service and actively tells the service, electronically, for permission to access the feed. The Switch Digtal Video process frees up the cable infrastructure from less popular channels and services taking up space when not actually being viewed, while still supplying access to those channels when needed.

For more details on Switched Digital Video and how it may be used by your cable service, check out the report from Blu-ray Guide.org. In addition, to find out how Switched Digital Video can affect DVR devices, such as TIVO, check out this report from CNET.