Every once in a while you run into a business success story that is truly impressive. That’s exactly the kind of narrative that describes the history of Comcast. In short, Comcast took cable TV technology, which pretty much became outdated overnight with the introduction of satellite TV, and managed to turn it around to be one of the best TV services on the planet.

There are a number of things that this company did in order to accomplish this, but they really center on having an appreciation for what TV viewers want and embracing the best possible technology in order to give it to them. The appreciation of what TV viewers want can pretty much be summarized not so much as lots of channels, but more accurately as lots of options.

Once it was acknowledged that TV viewers really wanted more options, it was just a matter of finding and implementing the technologies that could supply them with those options. The first step was to convert all of its programming on all of its channels to a one hundred percent digital signal. Digital TV has a number of advantages over the older analog signal that had been used to transmit TV programming for decades. Basically, with digital TV, all of the images and sounds that make up a TV program are converted into a digital format, compressed, and then streamed over the cable to digital receivers in individual homes that then decompress all of that data and then convert it back into the pictures and sounds that comprise the TV programming. This process produces a number of advantages. The most obvious advantage is that the digital video signal is so easy to cleanse of any interference that it can produce the highest quality picture possible. Of course pictures can be corrupted, but when digital TV is delivered over a cable there’s never enough interference present to compromise the signal past the point where the receiver can clean it up. Therefore any fuzziness of picture or sound that you get over a digital cable TV transmission must have been part of the original recording.

Since digital TV is pretty much a computer technology, it also paves the way for lots of other possibilities – all of which increase the number of viewing options. For example, digital TV technology provides an on screen program guide so that viewers can decide what to watch without the frustration and inconvenience of channel surfing. An on screen program guide also ties directly into digital video recording technology. With a digital video recorder built into some digital receivers, you’ll be able to record TV shows and then watch them later – in other words, you’ll never have to miss a TV program just because you have commitments that keep you from watching it when it comes on. DVR’s are easy to program with the help of the on screen program guide, which makes the process much more intuitive than programming a VCR, and for that reason alone a DVR is much easier to use.

Of course digital TV also forms the foundation needed to execute technologies like HDTV and video on demand. The main focus is to increase viewers’ options by increasing the number of channels that it offers. All of this has contributed to Comcast’s ability to take a flailing industry and turn it into a first rate service.