Jul. 2--Comcast is shuffling a bunch of channels in early August in King County, including a few moves related to its digital conversion.

Mostly affected are customers who already have digital-cable service.

Starting around Aug. 5, "Digital Starter" subscribers will start getting high-definition versions of 28 channels such as MTV, Comedy Central, BET, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. The full list was printed in the newspaper's legal-notices section.

"Digital Preferred" customers will get four additional sports channels -- NBA TV, NFL Network, NFL Network HD and NHL Network -- but lose ESPN Classic to the optional "sports entertainment" tier that costs an extra $5.99 per month.

Also being added is an HD version of CBUT, at channel 619. It will be available to "Limited Basic" customers using an HDTV and a digital tuner.

Comcast spokesman Steve Kipp also provided a little information on the Clearwire 4G/WiMax mobile-wireless bundles that Comcast began selling in Portland on Tuesday.

Comcast plans to offer the Clearwire bundles in the Seattle area sometime in 2010, Kipp said.

Portland's promotional price, at least, doesn't sound too bad.

Comcast is offering a $50 per month bundle that includes 12 megabits per second (Mbps) home broadband plus Clearwire mobile service in the metro area, offering up to 4 Mbps. After the first year promo, the plan will cost $73 per month.

Subscribers to Comcast's triple play phone/TV/broadband plan can add Clearwire for $30 per month. It's also offering a Clearwire/Sprint combo that provides local 4G and national 3G via Sprint for an additional $20 per month.

Comcast invested in Kirkland-based Clearwire last year.

Superfast USB 3.0 coming shortly

PCs with USB 3.0 connections could start appearing by the end of the year, boosting throughput 10 times over USB 2.0 -- fast enough to transfer 5 gigabits of data per second.

That's according to a Nikkei Electronics Asia report, which I found via Microsoft product planner Alan Cheslow's Twitter feed and blog.

The report said NEC -- the leading USB 3.0 manufacturer -- is going to begin large-scale production of USB 3.0 host controllers in September.

NEC expects USB 3.0 to quickly become mainstream. It's anticipating 140 million PCs with USB 3.0 will ship in 2011, and 340 million in 2012.

Unfortunately support won't be built into Windows 7 when the software launches. A spokesman said via e-mail that the USB 3.0 specification "was approved too late in the Windows 7 development life cycle so it won't be supported at launch.