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FCC Wading Into Digital TV Quagmire
Carnage4Life writes "The FCC is beginning to get impatient with the cable TV industry and television manufacturers for not getting digital TV out to consumers more quickly. In an interesting speech delivered at the CES on Friday the FCC chairman explains that the FCC is reluctant to dictate standards to the industry but will do so if no consensus on standards is reached by April."
BTW, has anyone noticed that the HRRC (Home Recording Rights Association) seems to be dead? No new content on their page for some time now.
Third, where the market does not work to promote consumer welfare, the Commission must. That's my job. It's in the law. It's our responsibility, and the public rightfully relies on the FCC when the market does not protect the public's interests.
God, that's scary... the whole idea that the privilege (not right!) to watch TV is something that the government thinks it is their job to dictate. I guess it's only a free market until the government feels like doing something else.
I would think the only place the government would have any say at all over is what bands this digital TV should broadcast over.
I dunno... maybe it's just a knee-jerk reaction, but whatever happened to "protect the nations boundaries" and "protect the citizens' rights". It seems like there's much better things we could be spending our time on... it seems like every time the government makes a standard, it turns into a joke (can we say OSI? :).
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
I don't know about other areas, but in upstate NY, Time Warner is going to get the sh*t kicked out of them by the digital satellite companies unless they charge LESS for DTV.
Why?
Because the satellite systems are already digital, and are much cheaper than even analog cable service. Dish Network is $30/month for 100 channels plus 40 music channels and amazing quality. Time Warner in upstate NY is $40/month for 63 ugly-looking channels.
Admittedly, the satellite vendors have one disadvantage - while the new small-dish systems have dropped the price quite a bit, you're looking at a minimum of $150 for a basic 1-TV setup, and $300 for a 2-TV setup, with $100 for each additional TV.
BTW, when I refer to "satellite", I'm speaking of the new guys like Dish and DirecTV, not the "old-skool" big-dish systems.
Time Warner is *afraid* of satellite, their only way to battle it is an all-out FUD war, which they've begun in Ithaca already.
Not that I believe any of it. In my new apartment next year, we're going to Dish. (My uncle has it and loves it.)
URLS: http://www.directv.com/ and http://www.dishtv.com/ - I personally get a better impression of Dish than DirecTV
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Same old problem Linux has/had: "Don't use it because people aren't developing apps for it. Let's not develope apps for it because people aren't using it." Instead it is "Don't broadcast HDTV because people don't have the sets. Don't make the sets affordable because nobody broadcasts in HDTV." Same for DTV.
Somebody has to do something. The studios need to start making DTV and HDTV shows or cable companies need to start supporting it and TV manufactures lowing their prices or nothing will get done. And the FCC is getting fed up with none of them doing anything.
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After going through hoops with TCI/ATT in an attempt to get Digital Cable, I don't want HDTV/DTV. Why?
I'll simplify this. Because your going to get screwed by the cable companies. Take my Digital Cable fun as an example.
I have xDSL at home, ummm addictive bandwidth. Then I decided I wanted TCI/ATT Digital Cable. Guess what. The analog modem in the Digital Cable box won't work in my house. No I have to get a seperate analog phone line if I want all the Digital goodness that TCI will give me. Even better...lets spam your phone with calls about @Home once we know your a DSL user.
Now with all this "interactive" menuing and channel guides that you get with DSS and Digital Cable, your going to need analog phone lines aren't you?
I don't want the hastle of a new medium. I don't want to buy boxes for my current TV, I don't want to have my boxes jacked into analog phone lines that I'm going to be shelling $14 a month for, and I really don't want to have to deal with a freaking antenna for HDTV.
I would like Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies on DVD though
except that I have heard of no plans for a 27 mb/s cable modems. I have a cable modem now, and it's fast enough(a little over 100K/sec upstream, 700K/sec downstream at peak)
But hey, the faster the better(not that most sites can dish out close to even 700K/sec)
I can't comment directly on DTV, but I can compare DSS to broadcast. There is a tremendous difference. For worst case (channel 5 in Atlanta), it's the difference between clear to the limits of the TV itself vs. practically unviewable (the all important X-files is on 5!). On other channels where reception is good anyway, there is still a distinct improvement in sharpness and color. This is noticable on a 25 inch screen at 10 feet (probably also at 20 but it's a small room so I don't know).
Before DSS, we had analog cable. It was SLIGHTLY better than broadcast on the worst stations, and not as good as broadcast on the best (which is sad really). It also went out a lot (according to our neighbors, it still does).
Digital cable uses mpeg as well, but based on reports here, I'm guessing they use a smaller bitrate. On DSS, there ARE occasional mpeg artifacts, in particular with bright flashes with lots of detail on the screen, but it's a lot less than the constant problems with either analog cable or broadcast.
Short summary, digital can be great, but it's dependant on decisions made by the provider.
I work for Scientific Atlanta and we're quite proud of those boxes. Nine months ago, we had to virtually give the first boxes away. Now we can't ship them fast enough. We've already shipped over a million. And you should know that there are going to be a lot of great things that you can do with those boxes in the future. Wish I could tell you more.
In the rest of the world, GSM rules because their local legislature made it so - as the sole standard for their country. I can call anywhere in Australia and many other contries without changing my handset or the SIM card in it - I just turn it on and it works. I can drive from Melbourne to Cairns (about 4000 km by road) and have full service along practically the entire route with my 100 gm GSM handset. I can change carriers but retain my handset if I wanted to. I can take my SIM card (about 2 grams in weight) with me and use a friend's phone in Singapore or Scotland if that tickled my fancy.
In the US, you can barely use some mobile phones within your own city, let alone another state. CDMA, TDMA, AMPS, PCS, and a little GSM thrown in; you name an half assed protocol, and the US has it. It's bad for consumers.
Another example, already seen in this discussion is AM stereo. In Australia, FM Stereo was made mandatory with one single high quality format. It has been so successful, that today no one listens to AM for music. The government made a lot of money from AM music stations willing to move to FM to retain their listeners.
Then the govt experimented and was burnt with self regulation, and the result was AM stereo. Complicated by two competing standards, consumers didn't buy the sets and car manufacturers settled on CQAM, but it was too late. I am not aware of any stations still transmitting in AM stereo after less than 15 years after its introduction.
As a consumer, don't be afraid of a single standard. Be afraid of a single carrier, a single cable company, a single software company.
Andrew van der Stock
Whatever one may feel about the role of government and the FCC, it is nevertheless true that this is one area in which competition has failed in the US. Technically speaking, the US TV system has been *way* behind Europe's PAL and MAC for decades, and now that Europe has gone digital, the US has just dropped another step behind.
Why market forces have failed utterly in this regard I have no idea, but they have, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the US government is tired of 3rd world country status and is telling the FCC to do something about it. Heck, *somebody* needs to break the logjam. It's not as if the market hasn't had long enough to do it itself.
Why has the market failed? Is it sewn up in cartels perhaps, and not actually free? Are Warner and Co to blame, seeing profits continue to roll in over the old system and hence not wanting to invest in new infrastructure? Whatever the reason, something pathological has happened there. Hopefully it'll get sorted out now.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Being screwed by your cable company isn't going to change until something new like digital TV is available and deliverable by competitors. That's a result of the "free market" in cable being free only in name, not in reality, because market forces don't work properly when only a single provider at a time can deliver cable and services to your door.
You say you don't want multiple feeds in, but keeping everything separate works in your favour: when all communication goes through a single point, whoever operates the medium has you by the balls. That's why your cable operator can afford to give you crap service in the first place. Put up a dish and an antenna, and suddenly the cable operator has to wake up to a massive loss in profits, or else.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You're completely mistaken. The Internet runs on a single basic networking standard, namely IP, which is universal regardless of the delivery mechanism (Ethernet, ISDN, PSTN, ATM, frame relay, xDSL, etc). Without IP as a universal compatibility layer to which everyone subscribes, we'd be nowhere. (All the non-standards you mention are layered on top of IP.)
There is nothing to take the place of IP in the TV world, so unless some standard is agreed the US is going rapidly nowhere in this area. The FCC understands standards, so as long as they don't go further and try to regulate content, their intervention would do the whole US TV scene a massive service.
Alternatively of course, the US could continue to be a 3rd world country when it comes to TV. Your choice. Europe has for decades been laughing at the US backwater, quite rightly (PAL and MAC are massively better than NTSC), and now that Europe's gone digital, the laughter is deafening. Is that how you want things to stay?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Here where I live, cable modems are a myth. Other people have them. Time Warner here is sitting on its ass doing nothing about "digital cable" (saw a commercial for it... once.) and two way cable modems are a joke. Meanwhile, Bellsouth is cleaning house with a well built ADSL system, and good tech support. Mine kicks major butt when I'm in linux.
I read on ABCnews that the audience went dead silent when he told them they had to put up some standards or get regulated and set a date. I figure it is about time someone tells those greedy broadcasters to quit thinking with their wallets and get moving. If we wait for them to bring about this super clear TV revolution you'll be old and grey. And Broke.
Ironically, I've seen HDTV here in Jackson. The local PBS station has a digital system. Just no one to broadcast to. You can sit in their lobby and watch super clear images for hours...
Any good science fiction suggestions for an 8 year old boy?
;)
The Stainless Steel Rat series. Big fan of that at age 8. I'd also recommend Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and possibly the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I read 1984 when I was 9, but I don't necessarily recommend Orwell at that age
Cheers,
Your Working Boy,
Nah, I like my WWII/Guns/Mystery channels, PBS, and my DVD collection. Still, my next set will come sans tuner and fully VGA/HDTV compatible. It's looking like Sony's VW10HT.
Your Working Boy,
You forgot to mention that at 8 years old you'll understand less than half of the jokes. But most of them will still be fun.
;) ;)
Perhaps, but what I've found over the years is that my favorite things (HHG, Python, Discworld, etc) got better over time as I learned more and could see more each time I reread or reviewed the stuff. I could never figure out who the hell Reginald Maudlin was and why Pythons would rip on him so, until I learned more.. And gods, imagine being a history major and being able to appreciate Holy Grail or Life of Brian on a whole different level after studying the Arthur legends or Roman Judea.. Hell, I got an A on a paper for my Roman Empire class writing about Life of Brian...
MST3k also does this for me a bit, but I got into it late and thus know almost every riff ref
Your Working Boy,
In the interest of accuracy, you'll actually be forced to buy a new tuner to watch broadcast TV.
If, when DTV finally arrives, it should come in a form that makes it difficult to record off-air broadcasts or limits the number of playbacks...then I won't be having one in my house, that's all. It's a matter of principle. Who needs TV anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The original plan was to move all television stations to a smaller UHF band, freeing up the VHF channels and some of the UHF channels. It now looks like at least some of the VHF channels will remain allocated to television.
The FCC wants to auction off some of the recovered channels and reallocate some of the channels to other services, such as land mobile.
The television broadcasters would have lost even more spectrum without HDTV. A digital SDTV (standard definition) system would have greatly reduced their spectrum requirements.
The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) was originally interested in HDTV as a means of protecting their spectrum allocations from other services (Motorola and land mobile). They needed to give the FCC a reason why it shouldn't reallocate large portions of the sparsely occupied UHF band to other services.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
For anyone interested in the history of HDTV, I recommend the book "Defining Vision: The Battle for the Future of Television" by Joel Brinkley (ISBN 0-15-100087-5). It is an interesting account of how money and politics, not technical merit, were responsible for the creation of HDTV.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I suspect that the television networks will have something to say about it. They may require their affiliates to carry the prime time network feed in high definition (1080i or 720p). NBC is not going to like competing against another network's high definition signal with a standard definition signal.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
AM Stereo got shot down because the people who own the FM stations also own the larger AM stations. Allowing every religious and foreign language station to broadcast in 'hi-fi' would have killed the market value of the FM stations, so the station owners kept AM stereo in the bottle.
For a few years in the 1980s, American car companies shipped AM Stereo capable recievers. Most people didn't notice, however, because nobody tried to broadcast hifi pop music on AM.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
That's exactly the point...
B&W televisions can successfully decode the color signals, and produce perfectly good sight and sound.. it's just that the color is missing.
Existing televisions have no use for the new digital signals... upgrades will be *required*, costing money...
Of course, the FCC, unlike Congress, has no voters to answer to, so the FCC cares not a whit what people think. How's this for a scenario:
Clinton gets votes and endorsements, for promising to appoint people who will ban NTSC broadcasts. Clinton appoints people, who promise to do so. Digital broadcasts suddenly get mandated. Everyone runs out and buys new TVs, making big bucks for the endorsees in step A.
This is what people get for letting the government abuse (and violate) the interstate commerce clause. I say interstate commerce doesn't apply unless a broadcast station is really strong, strong enough to cross state lines. Let alone CABLE TV, where it's not broadcast at all!
OK, enough ranting...
Blame the radio industry, not the FCC.
It's not the government's place to write and mandate an AM standard, no more than it is the government's place to write and mandate a PC99 standard.
I mean, what if they required all computers to sell Windows 98 as an option?
Just give me my Star Trek reruns, VH1's Rock Show and Behind the Music, and I'm pretty much set...
Also, is this difference something you can see from 10 - 20 feet away, or do you have to be sitting right in front of it to bask in its digital superiority?
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
rooooar
It's inconceivable that broadcasters would simply stick with a single NTSC-quality signal and lease out the remaining bandwidth for wireless data. Who would buy it? It is still a one-way path from the transmitter to you.
/SARCASM
Um, gee, the wireless communications market is only hotter then the core of the sun right now. I can't imagine what anyone would want all that bandwidth for.
There is precisely one force driving any company: Money. Broadcast TV currently gets its money from advertising dollars. Will a high-definition signal pull in more ad viewers? No, people go for the programming. They want their ER and Ally McBeal. They don't care if it is broadcast in mono, stereo, or surround sound. They also don't care about the number of vertical scan lines. If they don't care, the advertisers don't care, and that means there is no good reason to offer HDTV, especially when you compare it to the previously noted white-hot wireless communications market.
Last night's X-files was available as hi-def TV to those who had digital TVs in the big markets.
I fail to see what that proves. All it says is they are willing to float a trial balloon to see what happens.
When the digital TV conversion is complete, you will see either the wide-screen HDTV picture or you will have four channels to choose from instead of one.
As has been observed by just about everybody, we don't need more channels, we need better content. (We being the American Public(TM), not the broadcasting industry.)
There are far more stations converting to digital than industry forecasts expected and the FCC Orders required.
The stations will have to convert to digital to pull off the swindle anyway, so that proves nothing.
I'd like to hope that we all end up living in a shiny happy world of HDTV, but the cynic in me thinks the All-Mighty Buck will take precedence.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Guess I forgot the SARCASM tag again....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Hey, I'm glad someone caught the satire. I know my argument isn't techically sound, and it wasn't meant to be, it was just a response to that other guys "In my day we had crappy old TV and it was great" post.
One of the problems with Slashdot as it stands is this moderation system coupled with people's viewing preferences leads to problems like this. A response to a post gets moderated to say a 5 (not that this post particularly deserved it, but hey, I'll take the extra karma), then people see it before the post it is refering too.
Thats why flat mode -1 is the only way to go baby!
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
As if it was that much more expensive to make a reprogrammable decoding unit.
We get along pretty well on the internet with several video, graphic, and audio "standards", because we need only download a new plugin. It could work the same way with HDTV.
Anyway, I think the big problem right now is the price of the display itself. An HDTV is a television-sized display with computer-monitor resolution. Given the price of even a tiny 21" monitor, is it any surprise that HDTV is still too damned expensive?
If the FCC had gotten it's act together in the mid-late 80s we would be done with the conversion by now, but they didn't so we get to go through it now (now that there are three or four TVs per home...hmm...).
That's because they have avoided doing any regulating and have waited for the market to sorts things out, which it couldn't.
+&x
Of course, it's an open question whether HDTV is actually a good idea. Consumers don't like superior tech when it's too expensive.
hmmm, new HDTV set, or, a new car, hmmmm...
+&x
Look carefully and you will see that the protection of content is the stumbling block. Again and again more and more often we are seeing this. Will it change? Or will we change? Something is going to change.
It seems that in some sence the means and modes of production are comming into conflict. Could we be looking at a world changing change (revolution) in our time?
My town just started offering digital cable recently, and I've noticed a dramatic decrease in the quality of my normal old cable. Specifically, it's that kind of "see through" effect, where objects going horizontally across the screen can be seen through similarly colored objects (read: people) in front of them.
I'm under the impression that this is due to the compressions algorithms used -- the cable company is using some lossy compression to try and use less bandwidth (although Comcast blantantly denies any ghosting, shadows, or other image problems either exisiting or being their fault). It's not like I never noticed these before; it's just that the quality has gotten much, MUCH worse since digital cable began being offered. They're pobably trying to compress the image more, but I doubt that the occurance is just a coincidence.
My problem is this: While many companies and industries are using digital this and digital that ernestly, others are using it for profit. Do I really need a HDTV? I'm perfectly satisfied with my 640x480 broadcasts - there's no way I'll pay hundreds (and, not too long ago, thousands) of dollars more for a higher quality broadcast. Does anyone really expect to be able to buy a cheap TV like the ones today and a cheap digital-to-analog converter 5 years from now?
This is all just an exuse for the entire industry to go out and charge me more. Different companies are backing different standards depending on what's in their own interests, not what's best for the consumer. Frankly, I think that we're better off without some of these "standards" that are being tossed around.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
I read the article and thought it was great, but I think it was overlooking a key player-- Public TV. Since public TV doesn't have the same motivations for wussing out on HDTV, they ARE likely to take full advantage of their HDTV spectrum. When consumers see a fantastically better picture on PBS than on MSNBC, they'll want to know why. Look for the big networks to try and smear public TV Real Soon Now.
yes it is. I don't know what the USB port is for, but Time Warner said that once the entire infastructure is digital the box will be my cable modem too.
Yep Videoway is going out... They've already started to rent -- you guessed it -- Digital TV set-top boxes.
I've seen the results... Hoo boy! Artifact city! I can't possibly imagine over-the-aerial HDTV working with all the ghosting, click-and-pop every time someone turns on a light... and the interference caused by microwaves and blenders in your home.
Rabbit ears suck! That's why they invented cable for crissakes. Now they want to go back?!?
---
Sure, so give the content and distribution companies five more years.
Come back in five more years, and they're still sat on their arses mumbling to themselves...
Both types of company haven't been customer focused in the true sense for years, and finally blowing up NTSC (about 25 years too late IMHO) will at least make them stop snoring and take a look around.
Because a significant fraction of the investment in UK broadcasting comes from the public purse, we got working digital TV systems last year. However, I would swap all the steps forward we have compared with the US for a telecoms provider that wasn't dragging its feet on ADSL and call charges.
It's nice to see that in all these cases the Government (in the form of the
FCC and OFTEL) get to be good guys for a change.
Nick.
You're confusing HDTV and DTV.
HDTV what you're talking about. HDTV televisions are very expensive, and the high bandwith requirement is a major problem.
DTV is another thing completely. DTV will work with any television you throw at it, using a receiver provided by your cable company. It gives you superior image quality when compared to analog TV, makes channel pirating almost impossible, lets you have a lot of value added services (like digital music channels, pay per view, nice on screen TV guides...)
DTV isn't more expensive than analog is. Here, in Quebec City, somebody who had base analog service (about 35 CDN) will be able to go with DTV for 2$ extra. That includes a DTV receiver box and a choice of channels. With analog, you can only have preselected channels. With DTV, you get 16 base channels and you can choose 15 channels (with the base plan, it costs extra for extra channels) out of about 40. DTV is good for everybody, the consumer and the broadcasters, as it lets the customer choose the channels they want to get. No more Food network if you don't want it.
HDTV is another beast entirely.
"the FCC doesn't want to dictate industry standards"
Can't they learn from their own poor decisions??
I remember them saying the exact same thing with AM Stereo, with the result being five different standards and fragmented technology. No single standard was ever adopted, receivers were expensive if you could find them, and nobody gave a care. In the end their still is no AM Stereo worth mentioning.
So maybe that's why I am so pissed at hearing this statement from the FCC??
I'm seeing a lot of confusion in this thread between digital cable, DTV, HDTV, new sets, old sets etc. I have digital TV here in the UK (we've had it for about a year now) and so although YMMV I'd like to tell you all how it works here.
First off, the DTV we get is NOT high definition. It is better quality, but that's due to a less lossy broadcast method. Basically when you subscribe to one of the digital services they give you a set top box which takes the digital signal and coverts it to PAL (or in the US case NTSC, or french SECAM etc). This then plugs into the back of your normal TV set. In my case I use a seperate RGB feed via SCART because RF sucks, but you can use RF is you really want.
The picture quality is a lot better than analog broadcast, it's like watching DVD vs VHS. The signal going into the back of your TV is the same format (PAL) but the quality is better because of the quality of the source. There are also more channels, because as someone pointed out, over here rather than getting the same number of channels but in increased resoloution, we get more normal-res channels.
A quick rundown of services available:
* Digital Terrestrial : This is run by a company called ON Digital, they transmit a digital signal over standard terrestrial airwaves. You use your existing antenna and just plugin their box. You get about 10-15 premium channels.
* Digital Satellite : The main european satellite broadcaster Sky run a digital service which is quickly taking over from their old analog service. This offers up to about 300 channels including audio only, foreign language etc. The downside is you need to install a small dish to pick up the signal. This is however free if you subscribe.
* Digital Cable : I'm not sure if this is totally up and running yet, certainly the slowest to arrive. Cable has never been as big in the UK as satellite and the infrastructure is rather crap. Nonetheless digital cable offers similar service levels to satellite, no need for a dish (ugly!) and also broadband internet access which is still not really available over here.
So to round up - from our experience if you need new equipment (such as set top boxes) the companies give them away. They started off charging but as soon as one company gave them away they all did The only investment you might want to make is for a widescreen TV, a lot more broadcasts are in 16:9 format now because they have spare channels, so you can have a 4:3 and 16:9 of the same film for instance. Also with DVD coming along widescreen is a Good Thing (tm) in general. And the picture quality is better, but it's not up to the levels of HDTV (which will require a new TV).
If you have any questions feel free to post...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Well, go to Europe and watch some PAL analog TV then - a lot better than NTSC. Then watch the same PAL analog TV with a 100Hz TV - wow! Now watch DVD piped through Svideo or RGB to that 100Hz widescreen TV - we're really getting interested now!
Now imagine DTV and HDTV, more resolution (HDTV) than DVD, TV sets that don't even convert to analog before displaying (Plasma TV, anyone?).
Why you need anything better than that _incredibly_ crappy NTSC shit?
Because of the same f*cking reasons you don't use 8086 computers, black&white TVs, crap AM radio (oh wait, maybe you still do .. ), analog cellphone systems (damn, you do)!
I'm happy I don't live in that 3rd world country called USA - technology from the 60's all the way through.
Flamebait? Yes, but only if you're moderating with your personal US ego in front of your eyes.
it's in my head
Am I the ONLY one who read this positively?
Say what you will about the FCC, and some of their silly decisions in the past. On the whole, this guy seems to 'get it.' Consider this summary of his speech;
1) The industry has not been working for the consumer.
2) The industry has been working for their own ends.
3) By working towards their own ends, the industry hasn't developed any followed standards.
4) By working towards their own ends, the industry has harmed the consumer.
5) If the industry doesn't get off their asses ASAP, the FCC, backed by the US gov't, will kick said asses around, on behalf of the consumer.
Strikes me as a decent kind of guy.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Wow, so I guess all copying is illegal now. How many times must something be broken until they just give up? I'm tired of them trying to force this 'pay per play' shit down my throat. If that's the motivation behind digital tv, then I don't want any part in it.
We've had DTV for over a year now. The set top boxes are 'free' (if you take a subscription to the pay channels) and the integrated sets are now down to £500 (about $750) for a 28" set.
THe EU/UK govmt decided to stop messing around waiting for the world to agree on a standard and went with the UK system - a little like they've done with GSM phones already mentioned.
Switch-off for the analogue transmitters has been set to around 2010 (based on 90% of the population having got DTV recievers and 99% of the population being capable of recieving it then a hard will be set 2 years in the furture)
For somethings the govnmt HAS to set the goals, thats what they are there for - a central body to HELP co-ordinate things and if neseccary force change.
I have been a beta tester for digital cable in my area (eastern TN) for a little over 6 months now. The cable box I use is made by Scientific Atlanta. You can see it here. Anyway... the point of this post is that I'm not waiting for the digital infastructure to be in place so I can get more channels or better picture, I want the 27mb/s that Time Warner is promising once the entire area is digital.
I'm near Salt Lake City, and we've already got it. Cable went digital here a while back, and all of the local broadcasters (but one, I believe) teamed up to build a common HDTV broadcast center they all send their signal from, drastically reducing their costs and speeding adoption. Since they're broadcasting from a common location, it will also be a lot easier to receive, since you point the antenna at one peak to receive all the stations. I already have my HDTV (they're sweet, as long as the feed is S-video, progressive, or 1080i!), and will soon have my receiver (as soon as Toshiba sells the one to match my TV). Normally I avoid local channels, but it's hard to pass them up when they all go digital simultaneously.
Time Warner has been advertising digital cable here in Rochester for months. And I gather from the recent ads that they are installing now. I can just picture the standard being something different and costing some of the cable providers bigs bucks; a cost that will undoubtedly get passed along. As for me, I want a guarantee that when I go to digital cable that under no circumstances will I ever get the Golf Channel. If that happens, I won't get a single word out of my dad when he comes to visit.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I get your point but it isn't a good one. The FCC never mandated a switch from bw to color. Broadcasters were simply meeting a consumer demand. But there is little apparent demnd for digital tv. Also, unlike color/bw, the new digital tv sets are not automatically compatible with the old standard. You have to buy an expensive additional device for that.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Digital cable has nothing to do with the Digital TV that the FCC is considering regulations for. Digital Cable simply converts regular analog TV signals to digital and then transmits this signal to cable boxes at people's homes. The cable box then converts the compressed digital signal to analog and sends it to the television. This makes the picture marginally clearer and allows cable companies to transmit more channels in the same bandwidth, but does not provide the major improvement in picture quality that High Definition digital TV provides.
The FCC is impatient because they granted broadcasters an extremely lucrative block of frequencies in return for broadcasters using the frequencies to broadcast digital high definition television. Believe me, nothing compares to a high definition signal. Simply amazing!
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Hi, I'm Venomous Louse. I haven't owned a TV for five years now, and while it sometimes sucks a bit not to be able to rent movies, I've yet to lose any sleep about that. The fact is, TV sucks. Try not watching TV for a year, and then turn one on and watch a few commercials. It's like opening a door into an insane asylum, for God's sake! I am telling you, it is not normal to sit in a chair watching perfect strangers scream at you about how you should buy things that you don't care about. It may or may not be identical to North Korean mind-control techniques, but it's close enough to chill my blood and no mistake. In the rare intervals when they're not screaming at you to buy crap, they're bombarding you with dull jokes, bad acting, and silly melodrama. All of this seems normal and reasonable to the habitual TV user, but after a year or so of drying out, you will suddenly begin to see it as a strange form of madness.
Watching the news used to be given as a valid reason to have a TV, but there were always newspapers, and now we have the web. Both of those (especially newspapers) provide more depth than television anyway.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
The FCC's mandate to oust NTSC from the airwaves so soon is just a bonehead idea in my opinion. Digital TV is an upper class toy than something beneficial to everyone. Look for example at the prices of the DTVs, they are thousands of dollars, where the analog 25" one I have was only a few hundred and I rather like its picture quality. As for DTV broadcasting, why would cable companies want to try to convert? They are just now starting to roll out cable internet service which is pretty profitable for them. DTV over coax would be difficult at best due to bandwidth problems. Right now only microwave satillite has the capacity to stream 19Mbps per channel to everyone on your block. Cable companies would have to overhaul their whole coax network just to match the bandwidth. TV manufacturers are making quite a profit building relativly cheap TVs that have coax/RCA connections that have much higher profit margines than digital TVs. Even if a lot of people could afford the TVs and service, how many people does the FCC think would buy it? Cable on a good day only comes through to 55% or so of the country, what happens to everyone who can't afford DTV? Oh yeah, broadcasters CAN as an option broadcast NTSC...does that seem like a bullshit plan to anyone else? Simulcasting is expensive, there would be 5 minute commercial spreads just to cover the price of the double broadcasting. I can imagine broadcasters are as aprehensive as the cable companies for the same reason. Digital broadcasting needs entirely new equipment and that equipment costs money. What was the FCC thinking?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I indirectly place most of the blame for this on our government. Long rant, semi-offtopic.
The supply/demand argument works here, I think. Cable broadcasters aren't going to want to support (supply) digital TV (I assume they are referring to HDTV) until a lot of people have HDTV's (demand). As I remember it was a similar situation when CD-Roms came out. Software was pretty limited until computers started shipping standard with a CDROM drive.
On the cosumer (demand) side: The obvious problem is that HDTV's are very expensive, around $3000 minimum. I've seen studies that have shown that very few consumers are willing to shell out more than 200 dollars more than today's analog/NTSC TV's for HDTV quality. Numbers can be distorted of course, but knowing the average American consumer, I'd have to agree.
So where did the government screw up? There are three areas I can think of. One is the hardware in HDTV's, two is the current situation in the communications industry as influenced by the tele-communications act, and third are the timetables from converting all broadcasts in the country to digital.
HDTV Hardware:
The HDTV spec supports 18 different formats (different resolutions, progressive or interlaced, etc) and thus all HDTV's have to be able to run these 18 formats. More formats = higher hardware costs. Now, on the big TV's this cost can get absorbed easily, but what % of the population has big screens? All the people who have small TV's will have to pay just as much for that hardware. That's big money and helps to prevent the prices on small sets to drop below a certain point. In analog sets today, almost all of the cost is in the picture tube. Now, there is a large chuck in just the hardware.
How did this happen? The leading electronics companies couldn't agree on what formats to include, and the FCC simply caved in to corporate big brother, and included them all. Almost as pathetic as the giveaway of the frequency spectrum for digital broadcasting. Gotta love those lobbyists.
Communications industry:
Deregulation has hurt a lot more than it has helped. Service and contend providers are increasingly concetrated in a few companies, to the point where we nearly have an oligopoly. Many areas still have legalized monoplies (the exact opposite of what should be happening in a market controlled partially by the government). So when you have a legalized monopoly, there is no incentive to upgrade the infrastructure when you can make plenty of money with what you have now. I've posted this same argument before in the form of "why is high speed internet access so expensive or unavailable." You can apply the same argument as to why most cable companies aren't exactly moving fast on digital TV.
Timetables to 100% digital broadcasting:
The year for 100% conversion (plus or minus a few years, don't have my reference handy) is 2006. Six years is not enough time. Billions upon billions of dollars of equipment and infastructure have to be replaced. New sets have to be bought. Some people cimply can't afford them. The FCC is trying to push this too quickly. Why they are doing this I don't know. Prices are falling but even in 2006 I think they'll still be more expensive than today's analog equivalents.
In summary the FCC has simply caved into industry pressure and the results aren't good for the consumer. It's really unfortunate.
I'm not surprised that digital TV hasn't appeared yet. First of all, current low-definition TV takes a lot less bandwidth than HDTV, and most cablecos and TV networks would rather have more channels than a few really high quality ones. Unless they are trying to cater only to the very wealthiest consumers, perhaps... who likely don't watch so much television.
There's also some paranoia about changing the standards - I recall hearing two women in the mall talking about how the gov't was going to change the standards to digital TV, forcing everyone to get a brand new expensive TV set etc.. This was last summer sometime. TV is currently a friendly, non-demanding technology and the idea of making it "high-tech" is going to lead to similar FUD amongst the less technologically minded.
Anyways the speech seems to be referring specifically to interactive TV rather than merely digital TV. But haven't most interactive TV experiments failed? The biggest project I know of was Videotron's Videoway service in Quebec, and judging from the last annual report of theirs I saw subscriptions are dropping and the company appears to be phasing it out. No wonder the industry isn't too keen on it.
YOU WILL BE FORCED TO BUY NEW TELEVISIONS!!!
That's the big difference, and it's why your argument is terrible (and sure as hell isn't worth a 4 score.)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Wired has an excellent article on this subject. It is a little old (Feb 1997) at this point, but as far as I know, still valid. Everyone should read this: The Great HDTV Swindle.
Here is a quick summary:
Conventional NTSC signals are analog. Frames are broadcast more or less as they are, and the timing signal is embedded in the carrier. DTV is Digital Television. By digitizing the signal, you can do things like compress it to save bandwidth, include program information, add additional data services, etc. HDTV is High Definition Television. It roughly doubles the number of vertical scan lines being broadcast, yielded a significantly better picture. It also allows different aspect ratios, so you don't have to clip or letterbox a movie to broadcast it.
Sounds real neat, right?
Not exactly. DTV compression allows HDTV to be broadcast in the roughly the same bandwidth as current TV channels. It also allows compression of NTSC signals. Rather then broadcasting HDTV in a full channel, a broadcaster can compress the NTSC signal, broadcast that using only one sixth of the channel, and lease the remaining bandwidth to wireless communications providers.
Given the limited initial demand for HDTV, what do you think the broadcasters are going to do? Waste all that bandwidth on a signal most are not going to use, or give us what we currently have and lots of extra money leasing their bandwidth? I know which one I would bet on.
So, if you think you are going to be seeing a better TV picture any time soon, think again. Except to spend lots of money to upgrade your equipment, but with zero reward.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.