Slashdot Mirror
Japan's TV Broadcasts To Be All-Digital By 2011
Azuma writes "Officially, Japan will end Analog broadcasting by year 2011. Terrestrial digital television broadcasting services started on Monday, December 1st in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, with Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) and private TV stations broadcasting special commemorative programs. The services will initially be available to around 12 million households. Here is an article from Chinaview. The Daily Yomiuri reports that small local TV stations are at a disadvantage due to high costs of the new technology."
You could allways use a digital to analogue converter on the old TVs, at least if you have cable, satilite, or an external antennae.
Eventually all the new TVs will be digital and thus come down in price, so it won't be that much of a problem.
Digital TV is a wonderful idea, crystal clear picture and all, but the real question is, will anyone really notice a difference. Do I really need to be able to count all of the wrinkles on Ted Koppel's face?
I'm currently working on a degree in Broadcasting, and the US mandated transition to digital is not going to happen in 2006, no matter what the FCC says. I'll be impressed if it happens by 2016.
At home, I still use a 11 year old television and an 18 year old television. I'm not going to replace then until they break, and I'll be damned if I'm going to buy (or rent, if the cable company gets its way) a digital converter box to watch tv.
It's not happening here in the US, why does Japan think that it's going to happen there?
So now seems like an appropriate time to tell you how the story came out. I recently bought a MyHD 120 card, and am very happy with the card (I plan on buying a couple more). However I can only get one Digital channel so far, and they're not broadcasting true HD yet. Digital does look nice, very nice, DVD nice, but still isn't HD. There is one channel in the area broadcasting HD, but I can't pull it in, even though I just bought a 3 foot square UHF antenna to do so. There are supposed to be 8 channels in my area broadcasting Digital, and I can only get one. And only one of the 8 are broadcasting HD (which I can't get as mentioned), and then for only about half of prime time hours. I'm told by sales people that the stations are only broadcasting currently at half power, but I have no way to confirm this. Even the one channel that comes in strong (full meter), suffers occasional complete drops, very much like early cell phone use. While the HD picture is probably going to be glorious (and digital is already very good), they really fell down on the job when it came to the carrier signal, and I think it safe to say VSB was an extremely poor choice. People are use to a signal fading in and out on analog, but still be viewable (you can still follow the story or hear the audio), when a sizable portion have digital, and find they loose signal completely from time to time, well there will be hell to pay. The FCC has quite the mess on its hands.
BTW, when the one channel I do get is not in primetime, I switch to the analog sister station. The upconvert of local programing is like a 56k streaming video. Painful to watch.
A year later and the Quest goes on.
Letter To Iran
Here in Australia we have had HDTV broadcasting over the air for about two years (I think) and the price of HDTV's is dropping relatively fast. Last year a plasma screen was a good $2500 Au, now I see them about for $1250 Au, in a couple years they'll be the same price as a standard TV was 7-8 years ago. They're not that expensive... 2008 is plenty of time to at least get a converter box.
sweden is shutting down all public analog (terrestial) broadcasts in february 2008, why wait until 2011?
Just to ensure that people are aware of the fact -- Samir Gupta is not a PhD, does not work for Nintendo, and is one of Slashdot's more colorful frauds. You can see the beginning of the Samir Gupta hoax on USENET years ago, in early discussions on the Sega Genesis.
However, an amazing number of new people with mod points, impressed with the bogus credentials, frequently mod up his posts.
May we never see th
Zoom into the picture then and get what you'd have had before anyway.
... the black bars aren't covering up any picture on widescreen. You are simply getting more picture on both sides.
Whilst I'm pretty sure of your sarcasm, just to make it clear to other people
Over there in Germany, the state of Berlin and Brandenburg is shutting down analog broadcasting also. People on welfare without enough money to buy a digital receiver will get one nearly for free from the state. Nice, huh?
I think Germany's goals are somewhat close to Japan's in terms of "digital only" TV.
Several Japanese electronics giants have unnited to form a consortium and promote Linux in their hardware - Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Matsushita etc. Are they setting a 2011 target to give these firms enough time to come up with a mature hardware that works, rather than the hastily put-together Microsoft Windows XP Media Center stuff that is too expensive for what it delivers?
Knowing that the Japs are excellent planners, I think they've made a very reaslistic appraisal of the situation. Well before 2011, the SCO menace would be settled oncee and for all, likewise Media Center would be in Service Pack 7 or thereabouts.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
There was an ISP in england that already did this. I forgot the name.
You bought a 512k ADSL line and got a 2meg in actuality - the other 1.5meg was for video on demand and TV channels.
Quotes from http://www.digitv.fi:
- Finland entered the digital era when the multiplex representatives started up digital television broadcasts on 27th August 2001. This means that there are now six new television channels in three multiplexes, and the four existing channels can be received as digital parallel broadcasts. Viewers have a total of ten channels to choose from.
- The area of digital broadcasts covers over 70% of the population. The television broadcasting network is to be digitalised in phases. The process is due to be complete at the end of 2006, when approx. 99% of Finns will reside within the transmission area of digital television.
- The government has set up a target that the analogue broadcasting discontinues at the end of 2006.
Anything involving that comedy duo of the tall blonde cheerful looking guy with a mohawk, and the short stubby bitter looking guy with the really thick glasses (what the hell are their names?). They seem to have hosted a million wacky shows, and all of those I've seen have been very funny (like the one where they [and their cohorts] had 1 minute 30 seconds to perform these bizarre skits involving Complicated and Very Strenuous Actions, with no prior rehearsals)
You must be referring to "Kyain" (pronounced "kyah-een") and the blonde mohawk dude is "Udo Suzuki" while the short dude is "Amano Hiroyuki". I still think they all suck though. I just watch SkyPerfecTV's BBC documentaries... (Better watch what I say, I work for a Japanese ad agency!!)