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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.
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
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.
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.