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."

Comments

Better than the Amerika

[benna]

At least Japan is giving more time than the FCC is. The FCC deadline of 2006 just isn't going to happen. something like 98-99% of Americans have a television. More Americans have a TV than have telephone service at home. A sizable number of these folks probably don't have the money to just run out to Best Buy and buy a new television because the FCC says they have to. I expect to see a bunch of noise made in the news about this once the deadline approaches, followed by lots of Congressional campaigns running on the "The big bad federal government wants to take away your TV... over my dead body!" platform. This will likely lead to the analog/digital cutover deadline being pushed back significantly.

Re:Better than the Amerika

[cdrudge]

That's nice that the government will subsidize the converters. Everyone knows that the governement has an unlimited supply of money and that the people won't be the ones who still end up footing the "subsidized" bill once it comes in the mail.

If they have to ask...

[dagg]

Local TV stations, which are supported by residents in their areas, will struggle to further improve their community ties. In fact, the wave of digitalization will pose questions about their very reason for existing.

If they have to ask, then they should just give up now.

Hardware support

[brockgr]

The new PSX (Playstation3?) will support terrestrial digital here in Japan - as well as being a DVD and PVR - a really very sweet device.

What I want to see are Digital TV decoder cards for PCs. I can then just capture the TV on my PC and playback Hi-Def onto my TV without having to buy any other hardware. However there seems to be no sign of them. I guess teh MPAA (and local equivalents) are very scared that users will work around their "not-recordable" bits in the video stream.

Gavin

Compelling Moments

[toxic666]

Does digital TV rate up there with other moments that were compelling enough to warrant the investment by consumers?

1) 1920's -- Sound in the cinema.
2) 1930's -- Color in the cinema
3) 1950's -- Television
4) 1960's -- Color Television
5) 1970's -- Cable TV
6) 1980's -- Large Screen TV
7) 1990's -- Better Large Screen TV

Keep in mind the producer's investment costs get passed on to the consumer. The advances mentioned were not mandated by a regulatory agency and passed the consumer test on their own merits.

From what I have seen of digital TV it is gorgeous, but not something I would, by choice, spend $1500 on compared to what I can get from analog TV. I'm none too thrilled with the prospect of having digital TV and DRM forced down my throat at a higher cost.

Re:A little quick?

[harriet nyborg]

Just 8 years for the population to replace all of their TVs sounds a little quick. Or does absolutely everyone in Japan replace their equipment way often?

indeed, but it's all part of the japanese strategy to give their industries a head start. it helps them to retain their competitive edge internationally.

create a home market and then try to export it.

it matters little what the FCC does. the US is only 280 million people. tv's - even fancy digital ones - are commodity items. the market is totally ruled by volume.

china and india and se asia is where the market will be, and the japanese want to be there first.

so going through the growing pains in the home market gives them a big advantage.

you see there are another ways of how government can stimulate economic growth other than simply (and blindly) slashing taxes.

Everytime...

[UserChrisCanter4]

Everytime I see an article or hear a discussion about DTV transitions, I hear a bunch of people ranting and raving about buying new TVs, or how their TV that Moses brought down from the mount works just fine and you can pry it from their cold, dead hands. It really does crack me up when you consider what's realistically going to go into this transition.

First of all, The US deadline is now 2007, not 2006, per random circuit court.

A) 108 million households in the US have televisions. Of those, just over 70% subscribe to cable or satellite. Satellite subscribers don't have a thing to worry about in this transition (unless they don't spend the $6/month to get televised local stations, which is definitely worth avoiding ghosting and reception issues). Satellite users really don't have to worry about this at all, since the sat systems will probably keep broadcasting in the same manner they were before the change; essentially a slightly differently implemented digital signal. Local stations will be transmitted in the same manner, and the signals will be decoded by their existing set-top box. No pain. Cable carriers could, in theory, take the exisitng off-air digital signals, convert them back to analog, and send them along over the lines (I'm not sure if any of the FCC rules have forbid this), although with continued uptake on digital cable services, they'll basically be in a situation similar to the satellite carriers. Of course, assuming they're not allowed to to retransmit in analog, it'll be back to how it was 10 or 15 years ago before cable-ready TVs hit the market; a $4 or $5/month (maybe even $10) for the box, with the option to purchase per FCC rules. The boxes still patch into the TV using the standard interfaces (composite/S-Video, RF for the old crap, maybe component or DVI for newer equipment).

That leaves the off-air folks, the remaining 30%. Now consider what off-air DTV is. It isn't neccessarily HD (HD is a subset of Digital). DTV is MPEG-2 encoded video with dolby digital/AC-3 audio and 480 lines of resolution. Know what else uses that same video system? If you said the $20 DVD player they had on sale last friday, you're right. Essentially, you need an IC capable of decoding the stream, an antenna to get the signal in, and some RF equipment that can tune to that signal. In bulk, we're talking maybe $50, especially considering these won't be purchased for at least another 3 years. THe current cost of outboard ATSC tuners is mostly due to the fact that there's a very small market actually looking for them and the fact that they're typically designed to a little higher standards, given that they're usually interfacing to nicer HD equipment.

So the remaining 30% of people breaks down thusly: people who don't care enough about TV to invest in cable or satellite, and people who can't afford to invest in cable or satellite. The former group might have one or two TVs (they don't care enough, remember), so using my random $50 price point (which I think is reasonably believable), they can retrofit their existing equipment for $100, or simply put that $100 into buying a new TV. You can get a new TV for $100, and if they buy it at that time, it'll be DTV capable (see below). For the people who are too poor to afford cable or sat, well, they were obviously capable of scraping together enough to get a TV. Not to be heartless here, but TV is not a right, and if you could afford to get one you can probably afford to save up $50.

This all counts out the fact that one of the circuit courts of appeal upheld the ruling that all TVs larger than 13" are required to have a DTV tuner starting 2006 (I think it's '06).

So what we basically have is a lot of handwringing over a bunch of scaremongering by media outlets ("current DTV boxes cost hundreds of dollars", "of course they do, there's not a huge demand for them") and the lack of understanding of simple television systems by a lot of people. Folks, it's gonna be a cheap-ass box that hooks into your cable jack or A/V input and tunes to a channel. It's not rocket science. You can go back to watching your 15 year-old wood-panel TV now, and you can keep watching it for years to come.

Re:Everytime...

[wrmrxxx]

Sounds great to me. I only have to pay $50 - $100 extra to keep using what I already have. What could be fairer?

People who purchased a TV set (and most people buying them now) did so in the expectation that they could use it to watch free to air broadcasts. As you correctly point out, it's not a right of any sort. But it is a fairly understandable assumption given the history of TV that most people are aware of: the TV signal has always been there, and it has always been available to any TV set. Now, the rules are going to change. The expensive box of electronics someone purchased will become a pile of junk unless extra money is spent - this is not how it has been in the past so it's not a normal expectation for the future, apart for those of us who know digital is coming and have some idea of what it means.

Whether you approve of the changeover process and schedule or not, the reality is that some people are going to be upset by this. Whether they should be upset or not is another question again. Many will be comforted by the fact that the hardware will probably be fairly cheap, and only needed by some. Others aren't going to be so easily satisfied - they'll see it as a matter of principal.

The Real Question - Who Cares?

[stu72]

Come on - this is TV for crying out loud - does anyone actually give two shits if they watch Friends in analog or digital? And if they do, why on earth is the government involved? I can understand a government taking a high profile role in healthcare, pensions, crime fighting, defense, etc., but TELEVISION?

If the logic goes that they are preventing a standards war, my question stands - who cares? Maybe if the TV industry wastes enough money on a standards war, TV would become expensive enough that more people will question their viewing habits.

Without any goverment intervention, TV will become digital one way or another, eventually, just by natural technological progression. Why are we wasting tax dollars trying to hurry it along? Is it that freakin' important?

I can understand tax dollars trying to hurry along progression of medical technologies, defense technologies, communication technologies, but TV?? Who cares?

Don't give me that line about educational TV like PBS/Discovery Channel/TLC - they're great I know, but really, do they get that much greater in digital? I didn't think so.

dtv adaptors in the UK

[fiddlesticks]

in the UK, outboard DTT STBs now start at 50 bucks

here

This is both caused by, and helps encourage, the fact that more than 50% of uk household have DTV (cable, sat or dtt)