US Still Dithering Over Analog-Digital TV Conversion

Robin Ingenthron writes "As 2007 gets closer, the legislation to postpone mandatory transition from Analog TV broadcast to Digital is taking shape. Here's an idea - make the broadcasters pay to use the airwaves (they get both analog and digital spectrum for free). For that matter, why permanently auction the bandwidth to cell phone companies, why not rent it to them too? Each postponement keeps the Fed budget in the red, so consumers have a choice -- between analog (black borders on the sides of their digital TVs) and digital (black borders on the top and bottom of their analog TV)."

Comments

No thanks, spend the money elsewhere please.

[garcia]

McCain's measure would require broadcasters to air only digital television signals by 2009 and help consumers who rely on traditional television sets buy devices that would convert digital back into a format that they could watch.

"Consumers who rely on over-the-air television, particularly those of limited economic means, should be assisted," according to the draft obtained by Reuters.

How about we just not mandate that the signals go all digital? I have said it before... The taxpayers are getting fucked TWICE on this deal. We have to pay for the mandate to happen and we have to pay for the fucking digital tuners as well all for something that I really don't care to have anyway. TV isn't that important as it is, especially stuff that comes OTA so why do we need to waste billions of dollars on this technology? Just so I can watch the Vikings lose or the Simpsons have another bad season in digital quality? No thanks... How about you spend that money on regulating the corporations that deliver content over cable and telephone? Personally I am more interested in that digital information.

And because I don't want a digital set/tuner I won't be able to watch TV without it. I am assuming I wouldn't be one of those people that are considered acceptable for help...

Re:No thanks, spend the money elsewhere please.

[jfengel]

There are two reasons for the switch:

1. The new technology makes more efficient use of the bandwidth

2. The bandwidth currently being used by TV signals is particularly valuable set of frequencies. One important potential use of it is for emergency communications, which couldn't be done as well at the higher frequencies to which the TV networks are being moved. (I believe that has to do with the better penetration capability of the lower frequencies, while the relatively immobile TV receiver can use an exertnal antenna. But I'm not certain of this.)

A corollary to #1 and #2 is that the bandwidth can be resold to wireless providers for a lot of money, thus netting a windfall for the US budget and decreasing the deficit.

Oh, BTW: you probably won't actually get the Simpsons in higher quality. The DTV standard allows them to subdivide the signals, so they get to pump you the Vikings losing AND the Redskins losing AND the Red Sox losing at the same quality as you already had.

The upshot: it's not about quality; it's about efficient allocation of bandwidth and the ability of the US consumer to have more options and make some money off the sale of bandwidth. (Not enough, to my tastes: the TV networks make vast sums of money off that bandwidth, because an awful lot of people enjoy what they're producing.)

That may not be sufficient reason for you to outweigh the price of the digital tuners, but there are reasons.

Re:No thanks, spend the money elsewhere please.

[Minwee]

The DTV standard allows them to subdivide the signals, so they get to pump you the Vikings losing AND the Redskins losing AND the Red Sox losing at the same quality as you already had.

I see that you're an optimist. In my experience digital TV pictures are actually worse quality than traditional broadcast TV. Because the entire image is MPEG-2 encoded, even a tiny bit of interference can cause the screen to freeze or display brightly coloured artifacts. Because the signal is being squeezed into the absolute minimum possible bandwidth the overall quality comes out as being slightly below what I would expect from a bootleg VCD.

The worst part of digital TV isn't even the picture quality, it's channel surfing. With the current technology you just can't do it. If you try to page through traditional broadcast or cable channels it's easy -- *click* *click* *click* and you see three different channels. With digital TV there is a delay of at least a second after selecting a new channel while the decoder pores over the data stream trying to piece together an image. *click* *click* *click* turns into *click* ... ... ... *click* ... ... ... *click* ... *swear*

While it would be technically possible to overcome these problems by upping the bandwidth allocated to each individual station, the money to be made by packing as many extra channels as possible into the available spectrum will always be too much to ignore. If you expect the same quality as you get today from digital TV, you're going to be disappointed.

Re:No thanks, spend the money elsewhere please.

[Ironsides]

In my experience digital TV pictures are actually worse quality than traditional broadcast TV. Because the entire image is MPEG-2 encoded, even a tiny bit of interference can cause the screen to freeze or display brightly coloured artifacts.

That is not a tiny ammount of interference. DTV uses almost 50% of its bandwidth for Forward Error Correction (FEC). It takes a lot to take the signal off the air unless you are near the boundaries or reception, which with analog would get you a pretty poor picture anyway. As for the artifacts? That has to do with the encoder, not the signal. Don't even compare this to VCD, I work around these pictures every day and can see how much higher quality they are than regular TVs.

The delay? They new that would happen from the begining. If you know about Iframes, remember that they have to wait till they recieve one till they can actually start showing a picture. A half second delay at most under the current way of broadcasting. And yes, I do mean a half second AT MOST, unless you have a poor quality decoder.

Upping the bandwidth would not change this. Changing the LongGOP of the MPEG structure would, but that would require more bandwidth to keep the same quality. As for quality? They can set it from 19.4Mbps to 0Mbps for the ammount of bandwidth they use for a signal. 19.4 is way above DVD quality so don't diss it. What was probably happening is that they were reducing the ammount of bandwidth dedicated to the subchannel you were watching to another channel. Most stations will only use 4 sub channels at most under the current scheme of things. 4 channels being the most number of Standard Deffinition [720x480I] that you can fit into 19.4Mbps under most circumstances and maintain quality.

Re:baffling, can anyone explain?

[stratjakt]

They aren't permanently sold, they're licensed. The FCC is taking back VHF and UHF, after all. They couldn't do that if they were "owned" like property.

And they do pay licensing fees, application fees, they pay a huge fee to petition the FCC to increase their broadcast power and range, for instance.

Digital != black borders

[sunderland56]

between analog (black borders on the sides of their digital TVs) and digital (black borders on the top and bottom of their analog TV)

Digital versus analog is NOT the same as aspect ratio. The two concepts have little, if anything, to do with one another.

If your television screen's aspect ratio matches the aspect ratio of the program being broadcast, you will have no black bars. If the two do not match, you will have black bars, whether or not the broadcast is in an analog or digital form. I've got a Sony 36" HD set at home that has a 4:3 aspect ratio screen - no black bars when watching analog TV (or 4:3 digital broadcasts such as Fox).

Side rant: if you watch NBC digital, you get #(*&^%# annoying GREY bars on the sides. On dimly lit shows, those grey bars are much brighter than anything else in the room - annoying beyond belief.

Re:Government should not support this

[stratjakt]

TV is also a primary source of information in the event of a natural disaster, or even something as mundane as knowing which schools are closed if it snows.

Though, I agree it isn't a right. And American government isn't supposed to be the type of government that buys you the stuff you can't afford.

A digital tuner with analog out could be produced quite cheaply.

Hell, it's basically a DVD player without all the (relatively expensive) DVD mechanisms, with a slightly fancier decoding engine. If I can get a cheap DVD player for around 50 bucks, I would expect a DTV tuner to cost less than that.

Once a good cheap DTV to Analog chip hits mass production, the market will flood with cheap devices, and people will start to switch on their own. But not until then.

Don't knock analog

[overshoot]

The only TV I watch is by time-shifting. At least I can time-shift analog. I'm certainly in no hurry to trade in the ability to timeshift for the priveledge of having to pay several times as much for a set whose primary design feature is its ability to keep me from recording broadcast programs.

The old analog set works, and I'm not planning to replace it.

Digital TV in flyover country

[MadHungarian1917]

For better or worse TV is the primary information channel for most of the population and digital modulation schemes are simply not appropriate in many rural areas. Don't watch much TV anymore but I can receive the analog broadcasts from the nearest major market ~100 miles away with reasonable quality.

I do have a digital tuner and the digital broadcasts don't make the trip. I can pick up 1 station in a 30 mile radius
I do have a Satellite for the family - ie h*ll will freeze over before I give Comcast a single dime but Digital is a great idea for the metro NY/LA markets but it just doesnt cut it for the rest of the country.

BTW the reason NTSC uses its odd phase modulation scheme for color was to ensure backwards compatibility with the existing B&W sets.

This scheme is just a moneygrab by the Gov't because even Big Media doesn't want Digital because there is nothing in it for them either. ie spend millions of dollars to reequip the TV studio to broadcast the same stuff to fewer advertising viewers.

Sounds like a great deal to me Sign us up!

PS - Sorry for the blank posts not enough coffee

Taxes and DRM

[DownWithTheMan]

From my understanding Japan has just recently (this year) made the change to digital TV. What I've read and heard though tells me consumers are not too happy with the DRM restrictions that have been put in place with the broadcast flags. Japan, none to happy with DRM The EFF has also released some docs though on how to make a homebrew digital DVR that doesn't respond to the broadcast flags and can still record the digital streams. EFF.org But so not only would we be taxed for the whole thing twice as has been previously stated, but the content that we would be forced to pay for would be moderated and controlled as well for what we can do with it. Frankly I think the whole U.S. has lost it's mind. What the government may have thought would help to ignite digital innovation, has instead helped to block end users in again and support the white collar executives instead. So remember kids when you go to vote this November, Congress has around a 90% incumbency rate...