Will America's Favorite Technology Go Dark?

Ant wrote to mention that MSNBC is reporting on the upcoming proposed digital television switchover planned for the end of 2006. From the article: "That's the date Congress targeted, a decade ago, for the end of analog television broadcasting and a full cutover to a digital format. If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box. Back when the legislation was written, New Year's Eve 2006 probably looked as safely distant as the dark side of the moon. But now that date is right around the corner and Congress and the FCC are struggling mightily to figure out what to do."

Comments

A suggestion maybe

[hyu]

Perhaps they should delay the switchover if they're not ready.

Re:A suggestion maybe

[KiloByte]

That delay would deny hard-lobbying^Wworking companies fruits of the law they already paid for.

It's a matter of forcing people to ditch a solution that has been working for over 50 years, something that is dated but does its job, and is a lot cheaper. Old, cost-efficient things are what the industry hates. I run a server off a Pentium 120Mhz box -- do I need anything more for a minor WWW server that doubles as a border router for a small company LAN and an ISDN dial-in box for several employees? It works just perfectly. I get more from this ancient machine than you get from your P4 6Ghz if you waste your CPU cycles for running a spiffy GUI that blue-screens once a week.

The poor who watch TV can't afford HDTV. What they need, is low-cost entertainment, not high-end displays. I'm sorry if it cuts your company's bottom line -- but using legislation to force people to throw out what's working well just so they have to pay the upgrade costs is just wrong.

Re:A suggestion maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Analog TV emission is wasteful. Spectrum is a scarce resource (at least the ranges which are well-suited for long distances) and digital transmission makes much better use of it. Spectrum is also a public resource, and some of us don't want to see it being wasted any longer. Your right to use outdated technology collides with my right to put the frequencies to better use.

Re:A suggestion maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that it's a HUMAN RIGHT to watch TV?

Re:A suggestion maybe

[indifferent children]

If the government didn't mandate format and frequency standards, your TV stations would step all over each others' signal, and you would need to buy a new TV if you switched cable companies (just like you have to buy a new cell phone when you switch cell companies; just like you have to have a different cable-box for different cable companies, and your TiVo can't decode premium channels without a stupid IR-blaster (until we get the new FCC mandated CableCard equipment)).

The free market is not the answer to every question.

Re:A suggestion maybe

[mrsev]

......What a stupid suggestion. How dare you tell other people what they should or should not do with their hard earned free time. (Posting on slashdot is a SO much better use of time.)

You say that they might read or attent class. Well they might read things you dont like. They might read Mein Kampf and go the fudamentalist bible class. If someone is happy watching TV it is in poor taste to condem them for that. Do you honestly think that reading is inherently better than TV. Is an art gallery inherently better than a bar?

Basicaly you make the assertion that TV is inherently bad. TV can be a great educator if the programme is good. THe fact that there is mostly shit on the box is a different matter. It is like saying that we should spend less time online, well 99% of the net is shit but we have the ability to pick and choose.

Let us say that the goverenment told you that in 1 year you would have to switch off your 802.11b access point because they need the frequency for something else and from now on you can not use the device without buying a $200 adapter!

Re:A suggestion maybe

[badasscat]

What "situation"? The point is that it's not really important whether we switch or not. It's just television.

The problem is it's not just television. This is about freeing up radio spectrum for other things (like wireless communications), which is the entire point in changing over to digital TV in the first place, and the reason why the change was mandated rather than allowed to "happen organically". TV stations were given the extra spectrum required for DTV OTA broadcasts with the understanding that they would switch off their analog broadcasts at a certain date. There is no good reason I can see for allowing TV stations to hog all that spectrum, duplicating channels, for an unspecified period of time.

Maybe not enough has been done to promote the switchover - obviously, there are some people even on Slashdot who don't understand why the switchover is even important. But it is, and it has to happen. I don't know what the solution is, but I wouldn't be averse to simply letting things go and seeing those "70 million" TV's go dark. (I doubt there are nearly that many analog-only sets receiving OTA broadcasts still in use anyway - are we counting analog sets hooked up to digital cable boxes like mine, as well as analog sets that are just sitting in a closet doing nothing? My guess is yes).

I'm a little sick of luddites deciding matters of technology policy for the entire country. This would be the equivalent of forcing our phone system to continue to support the telegraph at the expense of voice communications because a few people still used it. At some point, you say enough is enough and force an upgrade for the good of the rest of the world.

Re:A suggestion maybe

[Yakko]

Please tell me how having to pay for a new TV (or at least a new converter) and having to accept a bunch of unknown restrictions on how I use the signal in my own home makes this digital TV superior to the currently working analog TV.

Fortunately, I stopped caring about TV in the early 1990s, so I probably won't have to worry about it. I am genuinely curious, though.

Also, I think you're wrong about this not being a political issue. I'm almost certain that when the folks out in the sticks (or otherwise without cable or sat) realize who was responsible for their TV cutting to static in 2007, they'll be at the pollbooth in 2008 to vote them out of office. This isn't a gradual thing, like eroding privacy rights. Someone took their TV away!

It's about plugging the analog hole

[Christian Engstrom]

Perhaps they should delay the switchover if they're not ready.

Oh, but "they" are as ready as they can be.

The driving force behind the legislation to abolish analog TV is the big media companies, who want to "plug the analog hole". That's why this is happening simultaneously in most of the industrialized world, despite the fact that no consumers have asked for it anywhere.

Their motive isn't to give you better quality pictures or (God forbid!) more choice. They want to force everybody to switch to digital because only digital technologies support strong DRM restrictions.

They can't retroactively change the court cases from the 70's that declared it legal to record TV shows on video for your own use. But by introducing new technology that makes it impossible to do so, they can make the legal point moot.

And by switching from analog to digial, they move away from the legal area where a reasonable balance has been struck between the interests of consumers and copyright holders, and into DMCA territory, where you're more or less classified as a terrorist if you even try to tamper with the copy protection.

I apologize for being so dystopian.

HDTV? How about HQTV?

[Loligo]

The quality of the PICTURE isn't so much the issue with TV, it's the quality of the PROGRAMMING.

Give me something worth watching first, then worry about improving the definition.

"Survivor", "Joey", and "American Idol" in 1080i are still crap, they're just crap in high resolution.

Re:Who really wanted HDTV?

[Dachannien]

This isn't about picture quality. It's about phasing out spectrum-hogging analog signals in favor of digital signals so the FCC can reclaim most of the spectrum currently used for analog TV. The increase in picture quality is just a sugar coating to help everyone else go along with it.

Re:Subsidize?

[MSTCrow5429]

Which government do you mean by the government. It can't be the US government. The government has no constitional authority to have any role whatsoever in education, the environment, or television. All you're saying is that you don't like the government's blatantly unconstitional and illegal interference in television standards, but you'd like the government to engage in blatantly unconstitional and illegal power grabs for your pet issues education and "the environment." You have no more legitimacy or authority than the very people you're railing against!

Panic is Not Warranted

[thebdj]

Okay people, calm down. We are only talking about Over-The-Air broadcasts here. Which I think some of you have forgotten. From the article, 85% of Americans get their TV from Cable or Satellite. That means only 15% are going to be shit out of luck. To be honest, things should just switch off on Jan 1, 2006 and cut all analog broadcasts. It would be nice to see the government quasi-encouraging technology for a change instead of stifling it.