Who Cares if Analog TV Goes Dark?

AVIDJockey writes "Take this with a grain of salt, but earlier this month the Consumer Electronics Association giddily released data showing that of America's 285 million TVs only 12 percent (33.6 million) are used for watching OTA broadcasts. In a further revelation, the CEA's numbers say that approximately 3 million (around 10 percent) aren't used for viewing broadcast television at all. Instead, the electricity gobbled up by these sets is used to play videogames, watch movies on DVD, or view old Jane Fonda exercise tapes."

Comments

paying too little?!?!?!?

[ericspinder]

In related news, the Cable & Satellite Higher Subscription Fee Association released figures claiming that 72 percent of subscribers felt they were paying too little for their monthly programming. 18 percent said they'd gladly pay twice as much if the level of customer service could be lowered. Surprisingly, a full six percent indicated that they'd rather watch TV from cable or satellite than eat or have sex. (The margin of error for the survey is +/- 100 percent.)

Ah, responsiable journelism. When I first read that last paragraph, I did a double take, but with the variance of 100%, it's got to be a joke. **But I saw it online, it's got to be true, I mean the site even looked really professional and everything**

Re:analog is not standard is not hd....

[Wesley Felter]

In the US, HDTV is digital. Analog TV really is going away.

Re:Margin of Error

[Otter]

The CEA study is real. The last paragraph of the Home Theater article is a intentional joke -- the rest is just inane.

Re:analog is not standard is not hd....

[caudron]

Somebody help me out here. I thought standard television was going away, not analog!

They don't make it easy to figure out, but this is the deal:

The FCC is mandating that analog signals go the way of the DoDo once a certain minimum percentage of digital viewership exists (theyfirst set firm dates for this, then realized that no one cared about their dates).

The FCC could not muster less concern for whether or not those digital broadcasts are HD, ED, or SD. They only care that they are digital, becuase the digial signal allows them to parse the signal in ever finer ways to auction off and make more money.

Most people assume that this means the broadcasts will be HDTV, but in fact the only /mandate/ is for digital signals. Those local broadcasters are leasing their bandwidth off to make some extra green on the side as well. That leaves them less badwidth to transmit their own signal, which means that even if they do claim HD, they often do so with a noisy comprression ratio.

Locally (Virginia Beach, VA), for instance, the only station to really stick to the idea of very high quality HDTV signals is PBS. Nova looks fscking STUNNING on my HD screen. As for the rest? Well, at least the signal is clear, but as for just how HD it is...I can say it's better than SD and often better than ED, but flipping to PBS shows just how downgraded the HD signal is on local stations like NBC, CBS, and ABC.

Note that locally I have access to every broadcasting network in digital and (ostensibly) HD quality to compare. This means, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB, UPN, and PBS.

Also, I have no cable or satellite service. I only watch OTA TV and movies from Netflix. Using a digital receiver, I can get crystal clear pictures that are better than the lossy encoded signal the cable and sat companies give us(though I do miss The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and I pay nothing. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

I hope that helps clear up some of the confusion.