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Brit TV Won't Go Digital Till 2012
judgecorp writes "While the US switches off analog(ue) TV in 2009, it stays on in the UK till 2012, according to a timetable, the Digital Dividend Review released by the UK regulator Ofcom. And while the US taxpayer will fork out $3 billion, there's no mention of government subsidising the switchover in the UK - apart from the licence fee which Brits pay for the BBC, or course. The good news is that the 112 prime MHz of spectrum freed up will be used for wireless broadband, rural coverage for wireless services, and unlicensed spectrum for data. All things that will keep us so busy, we won't bother to watch TV, anyway."
In Sweden they've already started shutting down the analog networks. Phase one (the island of Gotland and towns of Gävle and Motala) just started a month ago.
It's proceeding stepwise but all analog transmitters should be completely off-line by Dec 13.
Of course, Swedes aren't quite as TV-addicted as USians. (IIRC the statistic is an average of about 2 hours a day vs 4.5)
... these switchovers are not planned in advance but decided in closed rooms by a government that needs to close the budget.
A couple of months ago it was decided that analog transmission would stop on jan 1st, 2006.
That would give analog viewers only about 4 months to look for an alternative.
Only part of the country is covered by digital terrestrial TV, the remainder (which is the less densely populated part, so viewers would be less likely to have cable available) would have to switch to satellite TV.
These both a subscription services, while the original analog service can be freely received by anyone.
However, today it was decided to cancel the switchover and consider it again.
Don't you just love those opportunistic people? Need money... cut something off. Too much protest? reconsider it.
What exactly are the benefits of digital TV anyway?
More channels in the same bandwidth, higher resolution, less interference.
And unfortunately, compression. I've ranted about this before.
Maybe HDTV will be good enough to make this moot, but I have had enough bad experiences with regular digital TV (as it is now supplied on some cable channels) to envy the UK's decision to wait until 2012.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Cable is not a safe haven for analog viewers...
Here in the Netherlands cable companies are quickly converting everything to digital.
All analog channels are available in digital as well, plus some extras, "for free" (= within the analog subscription price).
Premium channels will be switched off in analog coming jan 1st, and cable companies offer free decoders (normal price about 100 euro) to anyone subscribing to an extra package.
My guess is that by this time next year they will be stating that "many viewers apparently prefer digital" and start switching off analog channels to make room for more digital programmes, to generate extra revenue from optional packages.
I say American almost anywhere in the world and what do people think?
well they hear your accent and they do not want to get in a geographical debate with you. And since you speak english they only think pretty much two choices Canada or the USA. If i hear some dude with a french accent saying he is american then I would think he is from Quebec or maybe Haiti. But then again you think you're the only ones here, and do not think about everyone else.
I did almost one year backpacking through Europe, and people would ask. Where you from?. I would say America. then they would ask me which country. My accent wasn't a U.S. accent. And they know there is 1 america not 2 like US splits it. For most of the world there are 5 continents not 7. Some countries think there are 6.
Even the olympics think there are 5 continents.
Giving some of that "prime" 112Mhz of electromagnetic real-estate to
the Police, Fire, and Emergency response departments across this country.
Because, you know, they need it. But first, a short story.
HDTV first came to the United States partially as a ploy by the
broadcast companies in this country. Congress got together and suggested that
the public broadcast companies (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and even WB) weren't even
making use of 1% of the UHF broadcast television spectrum, and put forth the
crazy idea that some of these businessmen give up a resource that they didn't
even have plans to use.
Of course, the industry response is predictable. They launch a
lobbying and marketing campaign at full strength; the subject, HDTV. They
get all their cronies from Japan to put together all this neat-looking fancy
broadcast equipment and flat-screen high-definition televisions. They talk
about all the capabilities, the greater services they will be able to
offer the public through this new technology.
The catch? HDTV needs more bandwidth. Oh, by the way, we suddenly
have plans to use that UHF spectrum you were talking about. All of it. The
broadcast companies basically strong-arm congress by telling them that if the
public is thinking of taking "their" excess and unused bandwidth away, then
they won't have any way to bring this new HDTV stuff into the country. And
you know how Americans are about TV, and you especially know how American
Representatives are about Big Corproate Money (of which TV has *tons*).
Congress, of course, capitulated. They did, however, tell the
broadcast companies that they had a limited about of time to make the switch.
This, of course, was all the way back in the 80's. Since then,
we've heard more and more from the broadcast regime about how cool HDTV is
going to be, and how we're already making the technology better before
we've even deployed it, and how hard it is to implement a brand-new
nation-wide television standard, and how expensive the components have to
be because this is high-def afterall.
The FCC has delivered a deadline. Rescheduled that deadline, allowed
the industry to go past that deadline, and then reschedule again. Congress,
for the most part, has been pretty much unconcerned with this whole mess.
And the American public is as uneducated and clueless as ever.
The whole reason congress got together on this issue way back in the
80s is because Police, Fire and Emergency departments were starting to feel
the crunch of their own bandwith limitations. In order to operate as
efficiently as possible, these organizations were among the first to start
using digital packet radio networks to convey data to the field. They also
have other constraints as police forces get larger, and criminals become
more sophisticated. Adding even more to these problems is the fact that
many large American Cities have many large American Buildings that make it
more difficult to get a radio signal through.
All of this became disaterously apparent on 9/11. Police and Fire
response units even a SINGLE FLOOR away from each other found it impossible
to communicate using their current radio equipment. None of the ground units
were able to coordinate with the units actually in the building. No one
standing on the ground could even tell those people risking their lives about
the buildings imminent collapse, or to provide them with information that
Don't bet on it.
The extra frequencies are earmarked for sale to the mobile phone companies - that's why the government is pushing so hard for digital.. it'll make millions selling off the unused space.
*if* any frequencies become available in 2012 for TV, then there'll be a bunfight between the BBC who'll probably want to start an HDTV channel (1 or 2 per frequency), and the commercial broadcasters (8 channels per frequency). 8*cash > 2*cash... follow the money...
Speaking as one who has the UK's analogue, Freeview (digitial terestial) and Sky (digital satalite) here's my experiences of the different options.
/doing/ something, but at least teletext doesn't seem to crash out, returning out to the program with at least 20 keypresses (press your RED button now!) to get back to the same place.
As a caveat, my analogue signal is perfect, as far as I can tell. I never have a problem with ghosting, snowy picture or anything else no matter the conditions.
With Freeview, certain blocks of channels dissapear if it's foggy, raining, too warm or too windy - depending on the conditions I might loose all the bbc channels, or all the itv channels (no real loss there) or any other 'block' ( i believe the spectrum is devided up into about 5 or six blocks in which the channels are broadcast).
With Satalite, it's usualy rain that gets it, if it's pissing it down outside our sky reception just fails: blue-screen and no sound. That's with a dish that is just pointed at sky, no trees or anything similar in between it and the satalite.
I'd say that with all said and done I'd rather have the Analogue signal over either digital option. I prefer gradual degredation to the working / not digital approach.
Quality-wise, even when both digital options are working to their best extent, simply watch a football match and just see the pixelation and artifacts appear. Even a snowy/ghosting analogue picture beats the crap out of ITV or Five showing a football match, especially if the weather is a bit odd (see above)
Even the interactive elements (reading news stories etc) seem very slow and poor in comparison with simple teletext. I realise it's probably the rotating number giving me an impression that it's at least
But we're getting more choice! That's what we're told. More choice is better for us. Despite the choise on freeview being the same 5 channles you get on analogue + a load of shopping channels, or on sky it being 400 channels of absolute shite (see shopping channels, music etc). Quality seems to go out the window when 'choice' is increased.
Er, I'm not a digitial-tv luddite at all really, I just wish they'd concentrate on quality image, sound and content over offering more and more increasingly banal channels.
You don't get more pixels. In some cases you get *less*! A good analogue picture is *far* better than a digital one.
The broadcast is either 16:9 or 4:3 but the number of pixels doesn't change, only the aspect ratio of the display, so 4:3 will look higher resolition (as the horizontal pixels will be smaller). Standard definition is 720x576.
Some channels (E4 for example) are conserving space by transmitting at a lower resolution still - 544x576 which is 25% less than standard resolution (E4+1 is at full res though.. go figure..)
On top of that it's all mpeg2 compressed, and they're fitting more and more channels into the same space....
It's nowhere near the joke that calls itself Sky TV yet (where the compression is so high some programmes look like they've been done in crayon in 3 colours) but it'll get there...