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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."
No digital till the end of the world...
The Slashdot FAQ states that the Politics section was for stories related the US government. Nowadays, we get stories in there about Canada, Britain, and everywhere else that have nothing to do with US politics. In fact, there are hardly any stories dealing with real politics in here.
Please editors, read up what your own site is supposed to be sectioned. This story isn't in the right one.
What kind of crap(py) news is that!
Game Company Database
That's because, despite standing to make gazillions from the sale of the analogue frequencies, the government expects the BBC to pay for the old and poor to get digital boxes. And then they grumble when the BBC asks for a license fee increase.
Bloody duplicitous politicians. *mutter*
I've got digital TV now. Millions have. The headline should read "Brits will keep analogue TV around until 2012". This isn't about getting digital telly, it's about how long we keep analogue around for the people who don't upgrade.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Because the government owns it all anyways.
Is 3 billion a big chunk of the budget ( $10 donation per person ..that we get back in the form of better emergency services cause of spectrum availability and clearer tv)? Compared to other things money is being spent on .. is this going to affect anything? I understand it could vaccinate/feed all of Zambia or something .. but we weren't doing that anyway.
What exactly are the benefits of digital TV anyway? I don't understand this HD TV and digital TV stuff, to me TV is good enough as is.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Can we stop the "brits" thing. We don't go around calling the French, Germans or Polish "Europeans" yet we still get that crappy label (which very few support) from Americans.
We have nationalities, we're not from Britianland.
I like muppets.
I agree with the Masked Engineer. Don't have a hard date, merely print "a label on every single device with an analog TV tuner explaining to consumers that there will come a day when that tuner will cease to function and an 'adapter' will be needed at extra cost."
e er/f_mario_orazio-09.21.05.shtml
That puts the consumer on notice and allows broadcasters to make the switch when they're ready. If they're ready sooner, the consumers were warned. If it's later, it's later.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/Masked-Engin
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Brit TV Won't Go Digital Till 2012? Erm. No. We've had digital TV for years. According to a recent BBC News artice (which I can't find) over 60% of the population has some form of digital TV reciever. 2012 is when the last region will loose it's analogue signal. The big switch off of analogue starts in 2008. One area of Wales has already had it's analogue singles turned off.
That article says that the bandwidth "could be all the spectrum we need for wireless broadband, new mobile services and maybe some more unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi like services" however the BBC have stated that at least some (probably most) of the spectrum will be used to provide HDTV. There just isn't enough bandwidth at the moment to broadcast HDTV signals in the alotted space for all the freeview channels.
I was wondering - is it possible to wash your clothes in a dishwasher ? I don't have a washing machine and this would make my life a lot easier.
Crow T. Trollbot
I was thinking, that instead of a "hard cutover", where the analog frequencies are cut off on a particular date, there should be a phased approach where the transmit power is cut down by say 20% per year. That way, people's analog sets won't just go suddenly blank, and there will be less consumer backlash from cutting the analog signals.
"The switchover will happen first in places like Scotland which are not likely to interfere with the rest of Europe."
Apparently these guys have never heard of Sir William Wallace.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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)
about seeing an American flag behind a British TV story.
Partly, it's about resolution; HDTV has more pixels, which makes for a nicer picture. And screen shape: the new digital TV supports wide-screen, which will make for better movie-viewing without having to compromise on full-screen vs. widescreen.
It's also a lot about bandwidth. The new digital signals are more efficient than the analog ones, so you can cram more channels into the spectrum. (Which means you don't always get higher resolution; they can cram 4 old-resolution channels into the space for one high-def signal. And a station can choose.)
And there's even more flexibility: a digital signal makes it easier to encode other kinds of signal: foreign languages, hypertext, etc.
But mostly it's about freeing up a certain set of frequencies so that they can be sold off for cell phones, wifi, etc. That's very valuable bandwidth at a frequency which can be better taken advantage of by small, hand-held devices. Some of it is allocated to emergency channels.
Here in Denmark we start switching next summer. It doesn't matter all that much because most "serious" viewers are on cable or satelite. In Belgium cable has a penetration of over 98%. This thing is mostly going to affect caravan owners I think. The decoders will probably drop in price so fast you won't believe it. Think about it: no single company to sit on the market and a device which is 100% electronic and has no moving parts. I think I will shell out a few extra and get one with a harddisk.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
They are just hoping that the Maya were right and the world ends on the winter solstice in 2012. That way, there's the off chance that they don't have to make the switch.
that freeing up of a portions of the frequency spectrum is not going to lead us to wireless panacea?
t rum/
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/12/spec
The solution is in smart end-points, not "reservation" of a tiny slice of frequency.
... 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 happens in 2009 when everything is supposed to be digital, and Canada still hasn't gone digital. Will it cause interference in places close to the border? I haven't heard of any plans for canada making the switch.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
He used a parenthesis, but there is no true meaning to the first sentence of the article. Is the United States on in the UK until 2012? His second sentence is even worse. Judgecorp realized attaching the random fragments together didn't work, but he just used a dash instead of rewriting the sentence to get something sensible. Ironically Judgecorp recognized the complete lack of importance of his post by acknowleging that nobody cares.
Only on slashdot can you beg to keep your post from being selected and still get in two catagories and the front page.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Many times in bad weather such as snow storms, satellite TV goes out. Will digital broadcasts have the same problems? With analogue, it sometimes gets a little hard to make things out, and sounds a little staticy, but in the even of an emergency, you can still get the information across. With digital TV, when the signal starts getting lost, you often lose the entire picture and sound.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The people who stand to make money industry, tv manufactures, and the FCC(reselling unused bandwidth) know that 2 things will happen:
People wills ee the sticker and put off buying a TV
Everyone will get very upset that there purchase won't be anygood, and apply pressure to the FCC to lift the mandatory switch.
Espcially when it's 3 billion dollar cost begins to make headlines.
I WOuld like to write one though:
"This analog Television you are purchasing will be no good soon, and you will have to by a digital tuner. Thf FCC mandated this at a cost of 3 billion dollars.
Don't steal."
Do they even relize there are peple who only use the airwaves? That can't afford to go digital...
It suddenly occurs to me that the people who can't afford to pay for TV will have to find something else to do besides watch the boob tube all day. That can't be a bad thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If I am to understand it correctly, moving to digital the data will still be either PAL or NTSC depending on where you are. It's just that it would be transmitted digitally.
I agree with you - more pixels please. When is digital HDTV going to be standard world wide? This PAL versus NTSC crap has gone on long enough!
when they were trying to invade Northern Ireland?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
We weren't called 'Brits' a long time before you weren't 'The Colonies'. I think the time has come for Britain to stop having to lead the way for north america and finally let it free to explore the possibility that being nice to people encourages reciprocation.
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
"Users will be able to view the material for 24 hours once they begin playback on their computers; once downloaded, the material will be stored on the user's computer for 30 days to act as a resource in the Peer Impact network, potentially hastening downloads for other nearby Peer Impact customers--"nearby" in the sense of network topography and bandwidth, not necessarily physical geography."
Like most legal video download sites out there right now, you can store it for 30 days. Once you start watching it, you have 24 hours to view it.
Movielink works this way. If you start watching it and don't finish within 24 hours or you want to watch it again a few days later, you have to pay an extra $1.99.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Man: "Look! We finally got our digital TV!"
Woman: "Quick turn it on!"
Newreporter: "This just in! A meteor will hit the earth in 20 minutes... Machines have become sentient and are attacking humans... And the sun is collapsing into a black hole!"
Man: "Oh bloody hell!"
Woman: "I told you not to mock the Mayan statues on our honey moon!"
Man: "Mayans be damned, I've just lost my bet of 500 quid to Arthur at the pub over that Terence McKenna fellow!"
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Actually, the switchover will start in 2008 (http://www.dvb.org/index.php?id=229) and will finish in 2012. Have a look the the map of the switchover times at http://www.dtg.org.uk/consumer/switchover_map.html
:-)
BTW, I've already got digital television, as have about 66% of the rest of us Brits
Cheers,
JohnT
One area has already been switched off. A far off island in Scotland decided to go all digital.
I like muppets.
Yes, I know who. But they are the same people who previously said the U. S. would switch over in 2006.
I think it will be very interesting to see what happens. Relatively few people with good, working TV sets are ditching them for HDTV sets. A lot of people find it hard to see why one should get rid of a perfectly good 26" TV that has a beautiful picture and cost $600 when you bought it twenty years ago, in order to buy a $2000 TV and a whole bunch of new gear to go with it.
And while you don't need to be fabulous wealthy to buy a $2,000 TV, quite a lot of middle-class families that have $2,000 to spend but have rather a lot of things to spend it on that take priority over replacing a TV that is still working.
I believe we will see at least one more cycle of pushing the deadline off as it gets close.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I can live without television. There is hardly a show worth watching. My television sets will become monitors for my security cameras, and for my vhs/dvd's
At least no more than there is now. There's not a 'switch' that will get flipped in 2009. Broadcasters will still be licensed a spectrum to operate in so they don't interfere with each other. Whether you are sending a digital or Analog TV channel, the spectrum will be licensed. For instance, let's say there's a Channel 4 on the US side of the border and a channel 5 on the Canadian side. For now, broadcasters are keeping their analog channels and adding digital on new spectrum. When channel 4 starts to broadcast digital, they will get a new spectrum (say UHF channel 49) where they will broadcast their digital signals. That one channel can equate to 6 digital extended definition 640x480 channels or 1 digital high-definition channel and I think 2 digital extended definition 640x480 channels. That channel will no more interfere with channel 5 in Canada than it would if it was analog. In 2009 if it is mandated that analog channels be discontinued, they will re-use their spectrum for channel 4. It wouldn't bleed over into Canada's analog channel 5 any more than the existing analog signal on channel 4 does today.
Official site shows phased switch off starting 2008.
One isolated village in Wales has already done this as test (they got their Set Top Boxes free).
Most areas can already get Digital TV in one form or another (Satellite or terestial).
Get the facts right please.
The Brits refer to themselves as Brits. Listen to Radio 4 or one of the "quality papers" like the Daily Mail (referring to the Daily Mail as a quality paper is meant to be ironic). How about lager lout as a replacement tag? After all, drinking and fighting is the new national past time.
You don't need a new TV, your current one will work just fine. The only new thing you need is a reciever that will convert the Digital signal to Analog.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
an-a-logue n. a person or thing seen as comparable to another
an-a-log adj. relating to or using signals of information presented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position or voltage
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill with a Dec. 31, 2008 analog TV turn-off, and just a $1 billion subsidy for digital set-top-boxes ($40 coupons, two per household). This was part of H.R. 4241, "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005"
1. UK electrical retailers are still selling analogue-only TV sets - these will require a separate set-top box to be usable beyond the analogue switch-off and even then, you'll be playing the horrible "2-remote control juggle" that you currently have to (heck, neither of my 2 different digital terrestrial set-top boxes let me change the volume level using the boxes remote control !! Madness !).
2. TV sets with built-in terrestrial digital tuners (known as "IDTV"s here in the UK) still seem to be fairly scarce (and far more expensive than buying an analogue TV set and a separate set-top box instead).
And don't forget that the UK still hasn't introduced HDTV yet - it'll be coming to Sky Digital satellite next year, but there's been no announcement about it for terrestrial digital at all. The horrible thing is that we could be talking about a repeat performance a few years down the road after analogue is switched-off - people start replacing their TV sets and recorders with digital versions, only to find out that they won't work fully when HDTV is introduced.
On a slightly different vein, I think the BBC have been very clever at promoting the "buy a cheap digital set-top box for under 50 pounds" adverts (yes, they're ads really) they've been running for the past 2 years or so. It effectively enforces the licence fee because those cheap boxes do *not* have a smart card capability, so the only effective non-ad/sponsorship alternative to the licence fee (encrypted subscription, which is how I think the BBC should be funded, since you can't dodge the subs assuming the encryption isn't broken) is now virtually dead in the water thanks to the millions of non-smart card Freeview boxes in UK homes now.
I feel sorry for you who live in the UK, especially after that ADSL disaster . I live in Iceland and we already have digital tv although we are not up to HDTV quality yet, but its better than analog for most (some people just have continuing problem with it due to all sorts of things). Digital TV has its pluses and minuses, the pluses are the picture can be much clearer, and the analog bugs are non-existant, like ghosts, static, lines and other kinds of interfierance, but the digital bugs that happen if the signal is to weak(or to strong) are far worse than the analog bug, since its usually compressed in someway the picture can become like a jig-saw puzzle for few seconds, or the picture goes just completely out for a few secs. Instead of some extra weird line in regular analog. Im not sure where im going with this so Ill end this with these words: Digital definetly is the future and is better (when it works right). --This sig has been removed because of copyright infragments
The uk has had digital TV since 1998. Obviously 'reading the full article' has not made it's way to Iceland yet.
It certainly is. Use plenty of Finish for exquisite results!
dunno about the rest of you but ive had digital tv for several years now right here in "britain".. what dumb twat posted this?
And what is worse, we get out Digital TV from the bloody WELSH...
There's no justice!
(And if I see Pobl Y Cwm once more, I'll SCREAM!)
Quite apart from its natural appeal to luddites, there are actually valid technical reasons to consider analog tv superior to digital tv at least in terms of its generally much greater robustness to weak reception conditions; the picture quality of analog tv, compared to that of digital tv, degrades much more gracefully over more than an order-of-magnitude larger range of received signal strength and for various types of interference. The picture quality of digital tv is generally almost perfect only within a limited range of received signal strength, and, below the lower limit of that range, the picture quality falls very rapidly to zero, which is obviously useless to the viewer. The picture quality of analog tv gets gradually and progressively worse as the received signal strength decreases, and there is still a viewable picture -- albeit degraded -- even far beyond the level at which digital tv totally fails to be able to produce any picture. A second problem with digital tv is that it is considerably more vulnerable to the effects of impulsive noise from electrical storms, poorly suppressed motors etc, recognisable by the times when the picture "freezes" for a few moments which can be very irritating when it happens e.g. during a live sports match. For the same average total energy of impulsive noise, an analog tv picture generally gets a number of isolated white speckles, which are not really distracting because they are tiny and have no consistent position. Digital tv is more spectrum efficient than analog tv but only at the cost of its much lower robustness to poor reception conditions.
Scroogle
Jokes on them:
Super secret cheat code #1: Change your system's date and time
Instead of spending money in something that is supposed to be born dead like digital TV, we could foucs our attention and money in giving broadband Internet a big push.
TVoIP is the real digital TV and is already here: so why investing in a duplicate?
Other countries in Europe have tried the same with a lot of money wasted and very little success!
By the way, I live on the other side of the Channel.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The problem with IDTVs is that there are too many local standards.
An IDTV set that can be sold in more than one country and/or would need to receive more than one provider will be more complex than a simple FTA set.
You will have to cater for terrestrial, cable and satellite modes of DVB, plus the different encryption systems.
It seems easier to sell a generic TV (with or without analog tuner) and a separate box that is catered to the needs of the locality and preferences of the user.
Still, it would be nice if there were some remote control standard so everything could be controlled from one remote.
There are many DVB set-top boxes on the market with a built-in RF modulator. "Plugging in a box" to a TV set without a Scart socket (or even a black and white tv) shouldn't be a problem at all, if you just make sure that you will buy a box with an RF modulator.
Correct on all accounts. Digital television in Europe means "SDTV resolution, broadcast digitally" - not HDTV. The highest resolution you can currently get is 720×576 (which can be interpreted either as a 4:3 picture or as a 16:9 picture, depending on the aspect ratio flags broadcast within the video stream.) That's all that is broadcast today and, more importantly, all that the current DVB receivers on the market are capable of decoding.
Having the DVB infrastructure laid out all over the country means that it will become possible to start HDTV broadcasts at some later date in the future (without changing the actual broadcast technology but just the type of bitstream that is being broadcast), but if (when) that happens, the viewer will need a new set-top-box with a more powerful MPEG decoder and HD video outputs. Those with a DVB receiver card in their PCs should be fine, though.
As of now, there is only a single satellite channel in Europe that broadcasts in HD, and you will need to buy a special STB to watch their broadcasts. Their current broadcast format is MPEG-2, but they are going to switch to MPEG-4 later. It remains to be seen how HD will be broadcast in Europe in the future, but chances are that the format won't be MPEG-2 when HDTV actually starts gaining some foothold here.
VHS VCRs are being phased out anyway, due to the emergence of HDD-based video recorders with a built-in DVB tuner/decoder.
That being said, "programmatic recording" is not ruined. Most VCRs sold in Europe have long had an externally controlled recording capability. That is, the VCR can be directly controlled by the timer in the DVB set-top-box: the STB can instruct the VCR to start or stop recording via a Scart cable. Different VCR manufacturers have used different names for this capability - such as Sat Record, External Link, or Rec Link - but you can usually find it by reading the manual.