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Sorting Through the Analog to Digital TV Mess
H_Fisher writes "CNN offers an article from Fortune magazine, giving a look at the problems surrounding the mandatory switch from analog to digital TV in the U.S., now slated for 2009. 'Managing this transition -- which will render about 70 million TV sets obsolete -- will be not be easy,' Marc Gunther writes. Among the problems: millions of American households without cable or satellite access will lose free access to news and weather along with the rest of their broadcast fare. Uncle Sam's solution? 'Yes, the very same federal government that is cutting back on college loans and food stamps will soon be issuing TV vouchers' - $1.5 billion to help U.S. households buy new digital TV equipment."
You can already pick up HD signals with your crappy rabbit ears or that monstrosity attached to your house...a generic UHF/VHF antenna will do just fine, and companies that advertise their antennas as being for HDTV are just trying to entice you into buying them.
You will NOT have to replace your antenna, what you will need to get is an external converter to turn the signals from your antenna into something your current TV can handle.
Of course, it is a /. article, so I suppose we've come to expect at least one troll line in the article summary.
:-/ Take it up with the author, I guess...
Yeah, I thought about pointing that out, too, but that quote was actually from the Fortune article itself.
The UK seems to have got the right idea. We can get digital terrestrial set-top boxes that plug into the TV, via a SCART lead (which carries, amongst other things RGB and Composite picture signals, and stereo audio), or on a few boxes via an analogue RF signal. That way virtually all existing TV sets can remain in use long after the switch-over takes place.
Only the really old sets don't have SCART sockets now, and although suitable boxes with RF Out exist they are more expensive.
-- Soruk
Spectrum space commands such a high price because it is limited right now. Open up the supply, with the same demand, and price goes down. This is economics 101.
Actually, the estimates on spectrum auction proceeds take this into account.
It is being legislated because the spectrum is legislated. It would open up a lot of money's worth of spectrum, more than 1.5 billion worth.
You don't have to junk the TV, just get a digital receiver and then plug it into your current TV.
Join the Army and get the GI Bill. There's only one minor downside...
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ATSC is not inherently harder to demodulate than DVB-T, in fact it is a bit easier, but only if you don't have multipath interference. Until this year, ATSC demodulators have had a rough time with multipath intereference, but now there are new chips that can handle it OK.
DVB-T uses COFDM which uses hundreds or thousands of carriers at different frequencies that change amplitude slowly. On the other hand, ATSC uses a single carrier amplitude modulated very quickly (VSB modulated, technically). Thus small time differences due to multipath are not a problem for COFDM, but are a problem for 8-VSB modulation of ATSC. The new chips have extensive time-domain equalizers to handle multipath.
On the other hand, there was evidence that 8-VSB provides a greater coverage area with less power. Power costs are a major issue for television transmitters.
The other issue is that ATSC includes high-definition, while European DVB-T systems don't (as far as I know). Hi-def decoders are a bit more complex than standard-def decoders.