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The Dutch Kill Analog TV Nationwide
Willem de Koning writes Yesterday the Netherlands completely ended transmission of analog television signals, becoming the first country in the world to do so. So what about cars and portable TVs? I'm guessing a market will emerge for portable set top boxes / converters." The article mentions the timetable for other countries to go all-digital; by 2011 most or all of the developed world will have made the switch.
... by 2011 most or all of the developed world will have made the switch.
And all those obsolete TVs will be dumped in the third world for scrap prices. Going digital might be nice as long as it doesn't destroy the environment and set the third world further back.
They only discontinued analog broadcasts over the air. The majority of people in the Netherlands get their television service through analog cable and not digital service.
Aw crap. I guess I have to upgrade my TV to get my clog porn fix.
Now we know how our grandparents felt when broadcasters switched to a color signal. Their old black-and-white tv's (which couldn't read the color signal at all in many/most cases) suddenly became excessively-large paperweights.
Note that the old "black-and-white" tv is not the same as the current type (which reads a color signal and renders it into greyscale). Those used a much older signal format that did not allow for color info, and while color tv's could read the old signal, older tv's couldn't read the new one.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Does the 2011 prediction assume that the US won't push the date back again? Does it assume that the reasons for US politicians to push the date back don't apply to politicians in other countries?
The conversion from analog to digital TV is in progress. Trying to guess now when the tipping point will actually occur is useless.
Well I'm all digital already, those pesky wavy analogue signals are probably stuffing up the airwaves and giving me brain tumors!
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Analogue is only used by oldies anyway. Everyone under the age of 70 uses Youtube instead - partly because their attention span is less than that of a goldfish - a side effect of "easy to use" Apple UIs.
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Umm, what about 'em? I've been to Holland and I didn't see too many cars with analog televisions installed. Does it mean limos? Well that's a small luxury market that can afford digital receivers. Or did they also switch to all didgital radio and is that what it means?
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
. . . will continue to be broadcast by the Dutch, as usual. No need for alarm.
Wasn't the FCC in the USA going to require this changeover by the year 2000 once upon a time? I've been hearing this story since I first took TV production classes 20 years ago. Sure the future marches forward, but I don't have a flying car yet either. Sometimes change takes a while...
i.e., virtually nobody used analogue television in the country anyway.
Whereas in the UK uptake of the Freeview package has been good, providing some 30 free-to-air channels, but there's a massive market of analogue-only households (no satellite or cable), hence the slow turnover. Even at £25 for a Freeview box it's not a minor expense to convert a couple of TVs in a house, and the signal is weak too due to needing to keep transmitting analogue. Some areas need new aerials. We're not going to complete changeover until 2012, although large parts of the country will be converted within the next 3 years.
I get Freesat as my house had a satellite dish and my parents had an old Sky digibox. 20 useful channels, 50 shopping channels and a dozen late night phone-in topless sex-chat channels.
[blah blah will] continue to broadcast three state-supported channels and several regional public broadcasters free of charge. In return, it can use the rest of the open bandwidth to charge around $18.50 a month for a package of other channels that is comparable with cable.
.torrent machine and connect that to my television. It won't make me happy, though.
This is more death of free media. If the only FTA transmissions you can get are either state-sponsored or state-supported, how can you reliably get news?
I sincerely hope that, once the analog broadcasts are halted in this country, the corresponding digital broadcasts don't require a monthly subscription charge. If they do, I will have to put together a
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
1. It's NETHERLAND.
2. It's not a tiny country, Luxembourg is.
3. Germany, Denmark, France and England don't broadcast in Dutch.
Given the fact that Amsterdam is the Capital of the Netherlands, them leading the way in state of the art television doesn't supprise me.
Very cool though.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
At least not from Germany, from over a year now. Maybe I'm misreading something or am simply in need of some coffee, but if I'm not mistaken Germany killed all analog aerial transmissions for TV something like a year ago.
;)
Seems like Holland lost again to Germany, just like in every football match.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
In the US the color broadcasts were (still are, for analog) backwards compatible with b&w TVs. You could watch the color broadcasts, in b&w, on a b&w TV.
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Finally RCA, which owned NBC, developed "compatible" color television sets. This is what became our "modern" NTSC sets.
And that's also why NBC was used to use a peacock and advertise itself as "an all color network." It's also why all Star Trek (The Original Series) episodes are in color, yet the first year of "Lost In Space" is in B&W.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
There is a US$40 box to convert the digital signals into analog input to the TV. At least that is how it works here.
Not to mention, the analog reception from the foreign countries is pretty bad.
l andse-belegger-vol-vertrouwen-in-amerikaans-vastgo ed.html).
Wether we (i'm Dutch) are big or small is a matter of perception. But remember, the Dutch own a large part of American real-estate (third largest investor, after Japan and Canada http://www.westplan.nl/nieuws/persberichten/neder
And no, not all analog Tv's will end up in Africa next month. But you will need a digital receiver, tranforming the signal into analog.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
People didn't just dump their black and whites then, they just got moved out of the living room to another room and the color set was moved in their place. The old black and whites didn't get dumped until they got broken beyond reasonable repair, and every small town had at least one TV repair guy who was busy all the time. I am generally speaking, but that is how it went down for the most part.
Now today, most everything electronic is not designed to be repaired, just tossed, a lot of times tossed just because there are new features, even though it isn't broken yet. Totally different culture and business model now. Like how many guys here have a stack of old still working computers but for the most part aren't used? And cellphones? Maybe being geeks we hang onto (some of) them, but most people just chuck stuff out now while it is still working, merely because it is a few years old and now obsolete. either that or the things really don't even last much more than a few years and one cheap dohickey breaks on them and it is neither cost effective nor very easy to fix them.
And I am not sure what you mean by the signal, I have a couple analog black and white portable TVs now (a sony watchman and a 5" screen 12 VDC camping TV) that still work fine, they just don't display color.
People who kill analog TV nationwide and... Oh, Wait.
Hello my US American friend,
1) No, it's The Netherlands. Holland is only part of it.
2) The definition of "tiny" is up for debate, but in this case most people refer to The Netherlands as "small". It's about twice the size of New Jersey, both in landmass and population.
Regards
AC
So what about cars and portable TVs? I'm guessing a market will emerge for portable set top boxes / converters.
a) there are few, if any, cars with TV sets in them. The primary market for in-vehicle TV is for truckdrivers. These have had to deal with quite some advertising over the past year for both digital terrestrial as satellite sets - the latter make most sense seeing as most truckers drive internationally (being a small country, The Netherlands is one of the world's leaders when it comes to the amount of territory outside its borders).
b) portable TVs are fucked
c) digital sets are pretty much non-existant, for terrestrial digital you always get a set top box, as well as for (digital) satellite.
The article only mentions the 'cost per household' as a reason for switching the signal off. In reality, the reasons are even less enlightened:
- the only service you got on analogue was the 3 public broadcasting channels, the 7(!) remaining national channels (not counting theme channels like MTV etc.) were never on analog, but only on (basic) cable and (basic) satellite[*]. As such, analogue service was already a joke.
- In fact, gives The Netherlands small size, you were more likely to get good reception on German and English channels in a large portion of the country any way; the number of usuable channels was few
- Given this, they want to reuse the frequencies for more regional services, like wimax and digital radio (which is even less successful than digital terrestrial TV because of its poor coverage).
[*] That's 10 general interest channels (comparable to networks) on a population of 16 million.
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You're ill informed. "Storage" of obsolete crap means dumping it into a landfill, where the heavy metals leach into the groundwater. A single TV set contains five pounds of lead!
And that's the best scenario. Most often they burn the electronics in order to recover the copper in the wires. The byproduct is toxic smoke and sludge.
Considering you can travel from one end of the country to another in less than 2 hours, as well as pretty much flat landscape, broadcasting difficulties is not something of a concern for the Netherlands IMHO.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
So what about cars and portable TVs?
In the states we have HDTV signals in the air and all you need is a HDTV tuner to pick them up. So, answer is, they are hosed unless they have a digital tuner, assuming of course that the digital signals are transmitted.
2) The definition of "tiny" is up for debate, but in this case most people refer to The Netherlands as "small". It's about twice the size of New Jersey, both in landmass and population.
I'm more of a Gonie than an American- a state even twice the size of New Jersey seems laughably small to those of us out here on the West Coast. But my real point is- radio waves do not respect borders....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
why oh why
DVB-T is the standard adopted by Europe and Asia (and perhaps other places as well?) for Digital OTA broadcasting, while ATSC is used in the U.S.A., Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan
you can do HD over DVB I have seen BBC trials...
I can buy lots of DVB equipment from usb sticks that are linux/MacOS/Windows laptop compatable to PCI cards and custom decoders
its feaking everywhere
what are the options for ATSC ?
why ATSC technical reasons ?
Is it the Dutch or the Netherlands? And wouldn't that be 'Netherlanders', you silly boi.
I would prefer to think that they retired analog TV. Killing it or pulled the plug on it. It is a good thing that it goes away, not a bad one.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
Now we know how our grandparents felt when broadcasters switched to a color signal. Their old black-and-white tv's (which couldn't read the color signal at all in many/most cases) suddenly became excessively-large paperweights.
Huh? Black and white sets work just fine, and always have since NTSC was developed. The color signal standard was developed to be backwards compatible with black and white sets. Essentially the color information is transmitted on a different frequency, and the television combines this information with the black and white information to create a picture. Black and white sets were produced and sold for many years after color sets became available because color was quite a bit more expensive.
Sorry, but you're 100% wrong in your entire post. There's no "black and white TVs reads the color signal and converts it into grayscale". Maybe you should learn something about the NTSC standard before you post?
AccountKiller
I am sorry, but this is like saying
"Stop producing food for horses because we are going all gasoline."
When cars replaced horsepower.
I am sure that analog TV and radio will never die out becuase it is the most straight forward way to send signal communications. I just hope that we evolve to the point of being able to put together a receiver/broadcast radio out of spare parts just like one could change a tire on a roadside. Steven Hawkins, this is for you man, to be like star trek, theoretic advances are not enough, we also have to evolve. And yeah, if _you_ can do it, you are special, the rest of mankind is not dumb, they just havent evolved yet.
Probably mucho DSP power will eventually compensate, but don't expect portable units to pick up digital TV signals terribly well if they are moving for at least the next several years.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
.... You BASTARDS!
...the question and the answer in one sentence: we are so brainwashed that we do not believe commercial broadcasting gives fair and unbiased news, but only believe the state.
This level of sophistication is so high, that even Russia pales by comparison:
In Holland, state-tv watches you, and you like it !
Maybe I'm misreading something or am simply in need of some coffee, but if I'm not mistaken Germany killed all analog aerial transmissions for TV something like a year ago.
No. It's digital now in many areas, and I would guess by far the largest part of the German population now only gets digital TV over the air (of course most probably use cable or satellite...). But it has not been switched of completely.
1. It's NETHERLAND.
No, it's The Netherlands. Plural, and with an article.
2. It's not a tiny country, Luxembourg is.
No, The Holy See is!
3. Germany, Denmark, France and England don't broadcast in Dutch.
But Belgium does. Besides, we're used to US movies and series broadcast in English, albeit with subtitles.
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...the Dutch own a large part of American real-estate (third largest investor, after Japan and Canada...) Doesn't surprise me much. After all, America is for sale to the highest bidder. But I don't see what Dutch investment in the US has to do with anything in this article.Of course, by FCC mandate all new TVs regardless of size are supposed to have an ATSC tuner in them starting March 2007. So the market for set-top boxes will be very small until 2009 at least, and even then will most people have switched to cable or satellite?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
But I don't see what Dutch investment in the US has to do with anything in this article.
It doesn't, he's just bragging that he personally owns the entire state you live in.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
my real point is- radio waves do not respect borders....
So what?
Ending analogue transmissions isn't intended as a punitive or repressive measure, it's meant to save a laughably small amount of money by ending a service that wasn't really used much anymore.
All these foreign channels are available on their laughably small (analogue) cable networks, free for them to watch on their teeny tiny little TV sets in their silly little houses.
From my UK experience:
Digital Set Top Boxes are already cheap and small - you can even get one that's built into the form factor of a SCART plug (that's the European standard AV connector).
Just buying a STB and hooking it up isn't enough for everyone - depending on coverage for your area you might need to spend money on your aerial. Maybe coverage is more even in The Netherlands, what with its relative flatness.
STBs usually put out a composite video signal, so the analogue TV you're converting had better have a composite input. There are TVs still in use which only have an RF input. I don't know of any STBs that contain an analogue RFmodulator. If there's a market for them, it'll happen. RF modulation is cheap and easy -- I must have half a dozen inline modulators from 16 bit consoles lying around in boxes here.
I'll be really interested to see how the analogue switch off goes here in the UK -- a phased switch off beginning in 2008 -- my guess is that those stubborn enough to have resisted digital by the time their analogue transmitter is decomissioned will stand a good chance of being given a free/subsidised STB and aeriel upgrade.
Radio waves may not respect borders, but they *do* respect the inverse square law, i.e. they don't travel indefinitely. A quick search says that most US radio stations (and I assume tv stations) have a broadcast range of approximate 20 miles. The Netherlands (Holland is a province) has an area of 16,033 sq mi, which means that over 2/3 of the country is out of range of foreign broadcasts.
Three comments.
1) Now they can send all the analog televisions to the aliens, so they can actually decipher those radio signals.
2) All those people on the free internet connection via television signals are going to be sad (maybe aliens can have internet connections now)?
3) I'm not sure if this is a good move or a bad one. Did Microsoft have anything to do with it?
Have you read my journal today?
I bought a new TV a few months ago. I couldn't afford a ueber-expensive HDTV, but the TV I did buy is capable of receiving digital signals and downconverting them to the resolution a normal TV is capable of (the new digital standard in called ATSC).
The digital signal is really quite excellent. Analog signals have always been snowy, fuzzy, and filled with distortion. The digital signal is clean and crisp. I don't even have some special antenna either, I chinced out and cut off the shielding from an old coaxial cable. Works perfectly if you position it right.
In fact, all televisions sold in the US above 25 inches are required by the FCC to be able to receive digital signals. Next year on March 1st that requirement will go down to 13 inches or larger. Of course that doesn't mean that all retailers in in compliance. I'd recommend if you see a TV 25 inches or larger being sold that doesn't have a digital tuner in it that you complain to the management of the store, and maybe the FCC.
AccountKiller
But the boob-tube helps to keep many Americans as good little pacified consumer / wage slaves.
Almost a guarantee that they'll be tax breaks for buying a new set or converter.
In other news, EE students around the world with modified TVs break into all the communications and apps that have moved to the open TV spectrum.
meh
Maybe they will take the opportunity to be the first country to ban TV in cars.
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Does it really sound like the public is being served by the private media? Don't you wish we would have been a bit savvier when, through being misinformed, we supported our politicians in their attack on Iraq?
I remember this from my Communications 101 class. I wish I remember which documentary I saw in class, but it's one of a few that ignites my vigor against some of the practices of big business. Anyway ...
... FM was kicking the living shit out of AM, quality-wise. In addition to dragging things out with Armstrong in a lawsuit, they got the entire FM band changed to a different frequency, effectively destroying everything Armstrong has marketed, sold and built to that date. Talk about corporate-induced obsolesence.
FM is something we owe to the late Edwin Armstrong, a former employee of RCA. In fact, he was pretty much on his own to get FM out, but was able to prove it to the FCC and actually had a frequency band allocated. Armstrong was hoping to make something from the royalties off his invention.
David Sarnoff (head of RCA) was a major asshole during this arena. You see
Unfortunately, the rumblings with RCA left Armstrong on the losing end and despite all the work and the major contribution to modern communications, he committed suicide.
Obligatory Wiki here.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
There is no such thing as free (as in beer) media. Everything is run on either tax dollars or advertising dollars. This means everything you see/hear is either state sanctioned, or corporate whored.
As for the torrent machine, I've started to do that. I don't consider it piracy. I consider it time-shifting. I only wish that torrent worked better for non-popular content. My Mork and Mindy download is going to take 854 more days. Sheesh!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The biggest problem is that companies make money out of this shit. Like many other countries (Belgium, Germany, etc), we also have public TV channels. But guess what? We are also one of the very few who are now actively forcing people to pay for things they already paid for in the form of taxes and I think that this is the real outrage when looking at shutting down the analog signal.
If you get a dish and view Astra you will only be able to get the Dutch public channels when you buy a license for some film channel ("Canal+") after which you can also receive the Dutch public channels. Another option is to buy a digital -> analog convertor so that you can watch these channels as usual (through use of the digital signal). Problem here is that there is only one company which sells these boxes (KPN). So either way the option to actually receive the public channels the way they were meant (free) is gone. And that is what I consider the real outrage in this whole switch.
Why on earth would the Dutch Kill need to transmit tv to the nation?
But... But..... But, what will I do to keep my children sedated for the hour long drive to grandmas house for the holidays with out Barney or Bob the Builder to keep them mezmerized?!?!?! Damn it, you can't expect me to actually TALK to the little monsters, can you?
Isn't that Weird?
the best news coverage ever given in the US was funded by the government?
In fact, you can corolate the entertainment news begining pretty much when the government stop giving money to the big broadcasters.
So money from the government does not mean government control. Sure, you need to watch thibngs like this, but don't make assumptions.
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> Yesterday the Netherlands completely ended transmission of
> analog television signals, becoming the first country in
> the world to do so.
Cool! Filmnet still have hardcore pr0n on Wednesday and Saturday nights?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
until, of course, the US voids all your countries agreements. If you don't like it, then you can march your army right over here.
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And, of course, the DVD players are digital already. Which, I suppose, is the whole point. The analog audience has been dwindling for years, so it's not digital per se that's the problem. It's all the boneheaded stuff (DRM, DMCA, et tedious cetera) that's been getting glued on during the transition.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
A quick search says that most US radio stations (and I assume tv stations) have a broadcast range of approximate 20 miles.
20 miles? Are you sure about that? I live in fairly hilly terrian at the bottom of a valley and can tune in even the low powered stations from further away then that -- using nothing more then a indoor wire antenna.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
ATSC provides better reception in fringe areas; DVB-T's modulation scheme is aimed more towards urban viewers (better resistance to multipath, etc.). To put it bluntly, in the U.S., rural viewers were apparently considered more important than urban ones, so DVB-T got dumped in favor of ATSC. So if you live around tall buildings, consider yourself to have been screwed. (I think there was also a big, steaming helping of "Not Invented Here" syndrome; no red-blooded American (Senator) was going to support some pansy-ass European television format. That's like admitting we can't do better, and that's unpossible!)
Sadly, the changeover to digital TV could have been a golden opportunity for the world to settle on a single standard for television, something we've never had. I guess the significance of analog TV is waning, but I've spent my whole life thinking that the whole NTSC/PAL/SECAM incompatibility thing was really a waste, and that maybe when everyone switched to digital, they'd see the light and not go down that road again.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Digital won't fit in the same bandwidth, so it can't be broadcast on the same frequency.
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In Soviet Holland, tv watches YOU!!!
Ofcourse, I am from Soviet Holland and I voted for the Commies, so I have a right...right?
Or at least that's what this guy says...
As long as we continue to kill you off in soccer, it's fine with me ;)
But Belgium does. Besides, we're used to US movies and series broadcast in English, albeit with subtitles.
Besides which, since it is not "Murka", huge numbers of people actually speak several languages. In Europe, this means you're educated; while in the US, it means you're considered a terrorist.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Dude, stop embarrassing us! :P
I just hope that we evolve to the point of being able to put together a receiver/broadcast radio out of spare parts just like one could change a tire on a roadside.
Well, this isn't too hard to do, at least for an analog receiver. I suspect that I could probably build you at least an AM radio receiver out of parts in my car (particularly if cannibalizing the car was allowable), not including its radio, obviously.
But building a digital radio receiver out of spare parts? You've got to be kidding.
One of the things that most disappoints me about the transition to digital television, and digital radio which will surely follow, is that it's going to become a lot more difficult both to teach people about how the technology works, and to build or demonstrate it yourself. If you could build a digital radio yourself, what would it look like? A few chips on a board, and that's assuming you could get someone to even sell you the right chips (and that you had a SMD soldering workstation), not to mention the patents on the compression algorithms if you wanted to roll your own. It's just one more device that we've made "indistinguishable from magic" to a large percentage of our own population.
And for what? So that the FCC can auction off the bandwidth to the highest bidder; nothing you or I are probably ever going to see or benefit from. That agency has become a 'profit center,' dedicated to raking in the dough for the government, rather than any legitimate function in the public's interest.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I luv yo' big fat stanky pussy Walkin' on down the blo-o-ock I luv yo' big fat stanky pussy Doncha neva stop! Pussy to my left Pussy to my right I'll eat yo' big fat pussy All day and night! I luv yo' big fat stanky pussy Doncha hurt me none I luv yo' big fat stanky pussy Lyin' in the sun....
Teach them to fucking read. Honestly. A good, entertaining novel will last them days, and there's a place where you can even get them for FREE: the library.
Keeping them attached to the tube even in the car will turn them into even bigger spazzes who need a constant source of entertainment.
Also, what happened to the days of looking out the window and watching the scenery? I'm only 28... it's not that long ago.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Obviously the moderator knows jack about the immigration policies of the USA and the Netherlands. I have seriously pursued the possibility of moving my wife and I to the Netherlands. We are both skilled workers, but policy makes it very difficult to get that job that you need to get residency.
However, the Netherlands and the USA let poor an disenfranchised people in. People from the Arab lands and people from the Latin American lands.
Not quite sure why this is a troll...perhaps some super-patriot thought I was mocking his nation? Hint: Patriotism is school spirit for grown ups.
Blar.
actually, Holland was/is a region in the west of the Netherlands made up mostly by the provinces North- and South-Holland. Nowadays in the Netherlands and the rest of the world it has become more or less a synonym for the whole country, but if you call a Dutch from the south a 'Hollander' they will be insulted :)
of course wonderful wikipedia has much more info (if anyone cares, and if not then still!):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland
Because EU wrote a law saying that each member state has to use terrestrial digital Tv before a date (2010 ???) and 5 years after the launch of the digital TV (TNT in France) analogic has to be switched off. So I guess this is what happened here.
radio signals from the vast majority of US broadcasters, at 5 kilowatts power, are regularly audible over 120 miles. skywave bounces off the ionosphere cause pockets of listenability for many thousands of miles. the "B" contour of most commercial TV broadcasters, running 25 KW to 100 KW of power audio and 10 to 50 Kw video, where some interference is likely but a good picture is pulled in almost all the time with an external gain antenna beam, runs 50 to 80 miles out.
every major metropolitan area is served with numerous 5KW radio stations, and those below midband are predictably audible across the SMSA boundary almost all the time, which encompasses radiuses of 20 to 40 miles.
on such technical material are the frequencies, powers, and beam patterns of radio licenses calculated. this is well-trodden ground, the number of communications lawyers in Washington, DC is second only to the K-street melange of political lobbyists, and they all use the same polar calculations to insure that radio KRAP applies for a license they can actually get authorized and sell enough ads to make money on.
amateur and shortwave radio can be expected at various bands and at various times, to be useable for two-way communications worldwide.
the 20-mile limit of Doctor Crumb needs some documentation. Soviet "chord" jamming of the 60s had to be done at the 100 to 200 KW level to drown out the state-run shortwave transmitters of Europe and the US, clearly audible any hour day or night in the US, and with the european state stations running up to 250 KW, they still got listeners.
yes, inverse-square laws apply. so do good construction principles. in the 1920s, primitive tube radios were made with great sensitivity, and if you had a good set, there was no problem listening on one coast of the US to the other coast nightly. that usually requires better than a 1 microvolt per meter sensitivity, and just about any crummy one-chip radio can do that today.
I might buy 20 miles for UHF television, merely because this follows line of sight rules with no skywave. but you can erect a tower of 1 + (4/3 (earth radius)) = h in feet and place an antenna, and get the signal of a typical TV broadcaster 35 KW or higher for over a hundred miles on any production TV set.
no, it gets back to hunger for frequencies, the desire of governments to reassign these frequencies in costly auctions for big dollars, and a serendipitous moment of technology change they can exploit for the purpose to explain why analog commercial broadcasting is going, going, gone. if they ever wanted to get the REALLY big bucks, move the technology into their military nets and sell THAT excess bandwidth. in the US, the military controls 99% of all assignable bandwidth DC to daylight, and has not given up one single 400 Hz channel since the Communications Act of 1939.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
They'd kill the transmission of all types of television signals, not just the analog ones.
Tax breaks for consumer electronics? Yea, ok. That'll happen about....never. The IRS does not do this and wouldn't even consider it -- regardless of how much you want to grandstand and exaggerate.
If you think the GOVERNMENT is going to give back the money they take from us so they can make us dumber when we go blow it on TV's, I think you are smoking crack. Not even I am that cynical.
And here are the reasons why:
1) The government isn't bright enough to think of it
2) The government doesn't give back money unless you forcibly take it from the (via laws or the repealing of)
3) The government loves to spend money
4) I've never seen a government mule but I hear they are well-fed
to those who are judged ill-able to afford to dump the old NTSC television set and buy a digital machine. you can already buy external digital tuners in the $80-100 range. when the production is ramped up by next summer to start getting the non-technical, anti-geek, and poor onto the new signals, the cost will be down as low as $40. and there's something like a billion and a half dollars in the subsidy fund.
no, you don't HAVE to dump the big glass eye for a new plasma. you'll just be "oh, Gawd, that's too bad you can't see the whole picture" goaded into it, like the switch to color TV happened once the color CRTs went square and all four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS) went full-color. the percentages, as I remember them, went from 2% penetration in 1960 to 5% penetration in 1963 to 10% penetration in '65 to 75% penetration in '68, and no black and white to speak of by 1975. last large-screen b/w TVs were offered around 71 or 72, and then it was just belly sets.
right now is the magic time, if you're cheap... we just got an analog/digital set for my mother, CRT and 23 inch, for under $300. you're not going to see that size and price come together again for a long, long time... and it was a name brand Sharp set with two AV inputs, stereo and 4-line comb filter, etc. when the CRTs are gone in a year, and they will be, 23 inches will be $450 minimum in LCD screen for a digital-720.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The chosen version
Yesterday the Netherlands completely ended transmission of analog television signals, becoming the first country in the world to do so. So what about cars and portable TVs? I'm guessing a market will emerge for portable set top boxes / converters."
My version:
Yesterday the Netherlands stopped broadcasting the analogue terrestrial TV signal. Despite the huge number of televisions, only 78 thousand households are affected. How does this come? In the 60s, the forest of antennas on the roofs were replaced by a single big antenna per suburb or township, with cables going from there to every house. In the 80s, these single big antennas were replaced by a single receiver point per city or regional area, giving every house a huge range of terrestrial and satellite channels. So despite that the terrestrial analogue TV signals has been cut off, everybody is still receiving the analogue signal via the cabling system.
I admit, it is less sensational and less dramatic: Sorry for the noise and extra information.
bash$
I agree. When I was younger we lived in a very rural area in eastern Oregon and could tune into TV and a couple radio stations from Boise (about 150 miles away) that were rebroadcast from Ontario, OR (about 90 miles away). The quality wasn't great and we had a big antenna set up, but you could still get clear reception. Driving around was bad because the signal dropped out constantly but at home it was definitely useable. I imagine most if not all of The Netherlands is easily reachable by broadcasts from outside the country.
If all digital TV programmes were broadcast scrambled, and every set required a viewing card to decode the transmission, then there would be no way for people to evade the licence fee. Also it would be possible to bill people for the hours they watched, which might be better suited to occasional viewers (families, soap addicts and film buffs would probably find it most economical to pay for an unlimited-hours card, but those who only watch the odd documentary might be better off paying just for what they watched). And it would be easy to stop the kids watching telly when necessary (just take out the card and the set doesn't work anymore).
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Half of Belgium TV is French, all of it (French AND Dutch) seems rather crappy (CSI:whatever x7 and Big Brother VIPs)
At least it is Analog for all over-the-air, and all digital TV seems to be some poor-quality IPTV (Belgacom is REALLY bad).
I thought that "The Netherlands" (pl) were more than just Holland. Guess I was wrong?
most US radio stations (and I assume tv stations) have a broadcast range of approximate 20 miles
Twenty miles? Insightful? C'mon!!!!
I know that someone will come up with a grand "I live in Weehawken and I can pickup AM stations in Duluth" scenario but in my neck of the woods (Milwaukee), I can easily pick-up AM radio stations in Chicago. I also swear that I was listening to an FM station in Grand Rapids while I was in my car in Milwaukee. The weather conditions must have been very friendly to radio waves that day.
A range of twenty miles for radio stations? I'd say it's closer to 75 miles for FM (more for AM).
it's the bloody dutch. now i guess this proves it.
I don't get foreign tv, but I can get tv from Wales and watch programmes in welsh, and the transmitter is more than 40 Miles away, I'm in South Gloucestershire in England.. I can receive RTE 2 FM from ireland on VHF any day of the week, implying that it's not relying on tropospheric ducting or refraction in the atmosphere if that's any help, I'm sure that's more than 100 miles away.
Dutch used to mean Dutch and German. That's why the Pennsylvania Dutch (who come from Constance, down on the Swiss border) are so called. It is a version of the word "duits", which is the same as the German "deutsch", as in "Deutschand", the German name for Germany.
This is the national anthem of the Netherlands:
Wilhelmus van Nassouwe
ben ik, van Duitsen bloed,
den vaderland getrouwe
blijf ik tot in den dood.
Een Prinse van Oranje
ben ik, vrij, onverveerd,
den Koning van Hispanje
heb ik altijd geëerd.
The first lines are translated as follows:
William of Nassau, scion
Of a Dutch and ancient line,
I dedicate undying
Faith to this land of mine.
My literal translation of the first two lines:
William of Nassau
am I, of Dutch blood...
In short it is odd to claim that "Dutch" is an English invention.
Two words: Baby Cage.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
"One Moment Please. This channel should be available shortly."
Out of curiousity I thought I might get an HDTV tuner and hook it up to my TV, I get good antenna reception. Anyway looked around Best Buy, (clerks of course knew little) and found a Samsung converter for $178. End of that thought. Seems far too expensive for what it does. Does anyone know of a reasonibly priced one? Obviously in 2008 will be upgrading my TV, likewise for vcr. With prices dropping on TVs figure I'll wait awhile before buying on, probably a 37" LCD.
Netherlands doesn't use tv antennas on roofs anymore. The article thinks anything different than an antenna must be digital.
Over 80% of netherlands use cable tv, which is analog.
Inaccurate.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.
Remember when TV was still considered an important medium? When the EBS was an essential way to transfer flash warnings across a region or the country? When it was even seen as a way children could learn?
Now, no one (in power) seems to really care if the public has access to TV or not. With the rise in expensive digital and HD receivers, and the mass obsoletion of literal tons of cheap, mercury-laden TV tubes, TV will become a luxury. Which, of course, is exactly how it started out in the first place.
We may even witness the death of TV as we know it. By the time analog TV is outlawed, will broadcast TV even be relevant anymore? By 2008 (if that date sticks, which it might not), household datapipes could increase to the point where people will start dumping TV receivers like they're currently dumping POTS lines.
(Go figure -- phones going wireless, and TV going wired.)
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I have Cable.
I am sure they will broadcast whatever makes money.
2006 HDTV = $10 extra
2012 NTSC = $10 extra
Why the push to kill analog?
What happens if there's an emergency and there's no digital signal? How are we supposed to transit emergency signals over the air?
Cars will be next.
on used videos and previewed DVDs as that is about all I watch anymore anyway.
Tv reception inside the 285 premiter of atlanta is being slowley degraded...
So what are the advertisers spending their money on that I'm not seeing?
anything else I might want can be found on teh internet.
probably serves the whole country. So that could not have been too difficult...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Old guy: "Nancy honey, the damn rabbit-ears ain't workin' no more! I wanna watch channel 4!"
Unless it's changed much in the last 10 years, you can pick up the BBC from much of Holland!
just stupid.. this is in a way a monolistic approach to get motherfuckers to go and buy a new tv, since analog tvs are at an all time low, the new hd tv, crap is still at $500+ um excuse be but shouldn't we wait till the analog tv just seice to stop working??
developing countries had thier own problems.. oh now they can't watch their favorite show, they gotta spend an unreasonable price for a new fucking tv so they can continue to watch their shows.. thats if they can even afford electricity, yet alone cable tv you asshats!
hey lets drop dial users for dsl, not all locations support dsl/broadband you asshats.
The Dutch are already a bunch of perverts. I mean, they go around putting their fingers in dykes.
Watching TV in a moving car? Not something that would have been thought of in "the rest of the world".
It must require a much more powerful signal that needed for the 1m directional rooftop antennas used here.
Different transmission band even?
Another option for all the obsolete NTSC televisions is for people to set up neighborhood broadcasting stations.
I assume, and this might be crazy on my part, that all of the stations that the obsolete TVs used to receive will be blank or raw static. In this case, people who set up illegal small area broadcast stations are getting a free communications medium along with an attentive audience. Play videos such as Hollywood films (if you're already illegal due to your broadcasting, then what difference does copyright infringement make?) and/or YouTube-type stuff and intersplice it with your own political viewpoints instead of commercials. Keep loose and mobile with your transmitter. It will only be the poor people who will be watching your illegal broadcasts because all the middle-class will have cable.
I really don't believe that NTSC broadcasting is going to go away in the USA. There's too much of an audience that would be lost for the advertisers.
Being that the purpose of the FCC is to protect the public airwaves, and that "the experts" agree that TV is going digital, along with radio (viva Satellite and Internet), does this mean we can abolish the FCC?
Offtopic: I think I am making history. I am recieving a blowjob while I type this.
barack to the future?
I've always been amazed that the media talks about HDTV like it's going to some major life-altering event. I can clearly remember hearing Bill Clinton say we "had" to go digital "for the sake of our children." It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Better picture quality is kind of cool, but it doesn't seem like the boon to humanity that some people make it out to be.
Personally, I'll miss analog. I turn on the set once or twice a year (no cable, of course), and the snowy picture is part of the charm. Same with radio. I could listen to NPR online, but I listen to it on a clock radio instead. Hearing the signal fade in and out gives it some humanity.
There's only two things I hate in this world - people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
With all the marajuana they smoke over there, it'll be 2015 before they realize that they've been watching snow and listening to white noise for the past 8 years....
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
The transition will happen here the following year and they are already fighting over the extra bandwidth which will be available then. Basically the biggest problem so far with the terrestial (dvb-t) transmissions has been the low bitrate. They are stuffing so many channels into a single mux it only looks good with an old tv. If you have cable or satellite the bitrate is better though. Most paytv providers use conax here and finding an external box with one is quite easy but for a computer those addons can be quite expensive. The adventurous geeks get by this problem with a softcam + smartcard reader combo. Setting a pvr box has never been this easy.
But what handheld ATSC receiver can I use with my handheld TV?
But it does make multiple TVs in one house obsolete. A household would need one ATSC receiver per TV.
You don't need a new TV for digital any more than you did for VHS or for NES.Most VHS players and most NES and Super NES models had RF output on channel 3 or 4. Most DVD players and the N64, GameCube, and Wii console, on the other hand, have composite and S-video and possibly component, but no RF. If the ATSC set-top receivers are anything like DVD players and newer Nintendo consoles, then people who rely on broadcast TV and have older TVs with only an RF input will have to add an RF modulator to the shopping list, and some RF modulators aren't compatible with the Macrovision copy distortion signal produced by DVD players and some digital TV receivers when playing "protected" video.
The difference is the accent. "Color SIGnal" is the former; "COLor signal" is the latter.
the reception was WORSE, the cheap A$$ company in my area, couldn't even deliver basic functions without huge digital artifacts. I have a nice 42" 1500 line capable HDTV monitor that my computer and DVD's love but was totally useless for cable TV, thanks COMCRAP. I DO use an HDTV capable aeriel, here is the SF bay area there are 12 HDTV signals over the airwaves....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Theoretically the view would be for passengers, e.g. in a limousine.
No, actually 8VSB requires less power to transmit (one of the reasons it was selected for the U.S. - large land area, much of it rural), but the timing constraints to pick up the heavily processed signal are very critical. The Doppler effect screws up the timing enough that the signal's hard to lock onto. The COFDM standard is, from what I gather, only a tiny bit less sensitive.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Have you ever used wifi in a moving car? Because that definitely works. Why would digital tv signals be any different?
Put the brats to sleep. Use diphenhydramine hydrochloride or doxylamine succinate for the kids (set the dosage by their respective masses) and caffeine for the driver. If they still wake up and give the driver a headache, there's always HeadOn, applied directly to the forehead ;-)
Do something about it. The rest of the world is becoming impatient.
You may be indeed on the mark about the downward spiral in the US. But don't waste our time talking about how impatient you are. the rest of the world isn't impatient enough to actually do anything, nor is likely to ever get that impatient. That's what counts.mass obsoletion of literal tons of cheap, mercury-laden TV tubes
New one on me.. Please enlighten me. LCD's have cold cathode tubes with Mecury, but I'm not aware of mecury in CRT's.
The truth shall set you free!
With the range of a typical wifi access point, you probably drove circles around the AP to try that out. And if you drive circles around the antenna, doppler effect doesn't cause any problems.
Well, somewhat wrong.
The huge amount of lead (much more than half the weight) that a TV contains is in the form of lead-glass.
The lead-glass is not ever going to be diluted by water, so that's a complete non-issue.
There are other sources of lead, like the solder used, but it's not that large an amount, lead isn't very soluble in water and all landfills have a watertight membrane underneath to keep the nasties out of the ground water.
Don't worry about it.
That said it's a bit silly to scrap tvs just because their turners don't work, with SCART (read:The RGB inputs on all european tvs) and the fact that most DVB is still Lowres you can just use an external tuner and the result will be just as nice (or nicer) as if you had changed the entire tv.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I suppose it is fruitless to ask the Dutch if they would please come kill all US analog television broadcasts ASAP, and the programmers who have been creating what is being broadcast...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Please take geography lessons so you suck less. Kthnxbye.
Because digital TV doesn't use WiFi for transmission?
Because you didn't bother to read the linked article on 8vsb?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Just because you don't know what's going on, doesn't mean the adults shouldn't talk when you're around...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You don't need to send you old analogue TV to the land-fill just yet. Like many people in the UK, I have a digital to analogue converter that sits between the aerial and the TV.
Actually I have a VCR that sits between the converter and the aerial so I can record analogue while watching digital. I'll get a PVR when they turn off the analogue signal.
Nah, the army will be busy repelling the flood of refugees from the collapsed U.S. economy and the resulting second civil war, which will be rendering people like you either dead or experiencing actual poverty as a result of the devaluation of your real assets.
No, he can do better than this... not all countries like to play the strong arm. Don't forget that while Europe does not have the required army power to invade us, they probably have the economic power to make us suffer.
You buy a digibox that receives the digital signal and outputs an analog one.
In the UK you can find some that cost around $40.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wasn't America originally supposed to make the switch in 2003?
Unfounded conspiracy theories, especially those that "satisfy" situations that have much more plausible explanations, certainly do not deserve to be modded insightful or informative. Hell, they don't even deserve an interesting or a funny mod. They're just getting boring, and they drag the relatively high standard of Slashdot discussion down.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Seriously, doppler effect at car speeds? How fast do you drive?
Do you think you can achieve echo doppler shifts of more than 200Hz? That shift corresponds to approximately 1200 km/h ground speed or 1 Mach STP. COFDM tolerates +/- 200Hz shifts adqeuately, +/- 150Hz shifts well, and has a fully flat response for absolute shifts below 80Hz. (80 Hz ~ 450 km/h ground speed).
8-VSB is only a tiny bit more sensitive to strong pre echos.
It is worth noticing that a google search on 8vsb +doppler reveals that your claim about problems with moving vehicles is repeated almost exclusively in Wikipedia and its mirrors.
Hey, I'm not an expert but everything I've read indicates that, yeah, 8VSB really is that sensitive.
Of course, even using your terms, it turns up things like "VSB is a single carrier transmission system, with no provisions for mobile operation" and "[F]rom all available information it seems that the ATSC system of terrestrial digital television used in the US and other NTSC territories will never be capable of mobile reception", so apparently at least a few other people think that, too.
And "atsc doppler" turned up this interview with the former chairman of the ATSC: "The ATSC system was specifically not designed to satisfied or reach moving receivers. This was not an oversight. When you try to satisfy mobile reception, it comes at a huge trade off in terms of bit rate."
I'm getting an ATSC tuner for xmas, as I said. Maybe I'll try it out in a car someday and we'll see.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Half of Belgium TV is French, all of it (French AND Dutch) seems rather crappy (CSI:whatever x7 and Big Brother VIPs)
At least it is Analog for all over-the-air, and all digital TV seems to be some poor-quality IPTV (Belgacom is REALLY bad).
I thought that "The Netherlands" (pl) were more than just Holland. Guess I was wrong?
Noord-Holland and South-Holland are provinces of The Netherlands (along with 10 others; Friesland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Flevoland, Noord-Brabant, Limburg, Groningen, Drenthe and Overijssel), which is an independent country.
Belgium is also an independent country. Some parts of Belgium, historically, have been incorporated in the territories of France and/or The Netherlands. The Dutch speaking part of Belgium (roughly) and The Netherlands are sometimes referred to collectively as the Low Countries, but mostly in historical terms.
Reception of Belgium analogue TV over the air is limited to the southern provinces, but Dutch language Belgium public TV stations can be received on basic cable troughout the country (unlike commercial TV from Belgium).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
As long as Germany continues to play Dutch-style soccer I don't mind seeing them playing against anyone wether its The Netherlands (Holland doesn't have its own soccer team) or not :)
Resumee: NL is allowing East-Europeans from EU in to let them working here (they earn relatively a lot compared to home country) much like IE and UK also have done. In 2007 the borders are even more wide open. Some are scared because of these new changes, some are not. There's a lot of debate on this, but the changes are coming. You're not from EU though (you're from USA) so these changes don't count for you. Oh, and you may want to look into the history of migration politics of the Netherlands. We have not "kept our jobs for native-born" we've had a lot of fluctuations in our politics (and problems, solutions, new problems, new solutions, etcetera) related to this. I'm not able to find links for you to Wikipedia though.
PS: don't forget that by moving to NL, you also move into EU.
I will definately look into this again. I was born and raised in the North-East United States, so I am well prepared for your weather :)
Blar.
you didn't grow up with the technology, talk to the engineers, aspire into ham radio, look over the manuals, read the technical journals including licensing discussions and issues, and in general spend the formative years of your life looking into propagation and antenna design.
or you would not have made your post.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?