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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.
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.
In the USA and most other countries, color TV signals are backwards compatible with the older black and white standards. Old B&W sets worked just fine on color broadcasts. That's one reason why analog color still looks so crappy to this day: the way color signal was shoehorned into the original standard creates a lot of visual artifacts.
Where are you from? In the US the NTSC color signal was specifically developed to maintain compatibility with B&W sets so that no one needed to buy a new TV if they didn't want to. I was under the impression that PAL/SCEAM were developed to do the same thing, but carrying the color information in a different way so it was more stable and immune to noise.
I know early FM radios don't work now (because RCA got the FCC to move the FM dial's portion of the spectrum in a deliberate attempt to kill the technology), but I've never heard of that with color TV.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Actually, the state-supported media are more objective than any of the commercial channels.
Any club of people that can raise a significant number of members will get
public funding and can participate in the public channel. There are broadcasting organisations
with socialist, catholic, buddhist, islam, etc. backgrounds, and they all get their voice.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
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!
Only analogue transmissions overether are stopped. Over 90% of the population have cable already (both analogue and digital). What the article fails to mention is that it only impacts about 70,000 people still receiving analogue signals from the air. Plus, the signal is replaced with digital (DVB-T). So these 70,000 can either get a DVB-T or a satelite receiver.
Its you silly English people who name us "the dutch", and our country either "The Netherlands" or even worse "Holland".
We name ourselves (as a country) "Nederland", which is inhabited by "nederlanders".
Actually, the state-supported media are more objective than any of the commercial channels.
Any club of people that can raise a significant number of members will get
public funding and can participate in the public channel. There are broadcasting organisations
with socialist, catholic, buddhist, islam, etc. backgrounds, and they all get their voice.
In addition to this, you have to realize
1) public broadcasters also feature advertising
2) it has been known for a public broadcaster to become a commercial broadcaster (veronica)
3) workers from failed commercial broadcasters have been known to rejoin the public system (tv10)
All of this mitigates the influence of government. (And the government money mitigates undue influence from advertisers).
The public broadcasters themselves are independent member-run organizations and can (and have) defied government positions. More successfully than the BBC has managed, for instance (turns out they were right about reports about Iraq's weapons being 'sexed up', but they didn't have the balls to say to the government 'you can put in a complaint like any regular citizen').
Additionally, public broadcasters are required by law to have editorial codes that guarantee editorial/journalistic independence for their employees - independence from both the government, advertisers AND the broadcaster itself. The journalist's trade union is always keen to complain about instances of this independence being threatened.
Getting impartial/non-partisan news is hardly the problem. The problem is that the news is either boring (especially the christian broadcasters, always yapping on about 'church matters' or, for some not well understood reason, every minute detail of the troubles in Israel) or alarmist and/or xenophobic drivel designed to compete with the commercial channels.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
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?
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.