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.

Comments

Uh, huh...

[__aaclcg7560]

... 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.

Re:Uh, huh...

[MaWeiTao]

There are millions of people who live on less than $25,000 per year in North America and they are probably not going to rush out to spend hundreds of dollars on a new TV.

Well, I know of two cable guys who would disagree with that statement. They'd point out that there are probably more people who earn less than $25,000 in the inner city who own new HDTVs than you'd find in most middle-class neighborhoods. And by the time 2009 comes around these television sets will be even cheaper, assuming people dont just get adapters. I just hope that in the US we don't start seeing tax dollars go to handouts to provide assistance to people who supposedly can't afford a brand new TV set.

Digital signals don't work in cars: doppler effect

[Dr. Manhattan]

It's really bad for the North American 8VSB standard used in ATSC. The COFDM used in the "rest of the world's" "DVB-T" is only marginally better.

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.

Re:really should be DVB tell me why ATSC ?

[Phreakiture]

ATSC requires less energy to transmit than DVB-T, due to the use of 8VSB modulation rather than OFDM; hence it is cheaper to use. If the USA were as densely packed as most of Europe, then DVB-T would probably be a slam dunk, but we have vast rural areas, and idiotically-built suburbs, and the TV signal needs to reach its audience at a cost that the broadcasters can sustain.

ach, that's silly

[swschrad]

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.