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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.
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.
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.
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...
[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
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... will continue to be broadcast by the Dutch, as usual. No need for alarm.
Better watch out when you are in the Netherlands--a car or a portable TV may be broadcast at you at any moment!
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.
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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!
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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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.
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Never The Same Color? ;)
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.
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I know everyone else is bashing you, and I'll never be modded up (I'm an AC), but if you are talking about the UK 405 line system, you are indeed correct.
.... You BASTARDS!
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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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".
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.
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.
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I live just a few blocks from where the first commercial color broadcast was made. Came in on my B&W set just fine thank you. Which is a good thing because they didn't "switch" to color, they added color a show at a time:
"The wonderful woooooooooorld ooooooooooof color!"
It's not at all like back in the day when my neighbor brought home a car and my horse stopped working.
KFG
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?
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is that kind of like Wiley-Coyote knowing about gravity, and suddenly being affected by it?
I actually see the effects of overly-compressed digital video all the time, as I have satellite TV. It's occasionally annoying, but not really a big deal. I haven't watched a lot of over-the-air digital TV, but I've yet to see artifacts, only poor signal quality from a station that's 35 miles away on my ad-hoc antenna.
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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.
www.wavefront-av.com
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.
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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?
Unfortunately evolution is going the other way. When I was in school I built an analogue TV from parts (it was monochrome, and the screen was green, and it only recieved one station, but it worked!. Most kids today can't even take the back off a TV. How many could wind a mains transformer on the kitchen table, or make a voltage multiplier?
And dont start on walking to school...
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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.
In fact, the bill passed and signed a year ago earmarks $1.5 billion for the express purpose of providing $40 vouchers for set top boxes to *anyone*, regardless of income level. Consumer groups were upset because they believed that the actual amount needed was about $5 billion.
I suspect the 2009 date was chosen due to it being just after the 2008 presidential election and far enough ahead of the 2010 mid-terms to have much effect. As to why February 17th was chosen, it's because it is just after the Superbowl and Daytona 500 and before the NCAA and conference basketball tournaments begin (that was a quote from someone in Congress from an article I read).
I'm sorry to say, but you need to adjust your cynicism to match reality.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
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.
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.
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.
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I didn't realise you were referring specifically to packet switching. This was developed by a Polish-born American, Paul Baran, for the US Air Force, and independently by Donald Davies at the UK's National Physics Laboratory. A packet switched network was in operation here from 1970 to 1986, and it was Davies who coined the term 'packet switching'.
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.