Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.