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FCC Says Analog TV Lives Until 2012
walterbays writes ""The FCC voted 5-0 to require that cable operators must continue to make all local broadcasts available to their users, even those with analog televisions." I don't understand how AT&T manages to deliver U-verse without any analog channels. Did they get it classified as not-cable and exempt from existing rules? Or as a result of this vote, will they suddenly have to drop 50 SD channels to make room for 5 NTSC channels?"
I've been arguing it here for years- we aren't going to switch to digital TVs anytime in the next 5 years. Too many people still only have analog TVs. Watch them decide to push back the OTA deadline next. Until analog only TVs are under 5% of the install base, they won't make that move.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Seriously, I would love to know what this has to do with AT&T. Of course U-Verse was declared not to be cable, since it isn't cable. How is this relavent in the context of the article? A non-cable television service doesn't have to follow the same rules as a cable television service? What a shocker!
Mod me as you will, but you know you're thinking the same thing.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The only way to really get up to date is to have the balls to dump the past.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The guarantee is that every 5 years, you need to spend 10 grand on another entertainment setup. This, and excessive advertising, have combined to push myself and my household entirely out of the market. Now they get nothing. We don't own any TVs, PVRs, or any of that nonsense. We don't pay money every month for cable TV or satellite that still has ads that we have to pay a further subscription to try and skip the ads on tivo and run in to intentional scheduling errors, or any of their other BS. We're done, and we've been done for almost 3 years now.
Instead, we have one computer that has a large monitor. Now, admittedly, our "large" monitor isn't anywhere near the size of a 2000 inch TV that takes up an entire wall of most people's living rooms. But we've gotten over that. We can still comfortably watch any movie we want in DVD format. With no commercials, on our schedule. I know some slashdotters will still get up in arms about the DRM on the DVD format and whatnot, but we're a regular, non ubergeek family. We don't care. Now the only money anyone gets from us in this fashion is the $17/month it costs for Blockbuster Online.
Isn't that fun? Not really; and I don't suspect our family will be the last to be pushed out of the market by their bullshit. When you add it all up; its just not worth it anymore. Now we spend the money doing other things; going out and having fun. It's alot better for our relationship, too.
~Rebecca
One of us is confused -- either me or the summary. From my parsing of TFA, it seems to me there are two separate things going on here that are being intermingled.
First, there is a rule requiring cable companies to do what they already do, for the most part -- have analog outs on their digital set top boxes. I don't think they'll care so much about that.
Second, there is a rule that they must continue to carry local channels, even after the digital switchover, some of which they'd love to replace with more lucrative pay cable channels.
What I can't tell from the summary or the article is if both of these requirements are in effect until 2012 or just one.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
MTV hasn't shown a music video (or anything that actually even remotely classifies as "music", for that matter) since the early 1990s; there's championship "wrestling" on the Sci-Fi Channel (and don't even get me started on the so-called "sci-fi" called "Painkiller Jane" or "Flash Gordon" - please bring back SG-1!!!!); TechTV got merged with G4, and promptly went to the sh*tter quite fast; and most of the "news" channels don't seem to have gotten the message that we really don't give a rat's ass about Paris & Britney!
You realize the industry is in a transition. There will be chaos and panic and random merges or non-scifi shows on Sci-Fi for some time to come. Newspapers are migrating online, CNN released their video service for free. Classic TV scrambling to hold "eyeballs" lost to torrents and online shows.
It's nothing to wonder about.
In 10 or so years, new leaders will emerge, producing content in a very different way, and they will likely be nothing like the current ones.
If TV isn't worth watching right now, don't watch it. You'll find there are plenty of better ways to get entertainment in or out of your home.
Actually, if analogue TV transmissions stops, then I just won't bother buying a TV. A computer is good enough for what little motion video I watch and I have a strong suspicion that many people will do the same thing. A complete switch to digital will likely cause the TV stations to permanently lose a lot of viewers.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm pretty sure the GP means UMTS and HSDPA, not GSM which predates CDMA.