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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?"
Every few years the so-called "deadline" keeps getting pushed back. Looks like I can keep my regular old TV set for a few more years.
And what makes this more hysterical is that the early adopters got screwed, buying plasma TVs only to find out they didn't support HD. Then the next set of adopters bought HDTVs, only to find out they were not HDMI compatible, and therefore, couldn't run HD content.
So, this new push-back of the deadline gives the content makers and the hardware companies more time to develop a whole new DRM scheme to screw those of you who just bought HDMI compatible equipment.
The guarantee is that every 5 years, you need to spend 10 grand on another entertainment setup.
Isn't that fun?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
At least, when you can walk into your local government building and/or TV station and pick up a free (government subsidized) digital-to-analog box. If analog TVs comprise 95% of the market, but 90% of people take advantage of a free converter box, does this now mean only 5% of TVs are considered analog, as, with the box, they can pick up digital (even if only SD) signals?
If we (society as a whole) can actually see some benifit from going digital and selling off the old spectrum, we should do it as soon as possible. If that means some of us have to go without TV, well... It would affect the TV in my living room very much, but I still support it.
However, if AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, et-al are the only ones who will benifit, I say hold off as long as we can; until a majority vote indicates that it is time to move on, keep the current analog systems in place.
No acconting for marketshare, of course.
Scratch that. Let's consider market share for a moment. Perhaps now is the time. Perhaps, we'd be more productive if 95% of us weren't worryign about who's going to be the next american Idol?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It seems like they'll pick option #2 here, and then either charge legacy users a fee to get a box, or just jack up everyones' rate by $5. Everyone is going to end up with a box either way, it's the only way to watch cable given that CableCARD so far is a bust and the cable companies seem anxious to start doing SDV rollouts.
And then there's the fact that the cable industry's main association is happy about this. What's up with that!?Seriously, by 2012, who the heck is going to even want to **own** a television anyway? On the bright side, I wonder what bittorrent will look like by then?
AT&T and Verizon get out of it by not carrying any analog channels. Cable has this option as well, but will have to provide Set Top Boxes to all of their subscribers (just like AT&T and Verizon do) which they don't do now, especially in small and rural markets. Also this doesn't apply to all, or even most, channels it only applies to must carry channels, which are channels that the cable company (or telco) is required to provide... requiring them to provide these channels to all of their subscribers makes sense to me.
If I were a television manufacturer, I would have already colluded with other television manufacturers to produce units that would spontaneously fail after 2 and a half years.
Gold Star (now LG - "Lucky Gold Star", not "Life's Good" as they claim) used to be infamous among electronics service techs for powering everything from the CRT filament to the audio stages from the flyback transformer. Crank up the volume too loud and for too long, fry the audio amplifier, which overloads the flyback, which takes out the horizontal output transistor. Now you have a dead TV and a service bill more than it would cost to replace the set.
They did that a *long* time ago. The days of 20+ year lifespans from TV sets are long gone. It's like the days of the 20+-year-old Maytag washer.
(In other news, I have a Sony Trinitron KV-1710 from 1975, and a KV-1926 from 1988, both of which still work perfectly. My first color TV was a 1970 Admiral Solar Color, which I had until 1996. But I see lots of newer sets (2-5 years old) at the curb.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I really wonder how many people are choosing not to update their TV sets to HD TV sets, because there is nothing compelling them to do so.
The decision to not buy a HD set is reinforced by talk of US Government credits for HD tuner purchases, and learning the cable population they are good till 2012.
Let us not forget the date of HD *only* broadcasts was pushed out 2 years. It was 2006, and is now 2008.
Why would the population who is happy with standard NTSC change their way? There are not a lot motivating factors here in the US in regards to HD TV acceptance.
There are many reasons people won't convert until forced.
1.) Broadcasters have done a rotten job of educating the public on any benefits of going digital. Not a word has been broadcast outside of the geek forums like here on just why one would want to go digital. Nobody has explained either just how they are going to get that digital signal to distant recievers that currently get really fuzzy reception on analog. Is it going to require a cable run? Is it going to be broadcast? Just exactly how are they going to transmit the signal has been left out of any information you get on it today.
2.) Many see the switch to digital as the death of free (as in beer) TV they have grown up with. They think that the digital signal they get will be charged for much like cable / satelite is and nobody has refuted this in public. Also, given the lie that was perpetrated by the cable companies when they were first getting established of lower prices as things move forward, it is little wonder the average Joe is gun shy.
3.) Other than huge corporate profits for the winner of the spectrum bid, the average Joe has no idea why this switch is need now. For example, they don't realize that some of that spectrum is needed by emergency responders because it can be received inside of buildings (something the 9/11 commission found they can't do now). So the average Joe again only sees the obscene profit the Government is going to make on the sale of the spectrum and seeing little benefit to themselves by it.
4.) This is probably the biggest reason... It requires the purchase of new equipment just to recieve the crap that is regular broadcast TV. It is an expense that many see as unnecessary for the quality of programming local TV has to offer.
5.) The retail stores and TV manufacturers have done poorly in obsoleting the analog TVs they sell. In fact, they have become even more attractive because of their price reduction without any warning that they will be obsolete when the switch is made. So instead of less analog TVs being produced and sold there are more.
I'm sure there are even more obscure reasons people will give. They won't switch without being forced into it no matter how long a time frame they have. They just don't see any benefit to it.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I'll soon switch from analog to digital & here is why:
My old TV is dieing.
My CRT from 1995 is finally giving up the ghost after 5 apartment/houses in 3 states.
And that is the only reason why.
I don't care about how good HDTV looks. I don't care about how flat the TV is. In fact, with a flat screen my cabinet no longer matches my TV (size wise). In fact, when I price compare I might just buy another CRT. Although I would prefer not to as I am buying for the next decade.
And there are a lot of other people out there just like me.
For years consumer electronics firms have anticpated the digital convergence, where the television becomes the computer and everything else all rolled into one. I've worked on a few of these projects. But the consumer electronics companies won't be the ones to do it: they do not understand software, design bare bones hardware, and seek to keep everything proprietary for customer lock-in. WebTV is probably the most notable of these failures.
Digital TVs are crappy, inflexible computers. The convergence is happening, but it won't be the TV that reigns: it will be the computer in what Steve Job's refers to as the 'digital hub'. Duh. Been saying this myself since '92. Amazingly, he seems to be the only exec who understands the forces behind the convergence.
The computer will be the television. I already have a 30" LCD monitor on my desktop. My computer can play a huge variety of formats in many resolutions. My computer is already attached to a cable company data network. When/if cable companies wise up and start the leverage their data services, offering on-demand video via software clients over their data networks, the convergence will really pick up.
But the cable companies are just as stuck in their thinking as the consumer electronics firms: it could be that iTunes or like technology ursurps their current potential advantage for content delivery AND presentation, not through anything other than corporate vision which doggedly persues ease-of-use.
"You have liberated me from thought."
- It only works for 1 tv ( you have to pay more of you want to receive it on more tv's )
.
Why can't you just plug multiple DVB-T tuners into the same antenna? Sure, if you're using DVB-S you need a multi-LNB and multiple cable runs, but for DVB-T it isn't a problem.
- I have to pay money for each film i want to see later ( as appsosed to just recording it for free )
Why can't you just record it like normal? Either plug your VCR into the analogue output of a DVB-T tuner, or get a PVR or DVD recorder (even build a MythTV system if you want).
- There is no difference in quality , since i only have a regular tv ( the digital signal gets converted back to analog )
That's pretty much untrue - the quality you can get on a reasonable analogue TV being fed by an RGB or S-Video connection is far, far higher than one just using an analogue UHF tuner. In order to transmit over UHF the bandwidth of the luminosity signal is reduced (i.e. reduced resolution) to prevent cross-talk with the colour subcarrier. S-Video separates the luminosity signal and colour subcarrier onto separate physical wires, allowing the luminosity to remain at full resolution. RGB completely removes the multiplexing of colour signals, which is even better.
So why would i pay more , to have less ?
It sounds like your belief that you will get less is based on unfounded assumptions.
If they force the switch , i'll just get everything i need from the internet
Now you really _will_ be getting less by doing that - even the higher quality videos available over the internet fall far below the quality of DVB channels.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Cell Phones are finally getting rid of analogue, verizon will stop carrying analogue in 2008. Until they come out with a 3W digital phone I'll guess I'll have to connect my phone to a large parabolic antenna.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I've been on satellite for almost 20 years. I'm using directv now, while they are as evil as any other company compaired to the cable they seem to be angels. The HD box that I paid 800 bucks back in 2003 about, blew up a few weeks ago. They fedex me a new one the next day and had some monkey out there a week later to install a new 5 lnb dish for me, for free. Well not for free, I'm stuck with them for anohter 2 years but that seems to be fine with me.
Directv seems to be going through some changes right now and they are notice able. I'm seeing more and more pixlation in their signal as they add more channels. I think they are about out of bandwidth on the old mpeg2 sats. That is what my free upgrade was for. They seem to want to get me off of that old system and on to the new mpeg4 system as fast as they can.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
An ATSC carrier uses the 6 MHz band, but better. At least around here, the minor networks (CW, MyNetworkTV, and Telefutura) have partnered up as digital sub-channels of a major station. That's several stations that aren't going to be building their own transmitters on their own 6 MHz NTSC allocation.
The fact that adjacent channels are no problem is, of course, a huge step.
What annoys me is how hard it is to find a simple, cheap set-top box. I'm absolutely fine with the 25" tube TV I got from Goodwill four years ago. I found one seller on eBay with the obvious stock of a bankrupt firm (search for "Hisense tuner"). ATSC is great. I like PBS, and I like it a whole lot more with 3 alternate (subchannel) PBSes. But, I can't go to Best Buy or Wal-Mart and buy a $100 tuner off the shelf.
In the UK the digital tv signals are in spectrum space, close to the analogue stations so you don't necessarily need to buy a new terrestrial aerial.
However, the quality of the analogue tv, both the audio and video have been progressively been made worse to make digital tv look good. Digital FTA (free to air) tv is over-compressed to hell and back video and very substandard low bitrate audio. Satellite digital tv is better than terrestrial FTA. Both systems suffer from idiotic channel number changes for seemingly no reason meaning people re-tuning boxes (complicated thing for older people / technophobes), mucking up the order of many user pre-set stations lists. Analogue tv you just setup and forget about it.
And these problems are just talking of standard definition tv, you don't even want to think what will happen if they ever put HD video out, more compression, more rubbish etc.
The same problems exist with DAB-radio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting Digital Audio Broadcasting). The quality of FM radio, (DAB hopes to replace FM), is being made worse and worse. DAB in the UK is seriously low bitrate MP2 audio, some of the lowest bit-rates in the world, and many stations that are in stereo on FM are in mono on DAB, saves money. The DAB CODEC is a seriously old, and the error correction for DAB radio is cr@p.
While many countries around the world are going straight to DAB+ (more up-to-date CODEC and error correction compared to DAB), the UK is flogging DAB because the companies don't want to spend money on the more efficient and better system.
So, from the UK point of view, digital tv and digital radio are horrible technologies being used to squeeze as many cr@p stations as possible into the space, whilst making the experience of viewing and listening painful to eyes and ears.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Then of course there is the whole HDMI/HCMI/HDCP debacle, which will limit what can and cannot go out of that converter box. DTV/HDTV is prime for that too.
So, until you're really willing to get rid of all your fair-use rights with relation to what comes in from your TV provider (OTA or otherwise), then you really need to ask the question - do you really want it? Are you willing to give up your ability to record stuff (on existing equipment) to get it?
Myself - the answer is no. I'll go to other mediums - DVDs on the computer with a nice projector and speaker setup - and just forget about the OTA or cable/etc. It's not worth it.
And of course don't forget this other post: There really is a lot of truth in that.
Oh, and don't forget about the nuclear-ness of this. Right now, if U.S. were destroyed by a nuke, you'd still be able to use any TV or radio to get information around. Once DTV/HDTV goes into effect, that won't be the case - in fact, you'll need something with a computer process, which might not survive the EMP of the nukes, to decode the signal; thus you've now effectively killed all public broadcast comms in the U.S. It would bring on a new kind of comms attack - EMP - that would kill the U.S. public comms structure.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)