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Confusion Reigns As Analog TV Begins Shutdown
As TV stations across the country switch off their analog signals, uncertainty reigns. Some 691 stations will have converted to digital broadcasting by midnight tonight (some interpreted the mandate as going digital by Feb. 17, not during Feb. 17, and shut down yesterday). This represents about a third of TV broadcasters nationwide. No one can say how many of the estimated 5.8 million households unready for the transition are in areas served by the stations that are switching now. The FCC added to the uncertainty by imposing extra conditions, making it unclear until last Friday exactly which stations would be switching at the beginning of the transition period. The article quotes a former analyst at Barclays Capital who said the whole process has been "botched politically."
Why the heck are we getting a story posted on this almost daily? Who cares?
WTF? This is like Y2K, except TV is actually important!
The idea behind pushing back the deadline was so that the current coupons(which were all given out) had time to expire. They could then create new coupons so people who missed out the first time could get a chance at a coupon, and thus their free converter. Or that's how I read it.
Think five months for the transition is causing confusion? Try five years: the UK is in the process of doing exactly that. It started in 2007 and will not finish until 2012. In addition another, incompatible, type of digital TV will start to be rolled out from next year at the same time.
If you do not get your broadcasts over the air (ie you use cable, satellite, U-verse, Verizon, etc.), you are unaffected, period. If you have a television that has a decimal point or a hyphen on your remote in the numbers area (on the remote that came with the TV), you are fine. In this case, you may need to start entering stations in other ways, such as 11.1 as opposed to 11. The ONLY time you need to get a converter box is if you have an analog-only tuner in your television, as most 4:3 tube televisions have, AND you receive your television via antenna.
2. When the TV was moved to digital, it should have been better than what was offered before. Yes, the quality is better (when you can receive the signal) but most of the time (even with good equipment) the signal doesn't come in, you lose channels, and they randomly drop audio and video. At least with the old way, if it came in most of the way, I could still see and hear what was going on.
This is the killer for me. Digital TV does not degrade gracefully. You can't get a low-res substitute if your signal starts going badly. And the use of 8VSB modulation means that stations *theoretically* can cover more distance with less power than COFDM, but it also means moving receivers are out of the question (goodbye Sony Watchman and car TV) and multipath interference (common in cities) can keep receivers from working properly.
In the 50's and 60's, they were able to upgrade to color TV without breaking compatibility with existing black and white sets. Today, they broke compatibility and they've failed to offer enough to justify it.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Hey..speaking of mythtv, I've got a question. I'm currently renting, and wanting to go do the mythtv client server route in the house. I was at this point (renting) hoping to avoid running cat5 all over the place. Can wireless work fast enough now for a myth client server system? For HD content? I've got my server with a HDHomerun pulling QAM off the cable, and ATSC over the air...
I used wireless for awhile on a little frontend box that was away from the master backend and it worked fine for SD content. When I switched out my tuner to HD though I started getting some stuttering and then broke down and just decided to figure out how to run a twisted pair to the box. I was using wireless G at the time... don't know if N would be good enough to eliminate the stuttering, but it's possible it might.
You stations may not be broadcasting full power yet. I believe they can go full power after today, or possibly that was delayed with the (optional) analog shutoff delay too.
(I think they may also change frequencies, but that's all automagically handled by the tuner.)
Just as well.There isn't much good on TV these days anyway. Even the PBS stuff is getting kind of shitty - they take an hour to show and explain things that can be done in 10 minutes. Also, some of the nature shows are so depressing: shows loss of habitat, people in Third World countries who believe that Tiger Penis soup will give them a hard-on (when it's their cigarette smoking causing their impotence), catching and slicing off shark fins and throwing the poor things back in the water, poisoning reefs to catch stuff for Western reef aquariums, etc... all stuff that I can't do a damn thing about.
Germany already switched to digital TV between 2002 and 2008. Austria did this betweenn 2006 and 2007. And in Switzerland the switch was done in 2007. And I don't see why this is a big deal. If there's something which is a clusterfuck, it's analog TV transmission techology.
It's pretty clearly stated in the FAQ
Me thinks we will either have either a surge in domestic violence rates or a surge in birth rates as a result of this switchover. When you think about, TV is probably the most effective birth control device known to man... all the countries with high per-capita television ownership also have low birth rates.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yes, 54Mbps is plenty for a single HD stream. The maximum bit-rate allowed by the blu-ray standard is 40Mbits
Except that you never really do get 54Mbps. You'd be lucky to maintain a constant 10Mbps. 54Mbps wireless is completely unacceptable for HD Content because the player is expecting a semi-constant stream of data which the wireless router typically can't deliver. I'd stick with a hardline.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
If they couldn't get enough to fully compensate the American people for their trouble, then they sold at a loss
It's not worth sending me a check for $64, only to take it away again on April 15.
I think that they made the right compromise - they more or less compensated people who were impacted by offering box coupons, they freed up additional spectrum for other uses, and they made some dough in the process.
Plus, it's a nice reminder of why you don't want government running everything.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I used to work for a company that made wireless access points. The highest we ever saw during testing (of our products and our competitors) was 22 Mbps.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
You may have to buy your own HD antenna. The good news is that most antennas are HD antennas, and people who are reasonably close to towers will probably be fine with the antennas that they already have.
People used to dealing with fuzzy analog may be out of luck, or they may need to add a directional UHF antenna (in my area, the company that owns NBC and ABC is going to start simulcasting ABC on the NBC transmitter, so I will likely gain a channel).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Well for those interested, 1-888-CALL-FCC. Posting anon, cause I work at that hotline. : ) It's a hotline to help with the switch, advise on Converter Boxes, and help with hooking it up.
You dont know anyone who is a videophile, or someone that can actually see.. I watch OTA because it's not destroyed by the satellite or cable company. The PBS hd channels here that are OTA are at least 90% higher resolution and far less blockyness than the re-compressed mess that Comcast passes off as the OTA HD channels. (Yes they compress them, I got the transport stream files to prove it. Comcast and DISH have the crappiest HD signals available. If you want to see your best video OTA is the best choice.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A company called Sprint.
Let's name names here.
Specifically, Sprint's wireless internet service has no competition from Verizon until the DTV transition happens, because Verizon can't use the spectrum they purchased to use for their (superior) service until after the transition happens.
...but what the hell is an HD antenna?
It is marketing BS, but there are geek issues involved. As you may know, analog TV uses 3 different frequency band ranges: VHF-lo (channels 2-6, which will be reallocated. Good for LONG DISTANCE transmissions at high power (using the atmospheric bounce) but also vulnerable to EMI), VHF-hi (channels 7-13), which will be kept for DTV, and UHF, which its upper band, from channels 52-69, will be removed from DTV reception.
Different antenna designs have different reception efficiency in different bands. Rabbit ears (folding twin dipoles) were only good for VHF, and since there is no more VHF-lo, useless for DTV. The other common cheapo UHF antennas, circle and bowtie, allegedly will work at receiving VHF-hi, but are not terribly efficient. There are designs like Gray-Hoverman, which weren't popular in the analog TV era, because besides not getting VHF-lo well, it wouldn't get the high end of UHF well either. Well, there's no more "UHF-hi" (ch 52-69), so now those type antennas can be used, and are pretty darn efficient in the DTV range.
Then there is the multipath issue. (ghosting) On analog-TV, it was an annoyance. On DTV, it can actually kill reception, because its a form of signal interference (which weakens reception). In places where its an issue, you're better off with those "new-fangled" DTV antennas (e.g. - Philips silver sensor, which looks like a triangular raygun made of metal tongue depressors) which are designed to "suppress multipathing", which then improves DTV reception.
I would imagine the "ideal" DTV antenna would be most efficient for receiving VHF-hi, the truncated UHF, and suppress multipathing. The old rooftop antennas should still work, but you MAY be able to get a new TV antenna that will bring in more dB, because of its design. But there is no industry standardization for the term HDTV antenna, so you won't know if its worthwhile to buy it without a spectrum analyzer. (Or more cheaply, read avsforum.com, and let the engineering geeks tell you what's the best antennas to get.)
I agree here, I live in austria and the switchover was absolutely painless. We also hat a coupon system where everyone got a 70 Euro coupon or so, you could get the cheapest receivers exactly at that price. Benefits, in many areas the reception now is way better and cheap DVB-T sticks are basically now available in every supermarket.
Downside, I have yet to see one, except that the national television station lost a lot of viewers (mostly older people were still watching air only, and those are in a huge degree incompetent to tune in their tv) because suddenly they had more stations and could reach the private stations which they never had tuned in.
But the situation here is differently. Cable is way cheaper and 1/3rd of all households has already a satellite dish because we in the past had only two channels and people started to switch over to cable and satellite asap (in the 70s and 80s) to get out of this misery. The only ones left with a houshold antenna mostly were elderly people!
I guess it depends on many factors, but overally the situation here is quite good with DTV, the reception definitely is better. The picture quality is good but not that much of a huge jump since PAL never had the issues of NTSC!
I was going for "funny"...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Some stations have the option to go back to their old channel as a digital station. That means that these stations will be giving up their second channel that they have been using as their digital channel. Here in the Los Angeles area the following channels will go back to their original channel. 7, 9, 11, 13, 18, 28 & 34. The rest will remain on their second channel while their analog channel goes dark. I should call some of the stations like channel 5 to see if they will be changing their logo, since their second channel that they have been using is 31.
Make sure that when the big transition day comes, that you perform a channel scan on your TV or converter box. That way you will be able to view the channels that have made the change.
Channels assigned for Los Angeles:
7, 9, 11, 13, *28, 31, 34, 36, *41, 42, 43
Here are some documents to look at from the FCC.
DTV Assignments
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-138A1.pdf
DTV Assignments Appendix B
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-138A2.pdf
>>>The station that stopped last night had some fun and went old-school.
I too watched my stations switch-off their analog, but it was anticlimatic. PBS33 in Harrisburg simply turned-off their transmitter during the mid-morning. FOX45 in Baltimore blanked-out for half a minute, and then started playing a 5-minute loop explaining how to buy and hookup a DTV box. CW15 in York displayed a 30-second card that said, "We will now be ending our analog broadcast and transitioning to full digital." I'm hoping the June 12 switchoff will be more dramatic.
>>>It was just like nightly sign-offs when I was a little kid, and it almost made me misty-eyed.
Yeah stations rarely turnoff anymore. Now they sell half-hour blocks of commercials to pay the bills. There are still some smaller markets like Binghamton New York where the stations turn-off between 2 and 6am. It felt odd to have no television in the middle of the night.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If you couldn't save up $50 in the time since the transition was announced, perhaps you've got bigger problems than not being able to watch television.
"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure." --Robert Heinlien
The 700 megahertz band is valuable because it propagates a longer distance than the gigahertz bands being used by current cellphones & wireless internet standards, requires less power, and uses a relatively small antenna (1-2 inches). Therefore it is MORE valuable than most of the other sections, for the task desired.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall