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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."
Hmmm, my programming source still seems to be up.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Frankly, I see something like this - the disruption of TV - as one of very few events that could get people off their butts to do something about their government. Spy on their phone calls? Eh... Take away their American Idol? Riot in the streets.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
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.
But...but...but they might miss American Idol, The Bachelor or Dancing With The Stars!!!!
You obviously missed the part where he said
Anyone with half a brain will be fine
Because Obama's advisor for the DTV transition works for a company that benefits from the delay. Until that chunk of the spectrum becomes available to the people who paid for it (mainly Verizon & AT&T), his company has less competition.
Well, since you're reading the news on an American website, and news of the digital TV switch has been all over American news for years, simple deductive reasoning would lead you to believe the country they're talking about is obviously Uzbekistan.
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)
If people haven't heard what to do then they're not watching enough tv. They've had plenty of test blackouts scheduled with numbers to call if they are not receiving a digital signal.
My 90 year old grandmother was ready 6 months ago. She watches the least amount of TV of anybody I know. I really don't think it's old people that aren't setup.
But also
Confusion. Uncertainty. Who reigns, and who is merely the figurehead, its strings pulled by the other?
Personally, I vote (yeah right, as though we get to vote on this) for Confusion to reign. It evokes images of people running around with their hands up in the air, yelling hysterically. A Reign of Uncertainly merely makes me think of people grimacing, with their eyes darting back and forth.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
After that, they put up the old Indian Head test pattern and audio tone for a couple of minutes. At the stroke of midnight, it cut to static. It was just like nightly sign-offs when I was a little kid, and it almost made me misty-eyed.
The one that went out this afternoon showed a bunch of snippets from the past 50 years, then they showed a live coverage of one of their engineers out in the transmitter shack pushing the "OFF" button. The instant cut to static was good for a laugh.
A TV (or television) is like a computer monitor, except that it doesn't need to be plugged into a computer to display a video signal. It uses a radio link to connect to a wireless access point, kind of like bluetooth or wifi, except the link is only one way, and the access point may be many kilometres away. In fact, the same signal is sent to many TVs simultaneously, in much the same way that a broadcast frame is seen by all of the computers on a LAN. They actually call the television signal a "broadcast". Everybody sees the same stream at the same time. TVs have no facility to back up and replay the video stream. It cannot be paused, either.
Since the wireless link is a simplex link, everyone is stuck receiving the same video signal. A TV viewer is bound by the scheduling and content choices made by a person called a program director who works at the broadcast facility. In order to alleviate this obvious problem, "channels" were introduced. Each channel streams a different video stream. However, due to the expense of the transmitting equipment and the fact that they are all using the same transmission medium (the so called aether), only a handful of channels exist. Until recently, these video streams were transmitted using an analog signal. As such they were plagued with interference, crosstalk, etc.
To combat these obvious defficiencies, many places started streaming the video to the TV over a shared wire. This eliminated most of the interference issues, and allowed for more video stream channels to be sent to the television. Over time, the TVs became more like computers. The monitor was connected to a box which contained a hard drive, allowing video streams to be recorded and played on demand. The signals were transmitted digitally, which allowed for error correction, and it allowed for true internet connectivity and two way communication. Most people still use them only for simple video streaming, however. There are also quite a few people who (probably for quaint religeous reasons), still rely on the analog wireless broadcasts to receive their pre-scheduled, pre-chosen video stream.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
My apologies, i'm a vodka and olives taste tester so i completely understand.
The part he nailed on the head was that it's the networks who care, not the majority of the consumers. If the networks don't have anyone to watch their ads, they won't have anyone to buy ad space.
There are also quite a few people who (probably for quaint religeous reasons), still rely on the analog wireless broadcasts to receive their pre-scheduled, pre-chosen video stream.
Analog television signals can convey the subtle nuances of a scene in a way that the average wood-eyed viewer could never notice, but that a trained videophile such as myself can spot like night and day. Also, cathode-ray tubes impart a dynamic character and emphasis to the even-numbered harmonics that impart a "holographic" like quality to the images, while still retaining the overall linearity of sweep azimuth and elevation granted by the intrinsic behavior of electrons given thermal energy by a heated cathode with a low work-function and accelerated inside a synchronized magnetic or electrostatic field. You'd never catch me watching digital TV on some cheap LCD display, buddy! Even an idiot can tell that the greens are heavily excoriated and taste entirely wrong.
Anyone else, well, maybe there are survival of the fittest selection standards still hitting us, on occasion.
Yes! Those people who are too stupid to figure out how to get out TVs to work will instead resort to sexual activity for recreation, and are more likely to be too stupid to use birth control, and eventually...
um... I think I see a problem here.
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.
While I agree with the sentiment, the one serious counter-argument I'd give is that you need to ensure that people are able to receive public safety announcements. TV is much better than radio for dealing with severe weather, because being able to see the weather maps and storm tracks gives you a much better idea of what's going on. Going into tornado season in Oklahoma (where I grew up) without TV would make me a little uncomfortable.
Recall that we (the people) give the broadcasters the right to use the airwaves in exchange for them providing public services: news, weather, and emergency announcements. We decided these things are important, so its important to make sure their accessible.
But at the same time, this has been coming for a long time, people should have been able to figure it out by now.