Slashdot Mirror
US Switch To DTV Countdown Begins
s31523 writes "In February lawmakers postponed the switch from analog to digital TV. Now, the new June 12th deadline is upon us with no sign of another delay. CNET is reporting that the President himself has stated, '... I want to be clear: there will not be another delay.' So it looks like it is going to happen, for real this time. Even with the delay, there are still estimated to be millions of unprepared viewers. Local stations may participate in the voluntary 'Analog nightlight' services in which TV stations agree to keep an analog signal turned on in addition to their digital signals to provide information about the DTV transition and to notify unprepared TV viewers of emergencies, such as hurricanes."
I'm not afraid of the switch tomorrow. I've already spent the last few months getting repeated phone calls from my grandma complaining about the funny new box we put on her TV so she can still get her damn Judge Judy.
The last one was the best. Grandma called up and informed me that her new remote was broken. So I called my cousin, who drives over to her house and finds that the "broken" remote is the result of grandma having put a fucking doily on top of the box (blocking its IR receiver). I shit you not.
I love my HDTV. But it's a demanding love.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What... you thought "February" was too easy to pronounce correctly?
I thought that with the transition, the old analog frequencies were being reclaimed. Some of the ATSC stations will change frequencies and broadcast digital where the analog used to be. So are they delaying the completion of the transition to allow for this nightlight service? When will we have our stations at their final frequencies?
"We have worked hand in hand with state and local officials, broadcasters and community groups to educate and assist millions of Americans with the transition...I want to be clear: there will not be another delay."
Well, I hope my government is this vocal and helpful in getting everyone coordinated to switch to IPv6 and HTML5. Oh, ha, that's right. If we switch to those, the government doesn't get to auction off IPv4 or HTML4 for twenty billion dollars. So I guess you only get grade A support from the FCC and Department of Commerce only when they profit from it. That's really a shame, I think if the United States informed consumers on more standards and compliance it would benefit the average citizen. Hell, sometimes I wish the Senators & Congressmen themselves sought such information.
My work here is dung.
I've changed over to digital torrent distribution, freeing up the airwaves completely.
It's about damn time. I have thrown away old HDTVs already!
If someone hasn't figured out they need to pick up a DTV tuner, and gone out and obtained one by now, but they can sit there and watch the static. There has been AMPLE warning that this was coming, so even stupidity and laziness wont cut it for an excuse.
Digital backslide
A friend who uses an indoor antenna bought a digital TV, and now only has four stations, two in analog, one of which is a Catholic religion station, and two in digital.
I fear this will happen to cable subscribers too after the loss of Channel 8 [see "Channel 8 goes blank for some WSEC viewers," by Amanda Robert, IT, April 23]. I can see channels going digital one by one until there are no analog signals left.
I was using an indoor antenna (before the digital switch). If I remember correctly, I had channels 12, 17, 19, 20, 28, 48 and 55. Now it seems that in the digital age, digital TV users have only two stations.
Welcome back to 1955 St. Louis!
Free Martian Whores!
REPENT! Repent ye geeky sinners! For the end of days is upon ye!
Lo! As it is written, there shall befall a great and terrible calamity upon all the kin of the nerdy, and their most precious gadgets and devices shall be laid low by the machinations of the wicked! And they shall lament, and make agitated phone calls even in the early hours of the late morning!
And there shall be a great moaning as the geeky rise to diagnose the woes of their parents and uncles and aunts and cousins and neighbors and co-workers and friends and even children! Naught will your warnings save you as the wretched shall pay no need. And ye shall be swamped with piteous wails and whinges as the masses of humanity beat down thy doors and fill up they inboxes with useless protestations and opinions and heed not thy councils.
Thou shalt spend thy last days overseeing the procurement and installation of countless digital devices. Yea, in peoples very living rooms! And thou shalt be condemned to maintain and provide unpaid support for each and every one of these cheap and buggy imports till the end of thy unhappy life.
Repent geeky sinners! Give up thy sinful social ways and cast off thy connections to society, like the mathematicians and programmers of old! Give up thy internet and telephone connections and families and social life! Give up and repent, lest ye be danmed! REPENT!
May the Maths Be with you!
I thought there were a bunch of coupons given out to get it for practically free?
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
$40 off for a $50 box, yes. I got 4 of 'em.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The only way to get the masses to switch is to force it upon them. Hence the continuing popularity of Windows XP.
Curiously, an FM radio station I'd like to listen to says they'll be able to throttle up the power once NTSC station WTVR channel 6 in Richmond goes silent.
I don't know what rule is limiting their transmission on 89.5 MHz due to interference with TV channel 6 (82-88 MHz, with the video carrier on 83.25 MHz and the audio carrier on 87.75 MHz).
I suppose it's an IF thing, but I can't figure out how 10.7 MHz or 45 MHz fits in there.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
No more TV! So much free time! Thank you, government!
When the reception is good the new over the air DTV picture is way better than analog though often there is a noticable delay between the visual and the audio tracks. This is annoying. You see the mouth move then hear the words a tenth of a second too late. When the reception is bad, DTV degrades poorly and you see ghosts and block people moving around. This is annoying. Analog tv seemed to degrade in a nicer and recover faster as well. Losing a signal on DTV is like the DVDs when your watching a movie and it gets stuck and there is no way to advance the tracking. Then a blue screen comes up and says "Bad or no Signal".
I wonder what seeing block people does to your animus psyche/subconscious. You could be watching the news and just then the foxy weather lady looks like a new T4 with a hole in her body. It is mildly uncomfortable to watch more so than the analog.
This move to DTV is surely going to be a boon for the providers of paid tv. And as an old time cynical /.er, I would be interested to see if there is a tidy correlation between cable provider profits and over the air DTV complaints...
--A future cable subscriber.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
in austin, I have only lost one station in the transition, a spanish language channel that was very weak in analog. I get 6 digitals. (FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, WB & PBS). The nice thing for me is one of the stations broadcasts weather on a 2nd channel, so I get a radar 24/7, which lets me see where it is raining. For me, its all a plus to switch to digital. Much cleaner signal and HD. the only negative has been slower channel surfing since signal acquisition is slower. This is all with indoor rabbit ears (like 12 bucks).
Nope. They didn't just print more money for the coupons. The money came from the people that bought licenses for the freed up spectrum. Part of the fees paid for the license were set aside for the converter box program.
If it's on the same multiplex, it's quite easy to do (with DVB, anyway, dunno what sort of craziness might be involved in ATSC).
If it's not on the same multiplex, you'd need at least one other tuner in the box (2 if sequential "channel" numbers are all on different multiplexes). Quite often that's the case, though, particularly in boxes which offer picture-in-picture or "record one channel, watch another" type functionality.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
Here in Canada the deadline is 31 August 2011. There are a few digital transmitters on the air in major cities. Here in Vancouver I get CBC, CTV and Global on digital, plus KVOS (independent) and KBCB (home shopping - ugh!) from Bellingham, Washington. Set-top ATSC converters are not available here, so I bought one at Radio Shack in Portland last fall and hooked it up to my trusty multi-system TV.
Even dumbed down to 480i NTSC, the picture quality is better than DVD. The CBC HD signal shows what digital can do: being less heavily compressed it's better than what you get on cable. None of the other local channels have gone digital yet.
KVOS and KBCB pulled the NTSC plug in February. Their old analogue channels have been dead air ever since.
The Canadian broadcasters are dragging their heels, pleading poverty and the end of civilization as we know it. Nothing new there.
The cable companies have the general populace snowed in to believing that you must have cable to get any TV at all. Nothing new there, either.
...laura
Want to motivate everyone to pick up their converter box? They should have mandated this back when they delayed the switch the first time:
Most of the broadcasters have half hour "How To Switch" public service programs. The FCC should have mandated that, in March, they pre-empt 25% of their analog programming with one of these programs. In April, 50%, in May, 75%, and by June, analog channels were to carry nothing but the DTV PSAs, or emergency broadcasts when necessary, 24 hours a day. Even worse, let the soap opera run for 5 minutes and then break in with "an important announcement concerning your television service". I'll bet that most people will run out and pick up a converter within days of the 50% threshold.
I never did figure out why they simulcast the 'How to switch' PSAs on their digital channels. All they'd need is a reminder to rescan your converter after June 12th. And put that up full time on the UHF channels on June 12th for a week or so.
Have gnu, will travel.
I did a load of clothes at the local laundromat last night, and enjoyed a episode of the New Twilight Zone (which I guess is itself pretty old now) as my unmentionables tumbled in the dryer. The TV, perched precariously atop a non-functional pop machine, was older than my kids. The signal was fuzzy, and I believe the "antenna" was a brown extension cord, ends stripped and screwed into the old 300-ohm input. Most of the time the color dropped out, leaving the New Twilight Zone looking oddly like the Old Twilight Zone.
A couple of weeks ago, I watched a static-y news broadcast at the local barber shop. His TV was equipped with a newfangled set of rabbit ears of much more recent vintage, maybe 10 years old or even newer.
Tomorrow, both locations will almost certainly dish up nothing but that "analog nightlight". And even if the owners get a fancy new box -- not likely at the laundromat, and not terribly certain at the barber shop -- it won't help. The metal in the washers and dryers will probably futz up the digital signal beyond repair. At the barber shop, every time he turns on the clippers -- instead of just getting a little fuzzy, the screen will likely go blank.
It should be an interesting day.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I am psyched! My wife and I were getting Direct TV until a few weeks ago. We recently got a new TV and tried to tune into the digital channels over the air and were pleasantly surprised. In fact, the increased quality of the network channels for free prompted me to cancel our basic cable (well, dish really) package instead of paying MORE to "upgrade" HD cable.
I figure why pay pay to watch commercials when I can get them in HD for free?
The cable company was a little disappointed, but they can go die. I can't believe they expected me to pay MORE money to upgrade to HD digital service when low rez analog service was going away anyway.
The best part is that you get to keep the dish on the roof! Bonus!
Could we get going on the switch to the metric system now please? It would require about the same amount of effort and consumer education. Yards, acres, miles, feet - come on people, this is not the 1800s.
If you are in LA, feel free to drop by Machine Project on Friday June 12th at 10pm for a talk by Jason Torchinsky about mechanical televisions, to be followed by a midnight countdown to the demise of analog TV. In memoriam of the TVs we all have known and loved/hated, we'll be gathering a pyramid of old TVs together for a countdown as they go to static. Please join us, and if you promise to bring it home with you afterwards, bring a TV for the pyramid.
Farewell to Analog TV at Machine Project, Echo Park.
People who haven't yet got a box that is subsidized with a $40 government voucher are too poor or lazy to be valuable consumers. They're probably so poor they don't even pay taxes. Why spend millions upon millions of tax dollars to bring these bottom-of-the-barrel consumers to advertisers when they can't even afford the nearly-free converter? It's not worth it. The overall quality of audiences will be improved for advertisers if we just leave these last few millions of poor people behind.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I did a lot of research on this last year. For what it's worth, I'll offer a few thoughts from what I remember.
First, get an antenna that can handle both UHF and VHF. Some stations will still broadcast on VHF. Ignore ridiculous marketing claims that an antenna is "digitally optimised" or "HDTV ready" or however that went. A signal is a signal. Having said that, from reports, some "UHF-only" indoor/outdoor antennas will actually do okay with VHF signals as well. I wish I'd known that last fact before buying a honking big outdoor VHF/UHF antenna. The "UHF-only" antennas take way less room. In any case, find out where the stations are located physically, and point the antenna at them. If they're dispersed, you may need a motor control to rotate the antenna, which is a pain, or multiple antennas, which is a big pain.
When I finally bothered to hook up the analog/digital conversion box for more than brief testing, and a freaking huge outdoor VHF/UHF antenna *inside* my apartment (it's mounted on a short brass rod stuck in a hole drilled into the end of a two-by-four stub mounted on a large homemade work table, so that it's up near the ceiling), I got channels 8 (CBS), 10-1 (NBC), 10-2 (NBC), 13-1 (ABC), 13-2 (ABC), 21-1 (PBS), 21-2 (PBS), 21-3 (PBS), and 31 (Fox). This is four more channels than for analog. However, channels 8 and 13-1/13-2 are basically unwatchable, with signal levels too low. The picture constantly jerks and pixellates. I hoping those stations jack up the freaking power soon. There are some okay shows on 13-2, in particular. If not, screw it. If they don't care enough, why should I? I watch a lot of DVDs, and there are more okay films on DVD than I can realistically watch in a lifetime, even with only watching each film *once*.
Second, don't get the absolute cheapest converter box. It'll likely have serious problems unless you get fairly lucky, such as sometimes severe audio lag, poor handling of marginal signals, a poor feature set, a tendency to fail early, etc. I ended up paying about $23 per box after taxes, for the ones I bought with the two $40 off coupons sent by the government. If you're interested, these were the Zenith DTT-901 model, May 2008 firmware. One feature I liked was "pass-through", but that obviously will make no difference very soon. I'm not up to speed on current models. Look on video fanatic forums. Odds are good you'll find a decent brand and model for little money. I can't remember if any $40 off coupons are still good, but if they are and you have them, use them for two copies of the same model, so you'll have one on hand while the other is in the shop, if needed. Worst comes to the worst, you can sell the extra copy or give it to a relation.
If you're having trouble with elderly relations, tell them that the little box is a bully and that it has taken over the channel switching. It may sound a bit condescending, but if it works, why not? It's a clearer visual image for them than the obscurity of technical details. Be sure the remotes for them have large buttons and are as simple as possible. Keep the "good" remotes in a drawer, for when you need them to set up stuff. I use myself a nice Sony programmable remote, and it works well, but even I have a bit of trouble sometimes with flipping from one mode to another, whilst managing for example overlapping sound level controls (mainly when playing DVDs that seem to flip a coin when it comes to loudness). Asking elderly relations to cope with this kind of remote fiddliness will be too much if they already have trouble with the DTV changeover with which to begin. It will cause active pain (to you), but discard *everything* except power and start/stop (for DVDs if applicable) and volume and channels for your kindly but dumb elders. If you're daring, explain the fast forward button. One hopes that doesn't overlook anything!
(Yeah, I know about TV Fool and such, but that's been covered in vast detail elsewhere, and I forgot most of it anyway, heh-heh!)
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Within the last few weeks the local Comcast moved 40 of their sub-100 channels to digital-only. Probably more so they can do switched delivery than because of the DTV transition (broadcast channels etc. are still being fed in analog). But it screwed with the recordings on my dual-tuner Tivo for weeks until I manually updated all of them to "box" from "cbl" -- annoyingly, cutting them out from the benefits of dual-tuner in the first place. :P
So long, electromechanical television reception, you go into the pile with analog magnetic video storage and analog plastic audio storage. Analog radio reception, you're not looking too good...
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Yeah, well, sorry about that. I'll be sure to seed the page with new and interesting errors to spot ;)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
During a weather emergency, the TV not the first place I go
Unless you're driving, analog TV is (was) the best place to go for weather emergency info because:
for relevant information. Noaa.gov, weather.com, and/or a local AM "News and weather station" are my collective first choice.
Static on analog AM (455-1600kHz) can tell you a thunderstorm is 50-100 miles away. Beyond that I'd say analog AM and FM radio is all but useless. The news cycles are too long, there are too many clear channel and autoDJ and syndicated stations. (I've been there, camping at 4:00a.m., emergency sirens come on, I scan the radio dial for information and here 1940s music, Art Bell, Industrial music and static...)
NOAA transmitters are typical of heavy government, by time a weather event is verified enough to get into the update cycle, it has probably passed you. NOAA transmitters are pathetically weak and placed in locations where their line of sight coverage is abysmal. Cross any great lake and you're likely to pick up TV stations the whole way across but you won't pick up any NOAA station more than 10 miles offshore. (In my case not even this far because the nearest station was about 15 miles inland!) Try this, get one of those TV/weather radios (before tomorrow morning!) scan through the T.V. channels and if you are within 25 miles of a big city, you'll probably get some TV stations and if you hear a NOAA station at all, it will be very weak.
Now here is the rub, not only is digital TV an all or nothing affair which has a wider area of 'perfect picture', but a much smaller area of 'usable picture', but to date there are no portable battery operated televisions capable of receiving a DTV signal. Yes you could run your DTV converter off an inverter, and someone has even created one which runs on half a dozen D batteries, but DTV decoding is computationally intensive which means it burns through batteries much faster than your Analog LCD TV. Gaps in weather and other emergency coverage will eventually be seen as one of the unintended consequences of the government mandated forced obsolescence of analog TV. A second unintended consequence is that millions of TVs will end up in landfills before their time because their owner is either out of DTV range, or he isn't technically savvy enough to hook up a converter. The third unintended consequence is that themanufacturers of new televisions will have a very good year. DTV was sold in the pre-internet days on the premise that it would provide jobs for EEs after the downsizing of NASA and the military. It has provided jobs, but unfortunately very few of these jobs have been within the U.S. And now we're stuck with "the worlds first DTV system" which was designed when MS Windows didn't even have a TCP stack and the 'web' consisted of a few dozen organizations, email and usenet. My point here being that after all of the money spent on DTV, it is within 5 years of being irrelevant thanks to youtube and similar video services and more efficient codecs.
Due to the anti-ghosting features (or maybe multipath rejection) the current standard is unusable in a car/fast moving vehicle. There is an update to the standard to aleviate this oversight, but for now, all of those RV drivers /van drivers, and boaters who used broadcast TV will be SOL.
I think to date there are no (or very very few) ATSC capable portable tv's... hopefully someone corrects me, but that spells bad news for folks in hurricane prone areas who could lose power for weeks at a time....
JP
jp
Damn. Obviously, different areas of the country are very different! Here in Oklahoma, the NOAA transmitters are in VERY good locations. From my house, I can pick up two or three indoors, on one of my ham radio antennas I can pick up seven or eight from across the state and even into Texas. Just the other day I was in my car listening to the one that is located in the OKC metro area while I was over 100 miles away.
And the updates seem to happen very quickly here. Indeed, I'll hear the NWS discussing something with the spotters over the radio, then within just a few minutes the weather radio goes off with the new updates. If I had any complaints, I wish they would make more fine-grain use of the SAME codes, our storms aren't usually large enough to affect an entire county at once, but even if their alert specifically says "northeast corner of Oklahoma county" I (on the far west side) still get the alert because they only break things down to county level with the codes.
I do agree about using TV during weather events. The one thing I really liked about the switch to DTV was two of the local stations (NBC and ABC) set up a secondary channel that was nothing but weather. They've ruined it a bit already, with advertising and insets and such, but for a while one of them just had a live feed of their radar up with NOAA weather radio audio. I usually just tune to someone who has radar up and turn the audio down, living here all my life I can read the radar about as well as they can for stuff that matters to me, so don't need the chatter.
In Kansas City, most of the local stations all signed off at 9AM.
I thought it fitting that WDAF-TV4 ended their broadcast with
1. a crude "1949-2009" graphic
2. A few seconds of the old indian head test pattern
3. A video of the old stars and stripes video they always used at signoff everyday
Followed by a "ceremony" with some backoffice engineers pushing the big button you aren't supposed to press.