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DTV Transition - One Year Later
commodore64_love writes "One year has passed since NTSC-analog television died (R.I.P. 6/12/09 — aged 68 years), and the new ATSC-digital television became standard. According to Retrovo, the transition had some successes and failures. Retailers saw this as an opportunity to sell new HDTVs and 46 million converter boxes, while cable providers advertised rates as low as $10/month. One-third of the converter boxes the US subsidized — approximately 600 million dollars worth — were never used by purchasers. Overall 51% of Americans felt the DTV transition was good, while 23% said it was not. 12% of respondents report that since the switch they have worse reception. Others received better reception, gaining 24-hour movie channels, retro channels, foreign programming, and other new networks that had not existed under the old analog system."
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television
Good suggestion, although I'd say that if you're replacing the VCR (and thus teaching new menus and settings anyway) it's probably easier to just go for a proper DVR instead. Newegg has a tuner/DVR for $140. Throw in a decent sized hard drive and you've got everything covered in one box for $200, and a device that (IMO) is altogether more elegant than a VCR or DVD Recorder.
I work for a small multi system cable company. We have several headends servicing small towns in south eastern Arkansas. Our primary problem is co channel. There are fewer DTV channels available so they gave out the same frequency to multiple stations. Also the range for DTV is much lower than the old VHF analog spectrum. With the old analog system Co channel was mainly a ghosting on the screen. With DTV it results in a complete loss of signal. We have tried several different types of antennas with no change in the problem. What we need to fix these problems is for the FCC to remap the frequencies they hand out to the stations. However they are not planning to do that blaming instead the cable operators for not fixing the problem.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on May 31st that http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100531/NEWS01/6010323/Forger-s-company-got-562K-stimulus-contract/ a local company, Tekreation Center LLC, recieved $562K in federal stimulus money to provide installation demonstration services to those who needed help getting the converter boxes to work. Demonstrations! Not actual installations. Tekreation reportedly performed 1,453 demonstrations for installing a digital-to-analog converter. $562,000/1453=$386.79 per demo. The could have bought a decent digital TV for that price. Another massive waste of your tax dollars.
Comcast's cable box is not capable of downscaling to 480i?
It is, but 1. renting the cable box costs a significant amount of money per month, and 2. subscribers are no longer capable of scheduling the cable box to be tuned to a given channel for use with a third-party DVR.
What she got was yet another box for me to put in the chain between her television and the antenna attached to the pole shed.
Nowhere, Nebraska implies legacy - low power - VHF broadcast and UHF transponders.
Trash the old - likely decades old - antenna.
Mount a new one, designed for fringe area reception. Mount it high. Don't cut any corners. Work strictly by-the-book. If you aren't comfortable with heights, let a pro do the job.
Consider installing a very low-noise pre-amp.
Anyone could implement an NTSC compatible, TV, Tuner card, PVR, camcorder... without paying anyone royalties.
Unlike copyrights, patents expire. For the first decade or so, NTSC color TV required a patent license from RCA (who incidentally sold its consumer electronics division to the company that now controls the MP3 patent). Unless you're fairly old, your reference point for comparison is probably sets produced in 1973 or later, over 20 years after NTSC was standardized. Likewise, ATSC is based on the same codecs as DVD (AC-3 audio and MPEG-2 video), so essential codec patents will expire within the next half decade.
. . .They absolutely are. I worked in the department that develops the guide software (all of the gui shit) on comcast settop boxes. . . .
* Licking chops *
So you're responsible? Well Mister Comcast Guide tester, I will politely tell you that the Comcast on-screen guide sucks donkey balls.
>>>one big antenna hogging all the spectrum which is only usable for one thing.
Broadcast TV occupies less than 1% of the total spectrum currently in use. It's not "hogging" anything. If you need more room to watch the Pr0n on your iGadget, shutdown one of the other less-useful services, not the TV which people rely upon for Tornado Warnings and other emergency events. See this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2003_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.jpg
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