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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."
Me, personally, I think it's great and had to be done. Recently got a tiny DTV to USB tuner (~$20) for my computer and think it's fantastic. No doubt everyone's heard this viewpoint.
But let me relay the experiences of my grandmother who lives in the middle of nowhere mid-west. She didn't get new channels. She didn't get 24 hour movie channels. She didn't get better reception. 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. She now has another remote. Her checklist of things to go through when she wants to program a recording just got one longer as well as things to check when it's not working. And when she records it, she can only do one channel at a time as that's what the DTV box has to be set on since her VCR can't control digital signals. She was already getting analog distortion or static when she recorded her soap operas and I think she had learned to cope with this kind of distortion when viewing them intently. Last I checked up on her she complained that the digital distortion (specifically the audio distortion) was much harder to work through at times as opposed to fuzzy static. The clipping of the voices seems to ruin her enjoyment of a cookie cutter three quarter view emo meltdown between two hams.
So I think a lot of the views you're hearing are people who are connected to the internet and the unspoken voice of someone who has neither the internet nor a cell phone is actually a large consumer of the programs on air wave TV and products advertised on nationally broadcasted programs. Just something to consider, after helping her through this change I would be doubtful that she is alone or unique to her age group.
My work here is dung.
Comcast wanted to triple the rate to go from minimal analog to the equivalent digital offering. We said, "No thanks," and disconnected completely. Even my ten-year-old son was on board with the decision.
We watch a few shows on Hulu, get movies from the local library, and don't miss standard television at all. Much much better.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, CW, and MyTV.
Now I get Zero. I got a converter box, and it'll pick up CBS intermittently; as in I'll get one or two frames every 10 minutes. But nothing else comes in at all.
Hope it was worth giving away all the bandwidth to phone companies...
who will now use that bandwidth to forcibly stream advertisements to your "smart"phones. /remember when the FCC worked for the greater good of society?
I wish I were in that situation --- there are a couple of stations which we only get if the weather is perfect, several which we'll get if I position the antenna which I had to make ( http://current.org/ptv/ptv0821make.pdf ) just so and one station (broadcasting on 3 channels) which we get fine so long as the weather isn't bad.
The reason for this is the TV stations reducing broadcasting power --- when the local PBS affiliate switched to digital and other stations were still analog we received their signal perfectly, regardless of weather over rabbit ears in the basement --- now that they've reduced their signal strength ( http://www.current.org/tech/tech819d.html ) we barely get the signal w/ the afore-mentioned digital-optimized antenna located in the bay window in the living room.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The best (read sucky) part are all the perfectly functional, yet completely useless, "old" analog TVs that have been dumped (often illegally) in landfills.
I would argue that they're not always completely useless. I work for a cable network (name withheld) and some of my customers are still using the analog boxes with a set top box to do the signal reception and transcoding. Obviously they're not getting hd but that doesn't always matter to everyone.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
They absolutely are. I worked in the department that develops the guide software (all of the gui shit) on comcast settop boxes. All of the settop boxes I saw while working there had at least composite output. Hell, I did the majority of my testing on SD televisions.
What the GP seems to be refering to is Comcast moving to only digital signals over their lines, requiring people with SD televisions who previously only watched analog channels to get a settop box. (up until now, if you only watched analog channels you could just plug the RF cable straight into the back of your TV. Of course you wouldn't get any guide features, but this worked quite well for years with people like my parents).
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
P.S. Here's the rest of the story which editors did not include for some reason?
"For station owners in the UHF band the transition went flawlessly, however VHF station owners (channels 2-13) are still receiving complaints from viewers. In most instances the FCC has allowed VHF channels to increase their power levels 6-7 times higher than what they were just one year ago. In other cases VHF owners are experimenting with low-power repeaters to fill-in reception gaps.
"However ATSC-DTV's existence may be shorter than expected. The US FCC is meeting to discuss ways to eliminate free over-the-air television completely, in order to make room for more cellphone frequencies : http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2010/06/articles/television/fcc-wastes-no-time-on-television-spectrum-reallocation/ (FCC Wastes No Time on Television Spectrum Reallocation)"
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
A very interesting point, it would seem that the momentum of the cable and mobile industries have overtaken the fragmented broadcast TV businesses. See http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2010/03/articles/broadband-report/fcc-national-broadband-plan-what-it-suggests-for-tv-broadcasters-spectrum/ for a more detailed explanation of how the FCC may squeeze the spectrum of broadcast TV, further marginalizing the whole idea. The article says that only 15% of Americans get their TV OTA, hardly a substantial political force. Depending on their progress you may be able to project when "over the air" TV goes off the air. My estimate would be 2020.
The worst thing about the conversion is that there is no redundancy in the signal. No multi-cast, spread-spectrum, nothing useful for checking or comparing signals.
And that kind of broadcast is only useful over hard-wired, land-lines with guaranteed hardware in the middle. Which means paying a multi-conglomerate for permission to watch "over the air" signals.
Thanks, stupid government. I hope you learn next time!
8-PP
armanox is watching on a translator station, which still transmits analog?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_relay_station#Digital_transition
It's a widely held, yet wrong, belief that all NTSC transmission had to stop. Some still remains, for like 1% of the population.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
But that leads to a very serious question.
And who is going to pay for all this?
The trouble is that the FCC wanted to auction off these frequencies to companies to raise money and to enable new services, which is all well and good.
The converter program was already controversial in terms of the amount of money it cost, and roundly criticized in rural circles because the new digital stations tend to broadcast using just enough power to reach their majority markets (the people who are largely already on cable anyway, because it's available there). Add to that the fact that digital signals just vanish below a threshold where analog is still very viewable, and you lose a lot of viewers.
But not enough to make it worthwhile to turn the transmitter power up.
If you offered them decent-speed Internet, many of them couldn't afford to take advantage of it anyway. So pipe in all the 3G you want, by the time you offer them a tethered connection at $60 a month, a lot of them would have to decide between news and food. Food wins.
Dialup would abound in areas like that, if the folks had the money to buy a computer and the $15 a month for an account, assuming anyone offered it that cheaply out in the sticks. I've offered up more than one computer, only to see it never turned on because dialup is $20-30 a month and limited to 28.8k due to overloaded phone lines, satellite is even more expensive, and Cable or DSL are a distant dream available miles away.
TV had the advantage of being free (for the consumer, at least), and faster than the delayed delivery of the newspaper.
Who has the incentive, the will, and the resources to serve this population? Who wants to use even part of the money the government made selling off the spectrum used to give the vast minority (rural elderly on fixed income) their TV back?
Most of them probably just pick up a newspaper on their weekly grocery run now and fall further out of touch on the daily news. And it's hard to justify spending a lot of money to get them back to the flashy high technology they depended on in the 1970s.
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