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Final Days For Australia's Analog TV
jones_supa writes "The switch to digital TV broadcasts in Australia has entered its final few days, with Sydney's analog signals being fully switched off today, 3 December. That just leaves Melbourne plus remote central and eastern Australia — and those areas will be switched over on 10 December, completing the country's transition to digital TV. The government runs an information site to assist the remaining crusty luddites with the switch-over."
Analog degrades better if you're on the fringe.
Digital is pretty much "all or nothing", with freezes, posterizing, etc.. if you've got a bad signal.
If you've got a bad analog signal, you'll get snow and static, but you'll still be able to see what's happening.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
We can see what's happening in all its grainy, 576i goodness.
For those who don't know... digital tv is this thing that superseded analog tv too long ago to remember in your country...
I've had more signal problems with digital TV than I ever did with analog -- things like a Charter cable commercial talking about its quality when the image of the spokesman's face had been broken and reassembled more than any synthetic cubist painting, or channels simply going missing for hours (albeit I think that one's a bug in the unit decoding the signal, not something everyone would necessarily experience). I suppose one of these days I'll appreciate the wonders of this particular technological progress, but for now it just seems like being handed shit and calling it chocolate ice cream.
even though I haven't lived in Australia since I was a kid, nor do i watch TV at all, it made me a little sad to see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q_S0Fk3dyM
I especially like how they played the 'go to bed kids' b&w clip and then the simulated 'switching off the CRT' images. Can't imagine how many grannies in sydney are bashing their TV trying to figure out what made it switch off.
How do they know it with digital TV?
DVB-T - simplex transmission, just like analog.
DVB-C - also a simplex transmission.
They can only track you if you use IPTV or connect the box to the internet so it can phone home.
New Zealand's Analog TV has just been turned off
Guess the sheep are pulling overtime now.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Analog degrades better if you're on the fringe.
Digital is pretty much "all or nothing", with freezes, posterizing, etc.. if you've got a bad signal.
If you've got a bad analog signal, you'll get snow and static, but you'll still be able to see what's happening.
But digital goes further, so if you're on the fringe of an analogue signal, you'll get a decent digital signal (well, as long as they're being transmitted from the same approximate location).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is interesting to watch for anyone like me who doesn't have a TV, and therefore, didn't catch the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJaft0a5VXc
i think he's thinking of iptv
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Get or build a better antenna. And put it up higher, and point it in the right direction. Use a signal amplifier. These things work.
"Digital killed the analog star..."
Table-ized A.I.
I live in a small town in the western US. I used to get four channels over the air on a good day with analog. Now, I get one. Not saying you're wrong, but I think people in more rural areas suffer more when the analog signal is cut.
Tell us more about your antenna.
I wonder if your "old" antenna is tuned for channel bands that are
not the bands used for digital.
There are some darn fine antenna designs on the internet
that can be made with Cu wire and a tape measure. The
first step is knowing the frequency bands you wish to watch.
A well tuned antenna is the first band pass filter to select the
signal for the receiver to dig data from.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
In Australia we have an government initiative called VAST (Viewer Access Satellite Television). Essentially, If you live in a rural area and have trouble getting OTA signals, they'll subsidize the cost of a satellite dish+decoder.
All the OTA channels are put up on the Optus C1 satellite and depending on your location they'll unlock the channels you're meant to get in your area.
I see no reason why this can't be extended to non-rural areas on a house-by-house basis.
Indeed. I don't know what they'll be using in Australia, but here in the US, 8-vsb transmits 1 error correction bit for every 2 data bits. I live in a small town in a valley that's 30 miles from the nearest television transmitter.
Australia uses DVB-T which has different propagation characteristics than 8VSB. DVB-T makes it easier to do SFN (single frequency network) because it resists multi-path interference (ghosting in the analogue world) better whilst 8VSB has a better power dispersal profile, which means larger coverage areas from one antenna.
Here in Athens Greece we are in a transitional stage where most of the city have only digital but for some few places the analog signal still exists; few day ago i was watching a football game (the real one, where they play with the ball mostly with the... foot!) in a friend's house located in a neighborhood with both signals available where my friend's tv was tuned in digital and a neighbor watching the same game was tuned in analog - we kept hearing that neighbor cheer or boo almost a minute before we could see in our tv the reason, totaly destroying our experience (by the way, we soon understood that he was supporting the opposite team - they lost, we won!).
Its even worse than that. If you have two digital TVs of different brands there is a slight difference in the time taken to decode. So if you have a TV in the kitchen with the same program as you are watching in the lounge you get an annoying "echo" effect
Did you submit it?
You know what's really funny? That you posted that without actually looking for posts about not owning a TV. There's one asking "who still watches TV?" and one that casually mentions not watching TV, that were posted before your comment. That's the closest you get. If you'd at least written "half the comments will be" you'd have gotten away with making a bad prediction. But you didn't. Instead, you admitted that you didn't look at the comments and just sarcastically posted a link to a 13 year old Onion article that everyone has already read, and added insults aimed at some theoretical people.
Number of Internets won by you: 0 (zero)