Do you actually watch ATSC digital TV from an antenna, or are you just regurgitating what you read somewhere?
With the exception of Sinclair stations (none near me, thank goodness), Christian Kooks, and some (but by no means all) PBS stations, few stations are multi-casting. There are some cases where an SD Spanish channel becomes a subchannel, but most subchannels are weather radars. In the four years that I've had an ATSC tuner, the number of subchannels has gone DOWN. This was made even worse at the start of 2007 by the FCC setting requirements that each subchannel was subject to the requirement to broadcast three hours of E/I crap a week (most E/I programming is neither educational nor instructional), even if it was just a dumb radar feed with no advertising.
Have you been in Wal-Mart lately? They have $200 TVs with digital tuners. These are CRT sets, and even display a crappy old NTSC interlaced picture. Nobody says they have to stop selling NTSC-scan CRT TVs, just analog-tuner-only TVs.
Since DTV uses less radio spectrum than analog, we can have the same number of channels taking up less space
I hate to break this to you, but digital uses 6MHz per channel, the same radio spectrum as analog. The only difference is that analog can't tolerate adjacent channels, and digital can. In other words, it uses the same spectrum per channel, but it uses the whole spectrum more efficiently.
Then they better give you a good deal on them, because they're last year's models. Back in March (two years before the broadcast cutoff), the mandate to stop the manufacture of ANY sets with analog-only tuners kicked in. (I think this includes VCRs and DVD recorders too.) I'm sure there are still "monitors" (sets with no tuner at all) being sold, but they're exempt for obvious reasons.
And like someone else said, there are other things to do with a TV than hook up an antenna. Many people may never notice until a few years later when they move the TV to the guest bedroom with no cable TV outlet.
What I'm getting the popcorn ready for is what happens at thrift stores. They've already pasted up the disclaimer in random places around the stores.
The reason interlace stayed around was because so many TV stations have cameras which output interlaced video. So get an up-converting TV. It's really rather rare that "venetian blinds" effect is visible.
And it's even better than that, because the digital signal can be used on adjacent channels. With the exception of 6-7 and 13-14, how many analog stations in your area are on adjacent channel numbers? Ever wonder why? Because analog needs channel separation.
Right now I can tell you that there probably ARE adjacent channels in your area, you just don't know about them because they're in digital, and even if you can receive them, they tell your TV set to show a different channel number.
So we lose 25% of the channels to the spectrum auction, but can use twice as many of the ones that are left. (That's not exactly true, because 2-6 are apparently not good for digital, so we lose a bit more than 25%.) Digital is also better about geographic distance between transmitters on the same channel.
But those boxes are inherently cheaper than US boxes, because they don't decode HD. US boxes must be able to decode HD, even if they don't have an HD output. This means more decoding power and framebuffer RAM are needed. Not to mention that only now are they going to be mass-manufacturing boxes, so most current boxes have been in the $200 and up range, and rarely found in stores. (Best Buy has a $180 HD Samsung model they've been selling, but it's apparently harder to find in stock than a Wii. They'd rather sell DirecTV anyhow because they get paid a cut of new subscriptions.)
The good thing about this for us is that over in the UK and the rest of Europe, HD is a second-class signal. There are millions of boxes out there that can't receive it, and they either have to get people to throw away those millions of receivers, or transmit two signals. Guess which isn't going to happen. Oh well, it's only the BBC, they can just raise your licence fee again to pay for it.
Over here the TV stations will only have to broadcast one signal. Sure, it takes more processing to decode it, but Moore's law is on our side.
Well, at least that explains how the Irene Demova Virus could affect only a single brand of laptop. Now we just have to hope that teh terrists use unpatched HP laptops as bomb timers.
Does it blend?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Now I'll have hot grits in my pants every day for forty years!
No wireless. Less power than a CANDU. Lame.
I did a quick check of TFA and could not find the word "exclusive". So quit your whining about "monopoly" this and monopoly that.
If you're going to insist on anti-corporate whining, at least whine about the right reason. FTFA: "Previously, cable or wire video-service companies had to negotiate local franchises with each municipality or township." This merely prevents them from having to individually deal with every little rural hick town and arrogant bedroom community in the state, some of which may indeed have already negotiated exclusive "monopoly" deals with another provider.
I've been using Joker since 2000 and had no problems. But I only use them as a registrar. Maybe the above poster was using them for some other service like DNS. But apparently he doesn't care enough to tell us what the problem was.
Copper? Don't make me laugh. Every audiophool knows that you need silver. And not just any silver, but pure isotope 109 silver (its higher density makes the sound flow better).
That is why I put a Firewire card in my G4 MDD tower, so that I can have each of my three external drives hooked up to its own dedicated FW400 port. (but of course the big drives are on the inside, since the MDD has four drive bays and two optical drive bays)
Of course that's a little more difficult to do with a laptop, but you're not likely to be leaving drives permanently attached like you would with a desktop.
Actually, Concorde would be flying to this day except for one thing: 9/11.
The re-inaugural flight was already on its way to New York when some assholes with boxcutters boarded planes at Logan. That was bad enough, but even worse was that a significant portion of the Concorde's regular customer base worked in the upper levels of the WTC.
Re:64 years late!
on
Flying Humans
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Okay, fine. Then this guy can become the first to survive two jumps without a parachute.
I don't know why people hate them so much. If you build circuits, i.e. actually pick up a soldering iron and make something occasionally, they have the essentials that you don't want to order from DigiKey, i.e. the perfboards you need to solder that PIC controller and misc. onto.
Certain of their generic project PC boards are cheaper than anything you'll find at Fry's. That and I'm always needing to pick up new tips for my desoldering iron as they erode. (though less so now since I picked up a bunch when they closed a couple of stores back in early 2006 or so)
Tandy also had Computer City, which they sold off to CompUSA. That makes two attempts by Tandy to run a big-box store.
But In(cr)edible Universe was probably the biggest of the big-box stores ever attempted. I was only in the Houston store once during its closeout, but the fact that Fry's moved into two of the old DFW locations, and didn't even use all of the Arlington location as store space, should give you an idea of just how enormous IU was. I guess the bigger they are, they harder they do fall.
Remember those computer fairs that used to come around?
There's still one that goes to San Antonio every six weeks or so (I think their only other city is Tulsa), and I'm expecting that to end the moment Fry's realizes they forgot to put a store in San Antonio and corrects their oversight.
For example, Sears hasn't always been "Sears", and there was a pretty long period in the '90s where their support went in the tank... but lately they've been winning me back again. Pity they don't have "Sears Electronics".
You do realize that they got bought out by K-Mart a couple of years ago, right? The same K-Mart that a few years back closed a bunch of their stores (certainly any that I knew of in central Texas) because they were on the verge of bankruptcy? And yes, it was K-Mart buying Sears, and not the other way around.
I'm glad to hear that they at least had the brains to close most of their DFW stores. The very existence of Fry's and Apple Store makes CompUSA redundant. I'm just surprised they didn't close the NW Austin store earlier this year.
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Do you actually watch ATSC digital TV from an antenna, or are you just regurgitating what you read somewhere?
With the exception of Sinclair stations (none near me, thank goodness), Christian Kooks, and some (but by no means all) PBS stations, few stations are multi-casting. There are some cases where an SD Spanish channel becomes a subchannel, but most subchannels are weather radars. In the four years that I've had an ATSC tuner, the number of subchannels has gone DOWN. This was made even worse at the start of 2007 by the FCC setting requirements that each subchannel was subject to the requirement to broadcast three hours of E/I crap a week (most E/I programming is neither educational nor instructional), even if it was just a dumb radar feed with no advertising.
Have you been in Wal-Mart lately? They have $200 TVs with digital tuners. These are CRT sets, and even display a crappy old NTSC interlaced picture. Nobody says they have to stop selling NTSC-scan CRT TVs, just analog-tuner-only TVs.
A 75% positive rating is still four times the positive rating of the US Congress. How is 75% "miserable"?
I hate to break this to you, but digital uses 6MHz per channel, the same radio spectrum as analog. The only difference is that analog can't tolerate adjacent channels, and digital can. In other words, it uses the same spectrum per channel, but it uses the whole spectrum more efficiently.
In Soviet Russia, analog TV network shuts off YOU!
Then they better give you a good deal on them, because they're last year's models. Back in March (two years before the broadcast cutoff), the mandate to stop the manufacture of ANY sets with analog-only tuners kicked in. (I think this includes VCRs and DVD recorders too.) I'm sure there are still "monitors" (sets with no tuner at all) being sold, but they're exempt for obvious reasons.
And like someone else said, there are other things to do with a TV than hook up an antenna. Many people may never notice until a few years later when they move the TV to the guest bedroom with no cable TV outlet.
What I'm getting the popcorn ready for is what happens at thrift stores. They've already pasted up the disclaimer in random places around the stores.
The reason interlace stayed around was because so many TV stations have cameras which output interlaced video. So get an up-converting TV. It's really rather rare that "venetian blinds" effect is visible.
And it's even better than that, because the digital signal can be used on adjacent channels. With the exception of 6-7 and 13-14, how many analog stations in your area are on adjacent channel numbers? Ever wonder why? Because analog needs channel separation.
Right now I can tell you that there probably ARE adjacent channels in your area, you just don't know about them because they're in digital, and even if you can receive them, they tell your TV set to show a different channel number.
So we lose 25% of the channels to the spectrum auction, but can use twice as many of the ones that are left. (That's not exactly true, because 2-6 are apparently not good for digital, so we lose a bit more than 25%.) Digital is also better about geographic distance between transmitters on the same channel.
But those boxes are inherently cheaper than US boxes, because they don't decode HD. US boxes must be able to decode HD, even if they don't have an HD output. This means more decoding power and framebuffer RAM are needed. Not to mention that only now are they going to be mass-manufacturing boxes, so most current boxes have been in the $200 and up range, and rarely found in stores. (Best Buy has a $180 HD Samsung model they've been selling, but it's apparently harder to find in stock than a Wii. They'd rather sell DirecTV anyhow because they get paid a cut of new subscriptions.)
The good thing about this for us is that over in the UK and the rest of Europe, HD is a second-class signal. There are millions of boxes out there that can't receive it, and they either have to get people to throw away those millions of receivers, or transmit two signals. Guess which isn't going to happen. Oh well, it's only the BBC, they can just raise your licence fee again to pay for it.
Over here the TV stations will only have to broadcast one signal. Sure, it takes more processing to decode it, but Moore's law is on our side.
Well, at least that explains how the Irene Demova Virus could affect only a single brand of laptop. Now we just have to hope that teh terrists use unpatched HP laptops as bomb timers.
Does it blend?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Now I'll have hot grits in my pants every day for forty years!
No wireless. Less power than a CANDU. Lame.
If you take it apart, I think it voids your warranty. (No Soviet Russia necessary here!)
I did a quick check of TFA and could not find the word "exclusive". So quit your whining about "monopoly" this and monopoly that.
If you're going to insist on anti-corporate whining, at least whine about the right reason. FTFA: "Previously, cable or wire video-service companies had to negotiate local franchises with each municipality or township." This merely prevents them from having to individually deal with every little rural hick town and arrogant bedroom community in the state, some of which may indeed have already negotiated exclusive "monopoly" deals with another provider.
I've been using Joker since 2000 and had no problems. But I only use them as a registrar. Maybe the above poster was using them for some other service like DNS. But apparently he doesn't care enough to tell us what the problem was.
I would like to point out that they aren't called spare monkeys, they're called scratch monkeys.
Copper? Don't make me laugh. Every audiophool knows that you need silver. And not just any silver, but pure isotope 109 silver (its higher density makes the sound flow better).
That is why I put a Firewire card in my G4 MDD tower, so that I can have each of my three external drives hooked up to its own dedicated FW400 port. (but of course the big drives are on the inside, since the MDD has four drive bays and two optical drive bays)
Of course that's a little more difficult to do with a laptop, but you're not likely to be leaving drives permanently attached like you would with a desktop.
Actually, Concorde would be flying to this day except for one thing: 9/11.
The re-inaugural flight was already on its way to New York when some assholes with boxcutters boarded planes at Logan. That was bad enough, but even worse was that a significant portion of the Concorde's regular customer base worked in the upper levels of the WTC.
Okay, fine. Then this guy can become the first to survive two jumps without a parachute.
Certain of their generic project PC boards are cheaper than anything you'll find at Fry's. That and I'm always needing to pick up new tips for my desoldering iron as they erode. (though less so now since I picked up a bunch when they closed a couple of stores back in early 2006 or so)
Tandy also had Computer City, which they sold off to CompUSA. That makes two attempts by Tandy to run a big-box store.
But In(cr)edible Universe was probably the biggest of the big-box stores ever attempted. I was only in the Houston store once during its closeout, but the fact that Fry's moved into two of the old DFW locations, and didn't even use all of the Arlington location as store space, should give you an idea of just how enormous IU was. I guess the bigger they are, they harder they do fall.
There's still one that goes to San Antonio every six weeks or so (I think their only other city is Tulsa), and I'm expecting that to end the moment Fry's realizes they forgot to put a store in San Antonio and corrects their oversight.
You do realize that they got bought out by K-Mart a couple of years ago, right? The same K-Mart that a few years back closed a bunch of their stores (certainly any that I knew of in central Texas) because they were on the verge of bankruptcy? And yes, it was K-Mart buying Sears, and not the other way around.
It doesn't make sense to me either.
I'm glad to hear that they at least had the brains to close most of their DFW stores. The very existence of Fry's and Apple Store makes CompUSA redundant. I'm just surprised they didn't close the NW Austin store earlier this year.
I curse both of you.