Will America's Favorite Technology Go Dark? 930
Ant wrote to mention that MSNBC is reporting on the upcoming proposed digital television switchover planned for the end of 2006. From the article: "That's the date Congress targeted, a decade ago, for the end of analog television broadcasting and a full cutover to a digital format. If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box. Back when the legislation was written, New Year's Eve 2006 probably looked as safely distant as the dark side of the moon. But now that date is right around the corner and Congress and the FCC are struggling mightily to figure out what to do."
A suggestion maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Look. (Score:0, Insightful)
We are currently at war in two countries and paddling, not drifting, towards German style fascism.
For God's sake (I use the term literally), quit bitching about your TV. There'll be time enough to save that after we save our lives and our country. I'm 25 years old and male and it seems likely I'll be invading Iran pretty soon, but the media is bought off and Slashdot, the biggest connector of intelligent people on the entire Internet, is less of a source of information than this month's GQ.
Please, please, I am begging you, I....ooh! Shiny!
Re:Look. (Score:0, Insightful)
You haven't even seen fascism yet, but you will if you keep appeasing the islamofascists.
As if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hubble telescope, anyone?
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a matter of forcing people to ditch a solution that has been working for over 50 years, something that is dated but does its job, and is a lot cheaper. Old, cost-efficient things are what the industry hates. I run a server off a Pentium 120Mhz box -- do I need anything more for a minor WWW server that doubles as a border router for a small company LAN and an ISDN dial-in box for several employees? It works just perfectly. I get more from this ancient machine than you get from your P4 6Ghz if you waste your CPU cycles for running a spiffy GUI that blue-screens once a week.
The poor who watch TV can't afford HDTV. What they need, is low-cost entertainment, not high-end displays. I'm sorry if it cuts your company's bottom line -- but using legislation to force people to throw out what's working well just so they have to pay the upgrade costs is just wrong.
Re:Subsidize? (Score:4, Insightful)
A government should spend money on education or the environment...not on the quality of your tv picture!
Re:I would invest in HDTV if (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why most "HDTV's" are actually HD monitors with no tuners though. That pisses me off.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about plugging the analog hole (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, but "they" are as ready as they can be.
The driving force behind the legislation to abolish analog TV is the big media companies, who want to "plug the analog hole". That's why this is happening simultaneously in most of the industrialized world, despite the fact that no consumers have asked for it anywhere.
Their motive isn't to give you better quality pictures or (God forbid!) more choice. They want to force everybody to switch to digital because only digital technologies support strong DRM restrictions.
They can't retroactively change the court cases from the 70's that declared it legal to record TV shows on video for your own use. But by introducing new technology that makes it impossible to do so, they can make the legal point moot.
And by switching from analog to digial, they move away from the legal area where a reasonable balance has been struck between the interests of consumers and copyright holders, and into DMCA territory, where you're more or less classified as a terrorist if you even try to tamper with the copy protection.
I apologize for being so dystopian.
Re:The reason no one is switching over (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming he could count that high...
HDTV? How about HQTV? (Score:5, Insightful)
The quality of the PICTURE isn't so much the issue with TV, it's the quality of the PROGRAMMING.
Give me something worth watching first, then worry about improving the definition.
"Survivor", "Joey", and "American Idol" in 1080i are still crap, they're just crap in high resolution.
Re:Subsidize? (Score:3, Insightful)
In TFA it's said one reason there is a push to turn off analog broadcasting on schedule is that it will open up the frequencies for other uses. The FCC would auction these off for billions. Elsewhere it states the converter box would cost about $50-100. Spend a small part of the profit from selling the frequencies to subsidise converters for the poor. Same as compensatng people living on land taken over by the governemtn for some project. Still a net profit for everyone.
Re:Who really wanted HDTV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
"forever go blank"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
[0](maybe you, maybe not, can't tell... why don't you people ever own up to what you post?!)
Re:Wait a minute! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
There still aren't very many HD channels or programs that I see advertised in my area, and I live by Detroit. The switch is moving at a near-glacial rate.
If the government forces channels to switch over, though, it'll happen much more quickly. People will go out and buy HD sets, and with any luck the technology will begin to drop in price more quickly than it has to date.
To be honest, I don't see this switch happening unless the government makes it so. It hasn't yet, even with this law in place.
Re:It's about plugging the analog hole (Score:3, Insightful)
The driving force behind the legislation to abolish analog TV is the big media companies, who want to "plug the analog hole".
Until the signal plugs into my robotic central nervous system, there will always be an anlogue hole... my dilated pupil.
afraid that many Americans will be unpropagandized (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damn the media (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Subsidize? (Score:5, Insightful)
Panic is Not Warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real metaphor is less glorious :( (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd go with the legal parasites.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
The free market is not the answer to every question.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that they might read or attent class. Well they might read things you dont like. They might read Mein Kampf and go the fudamentalist bible class. If someone is happy watching TV it is in poor taste to condem them for that. Do you honestly think that reading is inherently better than TV. Is an art gallery inherently better than a bar?
Basicaly you make the assertion that TV is inherently bad. TV can be a great educator if the programme is good. THe fact that there is mostly shit on the box is a different matter. It is like saying that we should spend less time online, well 99% of the net is shit but we have the ability to pick and choose.
Let us say that the goverenment told you that in 1 year you would have to switch off your 802.11b access point because they need the frequency for something else and from now on you can not use the device without buying a $200 adapter!
What about the people in rural areas? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
But telling the billionaire CEOs of the major networks that their Neilson ratings are going to plumet overnight, particularly for shows pitched to a lower income demographic (can anyone say FOX?)? No... that will NEVER happen.
Re:Damn the media (Score:2, Insightful)
RikF
I have a solution... (Score:2, Insightful)
I guarantee you that every Joe Schmoe and their grandma will have one within 18 months, including the 4 ladies on the bus who spent 25 minutes the other day trying to convince their friend to go "AOL for Broadband" on a new SBC DSL connection...
(They also tried to figure out what DSL stood for. They settled on "Digital Satellite Link." I was behind them supressing laughter. I would have politely given them as much tech info as they wanted, but they seemed like the type of people who don't like smart-asses 20-somethings making them feel stupid by actually providing unsolicited factual information.)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure I qualify as the poor, but maybe the "not affluent". My view is that I don't really need to be able to watch "Everybody Loves Reaming", "American Idol", or whatever other god-forsaken crap they have on with more pixels. Most things on TV don't benefit much from higher resolution, especially if you don't have a huge TV. What about DVDs? Well, I admit that watching the MPEG encoding artifacts can be amusing, but it's also not worth paying for. If they were the same price, sure I might choose HDTV, but it doesn't offer significant benefits, so I'm not willing to pay a lot extra for it. Then you throw in buying all new DVDs and all this broadcast flag nonsense. No thank you! I'll stick with what I've got.
I hate digital TV (Score:3, Insightful)
In an analog transmission, if the signal gets weak, I get a bit of snow in the overall picture. In a digital transmission a weak signal results in ugly "garbage" data (squares, pixels, weird colors, black spots and sound clicks and drops).
In an analog transmission, the full clear picture is a full clear picture. In a digital transmission, I can see MPEG artifacts everywhere (most noticeable next to sharp edges, like credits and subtitles, and in subtle gradients). It's in NO way a better picture than analog!
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm by no means poor, but I have better things to do with my money right now then sink it into a technology that, initially, won't truly benefit me in any way over existing OTA analog signals. There are many more people that have less then I do that feel the same way.
Telling people to go take a class or read isn't exactly going to change their problem.
It's really very simple. (Score:3, Insightful)
"You know me, Marge! I like my TV loud, my beer cold, and my signal analog!"
No it isn't. That's a side effect. (Score:2, Insightful)
The broadcasters were also mostly against it because they, at very least, have to buy new transmission equipment, operate two broadcast antennas for a while, potentially provide more programming, and deal with a host of new technical issues.
Really, only two groups benefit from this: consumers who get better TV (and with digital tuners mandated to be in all TVs over 27 inches soon, the cost of tuners is going to come down sharply) and equipment makers who get to sell everyone a new TV and/or converter box.
Keith Irwin
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Provide a link for the mythical $50 set-top box.
Quotes on "Well, of you sell enough of them, the price will theoretically go down to $50" bullsh*t are not allowed.
As a TV engineer, I know as a *fact* that the analog will not be turned off until enough little old ladies have been given new TV's/set-top-boxes and are sufficiently placated. The original "deadline" includes the concept "2006 or until a sufficient percentage of homes have the digital receivers in place"
Cheap Engineer
Keep broadcasting (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted there is nothing on analog broadcasts worth watching, but nations do need simple, broadcast media for government communications, emergency communications and other items which fall within the national interest.
Re:There is a way out. (Score:3, Insightful)
I did just watch The Patriot on TBS the other night and was reminded, quite quickly, just how annoying commercial "breaks" are while watching a movie. One can only assume that constant TV/Radio/etc advertising has a more profound affect on the mind than just getting people to buy stuff. Imagine the psychological issues.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is it's not just television. This is about freeing up radio spectrum for other things (like wireless communications), which is the entire point in changing over to digital TV in the first place, and the reason why the change was mandated rather than allowed to "happen organically". TV stations were given the extra spectrum required for DTV OTA broadcasts with the understanding that they would switch off their analog broadcasts at a certain date. There is no good reason I can see for allowing TV stations to hog all that spectrum, duplicating channels, for an unspecified period of time.
Maybe not enough has been done to promote the switchover - obviously, there are some people even on Slashdot who don't understand why the switchover is even important. But it is, and it has to happen. I don't know what the solution is, but I wouldn't be averse to simply letting things go and seeing those "70 million" TV's go dark. (I doubt there are nearly that many analog-only sets receiving OTA broadcasts still in use anyway - are we counting analog sets hooked up to digital cable boxes like mine, as well as analog sets that are just sitting in a closet doing nothing? My guess is yes).
I'm a little sick of luddites deciding matters of technology policy for the entire country. This would be the equivalent of forcing our phone system to continue to support the telegraph at the expense of voice communications because a few people still used it. At some point, you say enough is enough and force an upgrade for the good of the rest of the world.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Spectrum is also a public resource, and some of us don't want to see it being wasted any longer. Your right to use outdated technology collides with my right to put the frequencies to better use.
The analog TV broadcasts are wasteful, but so is a sharp transition away from them.
Since there are easily 300 million analog sets in the U.S. now, and most figures I've seen is that a converter should cost around $30, the value of auctioning the VHF and UHF TV bands off better exceed 9 billion dollars just to cover TVs.
Now, we need to add in the new VCRs (since a VCR with a converter loses the ability to do a timed record of more than one channel (sequentially). Assuming cheap VCR's around $50, and 100 million of them, that's another 5 billion dollars.
Now, the portable TVs and VCR/TV combos that can't be 'upgraded' have to be replaced. I have no decent guesses how much that will cost, but for the sake of argument, let's call it 1 billion.
So, we now arrive at 15 billion dollars the FCC expects the public to shell out just to stay with the status quo.
Does anyone know how much it costs a TV station to convert? Those costs will have to be added in as well.
Given those costs, it's already an uphill battle if the FCC expects the transition to happen any time in the next few decades. Just to make matters worse for themselves, the FCC allowed the 'broadcast flag' nonsense into an already difficult situation. While that might be a boon for gray market manufacturers of 'signal enhancers' that just happen to lose the broadcast flag in the process, I doubt the FCC intended that, and everyone else but the MPAA loses.
If the FCC is serious about ever transitioning to DTV, it needs to drop the broadcast flag nonsense, and come up with a way for TV stations to broadcast digital and analog in parallel for a few years and then mandate that they do so (with some form of just compensation). Then they need to encourage manufacturers to make the new TVs and VCRs digital only. If they don't do that, digital will become an overpriced hard-sell feature and bargain analog sets will continue to sell vigorously.
They will need to keep that up until nearly all analog sets die of old age or everybody voluntarily upgrades for the clearer picture (that will happen about the time small cheap sets for about $30 hit the market).
Finally, when the transition is complete and they auction off the old VHF and UHF TV bands, the proceeds from that will need to be used to pay for the incentives and just compensation they had to give broadcasters and manufacturers.
Somehow, I doubt they will do what it takes. It will be interesting to watch what happens when the FCC and federal government try to take the people's bread and circuses away. TV is the new opiate of the masses.
TV: Entertainment or communication (Score:4, Insightful)
For some, a TV can be a window into the rest of the world. Much as I think television is overwatched, it still does have some redeeming qualities.
Without a doubt (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes yes. A thousand times yes.
Or have I been trolled?
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
Everyone has the right to television news in NTSC format.
They are taking the wrong approach here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
Mandate that very soon (nine months, a year; 18 months, tops) all television sets sold must include a digital tuner. That worked for the V-Chip.
That kind of scale will quickly drive the costs down. At the same time, mandate that three years after the date when digital tuners are required, analog broadcasts cease. CD players went from $1000 to $500 to $200 in two years, as volume ramped up. If the converter boxes could end up at $50, the DTV tuner incorporated into the set would add less than half of that to the price (no power supply, no chassis, no case.)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:1, Insightful)
External tuner boxes will do just fine as a interim. And manufacturers are certainly free to produce models with integrated tuners if they wish. There's no need to mandate them in all televisions sold.
Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess we'll be going without broadcast TV come Jan. 1, 2007 (or whenever the new regs start). After all, we quit cable when the prices began rising here in our county (now they're at around $40+ for basic cable), so we haven't been watching too much TV anyways. But that's what the Internet and
Could be a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Read a book..
Re:Subject (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, I stopped caring about TV in the early 1990s, so I probably won't have to worry about it. I am genuinely curious, though.
Also, I think you're wrong about this not being a political issue. I'm almost certain that when the folks out in the sticks (or otherwise without cable or sat) realize who was responsible for their TV cutting to static in 2007, they'll be at the pollbooth in 2008 to vote them out of office. This isn't a gradual thing, like eroding privacy rights. Someone took their TV away!
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
I think its safer to say it's the crack cocaine...
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
It's difficult for many people to grasp the notion that there is something *besides tv* that they can use to fill the cracks of time in their lives. None of the comparisons you've made (art vs. bar, reading vs. tv, government and 802.11b) take into account the dominance that television has in a great majority of "civilized" peoples' lives.
I say that, for the poor, TV is only one step removed from a bad drug habit. It is a means of escape from every day life that tells people how to act and what to think. I find it sad that low-income people think nothing of shelling out $70/month for cable tv instead of providing decent food and clothing for their children.
Also, I take issue with your "tv as educator" argument. There's an enormous difference between being able to *think* and having trivial facts spewed at you in an entertaining manner. Unless someone is going to be a marine biologist, for instance, I fail to see how knowing about the symbiotic relationships among various sea organisms is helpful to an otherwise underproductive and impoverished lifestyle.
Television in and of itself, as a medium for entertainment, is fine. But I could not possibly agree more that the poor, and probably everybody, would benefit by getting off their butts and actually experiencing the real world. While it's still here.
IPv6 (an interesting parallel)... (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is it's not just IP protocol. This is about freeing up address space for other things (like networked appliances), which is the entire point in changing over to IPv6 in the first place, and the reason why the change was mandated rather than allowed to "happen organically". ISP were given the extra addresses required for IPv6 with the understanding that they would switch off their IPv4 networks at a certain date.
Maybe not enough has been done to promote the switchover - obviously, there are some people even on Slashdot who don't understand why the switchover is even important. But it is, and it has to happen. I don't know what the solution is, but I wouldn't be averse to simply letting things go and seeing those millions of computers go dark. (I doubt there are nearly that many IPv4-only routers and computers out there anyway).
I'm a little sick of luddites deciding matters of technology policy for the entire country. This would be the equivalent of forcing our phone system to continue to support the telegraph at the expense of voice communications because a few people still used it. At some point, you say enough is enough and force an upgrade for the good of the rest of the world.
Re:Subject (Score:1, Insightful)
Obligatory simpsons reference (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
To reinforce this difference, let me remind people that 480i and 480p are valid DTV formats, defined by the ATSC, the NTSC successor. In the professional world, these are called SD, or standard definition, formats, and are easily derived from existing analog signals/infrastructure.
Hope this helps.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:1, Insightful)
This is just a wild-ass guess. You have nothing to support this claim.
You offer examples of products, with little government regulation, that don't interopreate. That's nice.
I can also think of many products with no government regulation that interoperate perfectly. And I can think of many products with government regulation that don't interoperate worth shit.
I don't see any correlation between "government regulation" and "interoperability". I don't see why government regulation would be any more effective than an industry consortium or an international standard. The government doesn't say how big 35mm film is (ISO 1007 does), but I've never had trouble feeding no-name film through my camera.
(Since the government is influenced so much by lobbyists, I'd rather simply take them out of the loop. No reason to have people with no particular technology skills and no skin in the game making the final decisions.)
This is "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" in the truest sense of the word. We don't have unregulated TV broadcasts, so nobody can say whether "TV stations would step all over each others' signal" or not. But you still claim that "you would need to buy a new TV if you switched cable companies" (oh dear!).
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, the "stone-age" technology is perfectly adequate for 99% of the people out there. The quality is good enough, it does it's job, and it's cheap. I don't hear people clamoring for digital TV like they did for color TV.
Besides, I actually think the analog signal is better - atleast when I get some interference all I get is some static rather than having the TV cut in and out (extremely annoying). And you can do quite a bit with a weak analog signal.
The real issues here are:
1. Analog TV currently eats up quite a bit of the most useful parts of the spectrum. The FCC would really like to reclaim this part of the spectrum, then resell it. Needless to say, this would be a huge windfall to the FCC/government.
2. Content providers want to clamp down on the analog hole. They want digital TV because they can then DRM the signal and implement things like broadcast flags. Most people don't want this.
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
--just my thoughts
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
There are demographics which have a considerably less pronounced income then other areas. This doesn't mean they will do without, but rather new fads and especially technological fads take time to adopt.
Here, we have very few broadcast channels and a great deal of those consumers do not possess the technology to recieve digital television in broadcast form. In fact, you would have to travel an hour and thirty minutes to actually buy one. Unless I am mistaken, our local wal-mart does not even carry them.
I suspect, if this happens, we will have quite a few people going dark. Ya know what's great... even working in television... I hope they do go dark and we see even few television hours in the house hold.
It's such a horrible addiction consumers need to break.
70 million TV's head for the lanfill's.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A suggestion maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
Really now!? A DRM'ed digital TV system is superior to a totally free non-DRM encumbered analog system? Will the new digital system be superior in that it has no or few commercials? No? Will it be superior in the programs? No? Will Joe or Jane voter be able to buy a brand new, perfectly fine 27 inch digital TV at Walmart for less than $200.00 No? Then why the h*** make such a change? This nothing BUT a political issue, the politics of big money in corporate America. It has NO benefit whatsoever for the ordinary Joe, especially the low income Joes whose well paying job went overseas and all Joe can do now is flip burgers.
Pay attention any congress critter reading this! You WILL definitely, surely, without fail no longer be in office after you have voted affirmatively on replacing free TV with hobbled, rights restricted digital TV. Joe and Jane voter will be VERY angry when they learn they can no longer record their favorite 3AM TV program from the new-fangled TV you are forcing down their throat. They want to watch it at a reasonable time, but because of the copy restrictions you have already voted into place for the digital TV system they may not be able to do so. You Mr. congressman or senator MIGHT get away with eliminating social security, but you definitely WILL NOT get away with taking TV away from the people!