Sorting Through the Analog to Digital TV Mess

H_Fisher writes "CNN offers an article from Fortune magazine, giving a look at the problems surrounding the mandatory switch from analog to digital TV in the U.S., now slated for 2009. 'Managing this transition -- which will render about 70 million TV sets obsolete -- will be not be easy,' Marc Gunther writes. Among the problems: millions of American households without cable or satellite access will lose free access to news and weather along with the rest of their broadcast fare. Uncle Sam's solution? 'Yes, the very same federal government that is cutting back on college loans and food stamps will soon be issuing TV vouchers' - $1.5 billion to help U.S. households buy new digital TV equipment."

Re:Are you fucking kidding me?

[limabone]

You can already pick up HD signals with your crappy rabbit ears or that monstrosity attached to your house...a generic UHF/VHF antenna will do just fine, and companies that advertise their antennas as being for HDTV are just trying to entice you into buying them.

You will NOT have to replace your antenna, what you will need to get is an external converter to turn the signals from your antenna into something your current TV can handle.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[daveschroeder]

Of course, it is a /. article, so I suppose we've come to expect at least one troll line in the article summary.

Yeah, I thought about pointing that out, too, but that quote was actually from the Fortune article itself [cnn.com]. :-/ Take it up with the author [mailto], I guess...

Set-top box?

[Soruk]

The UK seems to have got the right idea. We can get digital terrestrial set-top boxes that plug into the TV, via a SCART lead (which carries, amongst other things RGB and Composite picture signals, and stereo audio), or on a few boxes via an analogue RF signal. That way virtually all existing TV sets can remain in use long after the switch-over takes place.

Only the really old sets don't have SCART sockets now, and although suitable boxes with RF Out exist they are more expensive.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[daveschroeder]

Spectrum space commands such a high price because it is limited right now. Open up the supply, with the same demand, and price goes down. This is economics 101.

Actually, the estimates on spectrum auction proceeds take this into account.

Re:What happened to the free market?

[pcraven]

It is being legislated because the spectrum is legislated. It would open up a lot of money's worth of spectrum, more than 1.5 billion worth.

You don't have to junk the TV, just get a digital receiver and then plug it into your current TV.

Re:What happened to the free market?

[Software]

My understanding is that owners of existing analog televisions will have to buy (possibly with government assistance) a tuner/converter box that plugs into their antenna and their television. Maybe they'll need to get a remote control to change the channel. Nobody needs to throw out their television. Yes, some people will instead buy a new digital TV, but it won't be a big deal in the larger scheme of things.

Analog TV transmitters, on the other hand, will probably be mostly useless. Most antenna towers do not have a lot of extra space to keep around unused antennas, so the analog TV antennas will be removed and replaced with something else. It makes perfect economic sense - something of lower value will be replaced with something of higher value.

You can

[wiredog]

Join the Army and get the GI Bill. There's only one minor downside...

Would $40 really help your college fund?

[bobalu]

>I'd rather go to college than watch TV
Great, do that and see if it can help your reading skills.

They're not giving you help to buy a digital TV, they're giving $40 for a converter box so you can watch a crappy old analog TV with a nice digital signal. Would $40 really help your college fund?

Re:In the Bay Area

[Ironsides]

Most DTV Transmitters have not been transmitting at full power. There is a deadline coming up at some point where they will have to start transmitting at full power, at that point you should have much better recepetion. As to why they have not been xmitting at full? Power costs a lot of money. TV stations generally spend 10k per month on a single transmitter.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[LlamaDragon]

Funny how quick people are to point out that funds are still increasing while ignoring the fact that the smaller-than-planned increases will still force cutbacks in education programs [ourfuture.org].

Re:'Yes, the very same federal government...'

[operagost]

Figures here. [slashdot.org] Make sure to skip the "cutting $13 billion" at the top and read the real figures at the bottom. $13 billion will be saved, is what it should say. There isn't some mythical pool of college loan money from which $13 billion will be taken.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[ndansmith]

. . . you really don't miss the damn thing: anything that's actually worth watching will be out on DVD sooner or later anyway.

Or you can use a good tv torrent [eztvefnet.org] site and watch the programs without commercials the night they air (possible even before broadcast time if you live on the west coast). I really do not think that all the effort to switch to a new sort of television is worth it. The computer is becoming the wholistic entertainment center for the household: Music, games, movies, now television. Someday soon a tv that is just a tv will be like a cellphone that has no camera: extinct. So I think the government should not pony the $1.5B, since media-over-IP is the wave of the future anyhow.

Oh, and for any **AA lawyers who are reading this, I don't actually use tv torrents. I swear!

only on /.

[the computer guy nex]

"Forget college, forget healthcare, we need radio bandwidth and tax cuts for the richest to help fight the terrorists."

Anyone else interested in seeing the person that actually modded this +5 Interesting? Lets not forget that In fact, the percentage of GDP spent on health is higher in the United States than in countries with government-provided health care [mediamatters.org] and the government pays over 300 billion a year in grants towards college [state.gov].

Heaven forbid we spent 1/200 of that on television. Crazy liberal whiners.

obsolete???

[Anonymous Coward]

..which will render about 70 million TV sets obsolete..

obsolete? why? suddenly their tubes will be unable to steer electrons? just get
a digital set-top box that CAN decode the digital signal and then send that
to the old analogue happy TV - via scart or coax. its what the rest
of the world are doing!

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[_Sharp'r_]

Now try and apply that to the reality of the changes in the student loan program [newsobserver.com] and you'll see that your example has absolutely no relation to reality.

The per student amount of loans available was raised considerably. The artifically low interest rates subsidized by the government were allowed to rise a couple percent, but with the benefit of becoming fixed instead of variable. Interest rates in the US have been rising recently, you might also note.

Any student who is currently eligible for a student loan would still be eligible after the changes and could actually get a bigger loan to deal with inflation. What's going on is that down the road when they go to pay it off, they'll have to pay more for the loans they took out, thus saving the taxpayers some money over the next 5 years.

So how does that scenario reduce the availability of student loans for students again? Answer, it doesn't, it just affects the eventual payback by the now working professional.

Re:Same here

[TheSync]

ATSC is not inherently harder to demodulate than DVB-T, in fact it is a bit easier, but only if you don't have multipath interference. Until this year, ATSC demodulators have had a rough time with multipath intereference, but now there are new chips that can handle it OK.

DVB-T uses COFDM which uses hundreds or thousands of carriers at different frequencies that change amplitude slowly. On the other hand, ATSC uses a single carrier amplitude modulated very quickly (VSB modulated, technically). Thus small time differences due to multipath are not a problem for COFDM, but are a problem for 8-VSB modulation of ATSC. The new chips have extensive time-domain equalizers to handle multipath.

On the other hand, there was evidence that 8-VSB provides a greater coverage area with less power. Power costs are a major issue for television transmitters.

The other issue is that ATSC includes high-definition, while European DVB-T systems don't (as far as I know). Hi-def decoders are a bit more complex than standard-def decoders.

FactCheck!

[GarfBond]

Here's a nice article from factcheck.org on the subject: Ad Pushes Digital TV - But Doesn't Tell The Whole Story [factcheck.org]

Telecom companies pushing for a forced conversion to all-digital television broadcasts ran ads in Washington DC and elsewhere highlighting benefits for firemen, police officers, and other "first responders," who stand to receive improved communications capabilities and gear. The ad calls digital TV a "win-win solution" benefiting both consumers and the emergency responders.

The ad is true as far as it goes, but misleading because it implies that the digital-TV bill taking shape in Congress would have only winners. In fact, there would be losers, too. According to the GAO, an estimated 21 million households now get TV only through a standard, analog TV set, and would be forced either to junk their set and buy a new digital set, or to obtain a new converter that manufacturers estimate will cost about $50.

Also not mentioned is that taxpayers will be asked to contribute up to $3 billion to subsidize the conversion. That money would come from the proceeds expected from auctioning off some of the airwaves now used by TV broadcasters.

The funding of the ad is also something of a mystery. One source told us it was financed by Motorola, which stands to profit from the transition by selling new police, fire and emergency radio equipment. Motorola wouldn't confirm that, nor would they deny it.