Is the US Ready For the Switch To DTV? 423
tonsofpcs writes "On Monday, September 8, Wilmington, NC will be the first television market (#135) to make the switch to DTV by shutting off their analog transmitters. This forum will be posting updates throughout the coming months to keep everyone updated on how the transition works so that we are all prepared come February 17, 2009. So far, it seems Wilmington will still be going ahead as planned, despite Tropical Storm Hanna's proximity."
Are prisons ready for the switch? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've had cable for almost 30 years (Score:1, Interesting)
I am 42, had a computer since '77 but never had cable. My parents are in their 80s and never had cable.
I can't believe anyone would pay $500 or $1000 a year to watch television. Put it another way, cut the Pay TV bill and in twenty years you get a free car!
Mom and dad bought a digital decoder box but it's a huge pain with yet another remote control and umpteen volume controls that all fight each other. What a pointless disaster.
Re:I have a feeling (Score:5, Interesting)
Over-the-air DTV works terribly. First off, with analog, I could point my antenna in just about any direction and get SOME kind of fuzzy picture that was watchable. In other words, analog was easier to tune in,
With digital the tuning is much more difficult. I have to align the antenna perfectly along the 55th meridian, check the stars, adjust the horizontal azimuth, and get down on my knees and pray the signal is strong enough to not freeze the video (extremely annoying). And if there's a Tropical Storm blowing by? Forget it. The rain attenuates and destroys the signal. Yesterday I was unable to get my normal programming due to Hanna's presence... just a bunch of pixelated images instead of clear video.
DTV also provides fewer stations than analog.
In the Lancaster PA region analog reception provides these stations: 2,3,6,8,10,11,12,13,15,17,21,27,29,33,35,43,45,48,49,51,57,61,65,69 from various sources like my hometown, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Switching over to my DTV tuner trims that number down to just a few: 8, 15, 43, 49, 57, 61. Twenty-four downto just six.
Pathetic.
The FCC's discontinuation of analog in favor of digital broadcasting is yet another government-sponsored frakup. Good thing I've learned how to stream TV shows off the net. Thanks to DTV, I no longer can watch ABC or CBS stations. Channels 21 and 27 have disappeared off my DTV dial! What a brilliant job Mr. FCC Engineer. I now have LESS choices to watch, not more. /steps off soapbox
Re:If you cable you may need a box on satellite yo (Score:3, Interesting)
I just tell people:
"If you have cable, dish, or FiOS television, then you need not worry about the over-the-air transition. It does not affect you."
Prisons not ready (Score:5, Interesting)
Numerous stories [google.com] mention that prisons are not ready for digital television, and prison administrators are worried.
Generally, inmates pay for their own television sets and (for some reason that escapes me) are not eligible for the $40 coupons.
Prison administrators say [tennessean.com]"the tube does more than fill year after year of idle hours. It provides a sense of normalcy and is a bargaining chip that encourages good behavior... At Indiana's Wabash Valley super-maximum security prison [a psychiatrist said], far fewer behavior problems were reported among inmates in isolation after they were given small TVs. 'You don't want to be managing prisoners who have nothing to lose,' Kupers."
I expect the test will show that, in fact, prison inmates represent only one example of what will prove to be a large population of forgotten Americans... the people who don't answer telephone surveys because they don't have telephones, the people who don't shop at Best Buy because they don't have cars and the nearest Best Buy can't be reached by public transportation, etc.
I will grant that the amount of publicity being given to the DTV switchover on our local TV stations is so large... at least during the times of day we watch and on the channels we watch... that it's hard to imagine people not knowing about it, but there is always that twenty percent of the population who can't name the President.
Indeed, I'm astonished at the poster who asks "Will they broadcast a notice?" since our local stations have been doing that continuously since February. Either his are not or he, like those twenty per cent I'm talking about, didn't notice.
Re:I have a feeling (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure about the US but as I understand it in the UK many digital transmissions are currently transmitted at reduced power to avoid screwing with analogue reception. Once analogue is switched off digital reception should get a lot better.
Re:Despite Tropical Storm Hanna? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well for one, it would be nice to see those red boxes when the weather man goes "there is a tornado warning for the communities within blah blah blah..."
EBS isn't worth a shit. All it does is replay a canned warning message with the counties under the warning, and at the end of the message it says tune to your local channels for more information...
What irritates me about the switch (which I still see as completely without merit - unless you are a telecommunications company or a DTV manufacturer), is the fact that they keep saying "If you have cable or satellite, you need not to worry about the conversion. Only people who uses traditional off-the-air television have to make the switch". Even worse is when your local cable company advertises that to avoid the switch just get cable...
Problem being that when the cable goes out (and it does during a hurricane) you are screwed and must resort to listening to the weatherman on the radio who continues to say "if you look in this area of the screen..."
Re:I have a feeling (Score:2, Interesting)
In most areas, stations are using their combined analog and digital power ratings to report to the FCC. In Michigan, analog stations are reducing their power levels this month to what digital was, and digital is getting more power. When the analog is switched off, digital will be at 100%.
One thing to note too, UHF stations (which what all television will be living in after the transition) require more power than VHF (usually by a magnitude of 20x - 30x) because of the frequency difference (higher frequency => more power for same output).
Re:I have a feeling (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to blame the FCC for something, blame them for selecting ATSC. Why on earth they chose MPEG2 when everyone else gets MPEG4 or H.264 is anyone's guess
Who's "everyone else"? Other countries? The current UK digital terrestrial TV system, DVB-T, uses MPEG2.
Though I should make clear that DVB-T is only used for standard res transmissions (*) and has been in proper use here since the late 1990s, so it at least has a good excuse for being based on 1990s tech(!). Even though we're only just *now* starting to switch off analogue in favour of this already dated system!
Also, unlike the US where (AFAIK) you're going straight to a single terrestrial digital standard that supports hi-res transmissions which can still be shown by standard-res boxes (albeit at reduced resolution), the UK/European DVB-T boxes won't handle hi-res. So we're getting another new standard for that which probably *will* use the more modern and efficient H.264.
And to be honest, I'd have thought MPEG-2 would be horribly bandwidth-hungry for hi-def and a pointless choice given that more advanced codecs are now available and the existing boxes wouldn't support it either way (even if the original MPEG-2 DVB-T standard would have).
Anyway, are your FCC/ATSC *really* using MPEG-2 for hi-def? If that's true, it makes no sense at all.
Re:I have a feeling (Score:3, Interesting)
This was a problem in Iceland, when they did first start broadcasting in digital. The idiots at 365 Media (that runs most of the private tv stations in Iceland) did turn the digital transmission to 100% when it first started. The end result was that the digital signal did create snow and other issues with the remaining analog signals on 2500Mhz band that they are using and also normal uhf analog broadcasts.
In the end they did drop the signal strength down enough so it did not create issues with the analog broadcast.
Iceland is going to go all digital in 2010. Too late in my opinion. Some areas have had 99% of all tv stations go digital already.
This is more serious than you think ! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:UK is *very* different (Score:3, Interesting)
I know one person in the UK who can't get DVB-T, even if she replaced her antennae. She lives in a valley in a remote part of Devon. She's been told she will get DVB-T when the analog signal is turned off and the digital signal power increased.
Do most houses in the US have antennaes on the roof? (Most in the UK do). That might be causing confusion.
Govt/Retailers only making half-hearted effort (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I have a feeling (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. Seriously. I live 40 miles from New York City, and can barely get the four major broadcast networks (Back when it was around, UPN used to come in fine, which was a sort of cruel irony)
I just got back from spending a few months just outside of Dundee in Scotland (read: middle of nowhere, especially by American standards). We could pick up a couple dozen OTA channels, with considerably better quality than I get with digital cable. It just works.
The US digital adoption is clearly being manipulated by the cable companies, who just want to protect their obsolete monopolies....
Re:I have a feeling (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I have a feeling (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I have a feeling (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong. Power for NTSC transmissions are measured as peak power. The sync pulses are at the peak, and the average power is much, much lower.
ATSC transmission power levels are measured as average power, which due to the digital nature of the signal is much, much closer to the peak power level anyway.