Complaints Pour In After Digital TV Test 537
djupedal writes "'Even if all goes smoothly, next February's digital television shift is likely to generate hundreds of thousands of complaints from television viewers around the country.
A major problem during a test run in Wilmington, N.C., was the inability of over-the-air viewers to receive new digital signals, according to figures collected after the test.'"
Yawn (Score:2, Interesting)
TV viewers in the lowest age category dropped by 50% in the last year. Netcraft and Nielson confirm it, TV is dying.
Let the pain begin! (Score:3, Interesting)
I've already tried using the digital TV receiver in my area (Ventura County, CA) and I only get 3 stations that all seem to be related. The major stations are supposed to already be transmitting a digital signal but I can't get any of them (ABC, NBC, etc).
I guess I'll miss out on all the car chases that are followed by news helicopters and the witty news anchor banter. Oh well, somehow I'll get by.
Re:I expected as much... (Score:5, Interesting)
The opiate of the masses (Score:5, Interesting)
Marx had it wrong.
*TV* is the opiate of the masses.
Any my crystal ball says if they turn of the TV,
there will be riots in the streets.
I'll bet the politicians blink (Hi, Sara!) and analog stays on the air.
Re:Mmhmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. And this has been a problem since cable-TV went main-stream. I remember when cable was new and few people had it. And the more it grew, the poorer over-the-air signal quality became.
You will find the same sort of problem with radio stations as well. They adjust the power output based on the time of day... or hasn't anyone noticed? The power is always boosted during peak driving times and lowered during all other times. In the case of over-the-air television, digital or otherwise, they aren't going to pay for the power unless there is money in it.
hilly terrain sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I expected as much... (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't necessarily require a different antenna for VHF/UHF - As an example, ChannelMaster makes a variety of dual-band devices.
True, but if one does not know that some channels broadcasting UHF now will broadcast VHF in February, you would be inclined (as I did Tuesday before I knew this) to just buy one of the the UHF antennas ubiquitously marked "HDTV Antenna."
This is another missed opportunity for the government to have managed this transition. No one is telling this fact to the public.
A mistake on many levels (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I've been against this forced shift to digital only broadcasting ever since making the move to satellite from cable. Given how touchy satellite service is in even the slightest amount of rain, I can only imagine just how touchy some the local stuff will become to any form of interference. And unlike the satellite stuff, the local stuff is only being obtained from a single source.
For example, what happens in a state of emergency where many of the population can't receive a complete digital signal as disaster is bearing down on them? All of those efforts to warn people ahead of time will be for nothing... especially for those who can't afford to upgrade to the fancy digital converters.
Second, what becomes of the electronic waste that will be generated when TVs lacking the capability of being upgraded (especially portable sets) are suddenly trashed at the same time? Has there been a plan put in place specifically to collect these obsolete sets that won't involve them being dumped onto a 3rd world country?
Finally, there's the question of the intent behind this transition. Does it even have anything to do with improving quality at all, or is it about getting all forms of broadcast into a digital form so that it can be controlled, monitored and classified by external means? Are these "converters" going to phoning homing in some manner to tell some authority figure what exactly we're watching and when as a means of monitoring our interests and assess us as potential threats?
I'd like to be wrong on a lot of this, but for the moment, the possibilities are hard to ignore.
Re:Mmhmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Not by a long shot. People who are currently putting up with a snowy picture will find that they are unable to get anything at all after the DTV switch....
Analog TV degrades gracefully. The farther out you get, the worse the picture quality, but you can go right to the deep fringe reception area and still get something even if the quality sucks. With digital TV, once the signal drops below a certain threshold, the error correction is unable to compensate for the degradation, at which point you get a blank screen.
Then, there's the problem of multipath interference. With analog TV, you just get a ringing ghost signal that is still watchable. Unfortunately, the ATSC digital TV standard that the U.S. chose (unlike the standard chosen in Europe) is relatively poor at handling multipath interference. If you have much multipath interference at all, the signal goes away. This is pretty easy to demonstrate by watching an analog signal and a digital signal off a pair of rabbit ears and rotating the antenna....
Finally, there's the problem of encoding. ATSC uses MPEG-2 as its video encoding scheme. Ultimately, I think that will prove to be the greatest flaw in the ATSC standard. Because it uses interframe compression, as soon as you get a tiny bit of signal that can't be decoded, you can lose the signal for up to half a second. (I frames must be transmitted every half second according to the MPEG-2 spec.) Worse, because the audio is muxed with the video, if the video stream can't be properly interpreted, you lose the audio signal, too unlike in analog where audio is the last thing to go....
In short, this was all very predictable and pretty much inevitable due to a combination of poor decisions when designing the standard and the need to greatly increase transmit power to cover the fringe reception areas with enough of a signal to be above the threshold of detection for digital
In my experience it sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes the quality is better when you get a good signal but most of the time I don't get that good of a signal. Unlike analog TV where I could still watch and listen to a crappy quality picture, with digital TV I either lose the whole signal or the audio doesn't work. The audio going out in the most common thing it seems.
Plus wind/rain and other stuff severely affects the quality.
Overall it's total shit. If they want to get rid of analog OTA TV then they might as well have forced everyone onto cable or satellite because OTA digital TV blows.
Problems, Problems, and More Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
I consider myself to be technically competent and quite familiar with video protocols... especially digital video formats and transmission requirements.
I also live in a MSA that has over 140,000 people living in it, even though the Neilson company doesn't consider it big enough for classifying it as an independent television market. Yes, I know that there are markets much smaller than this, but it doesn't matter.
The point is, in spite of the fact that I was able to tune in over 10 television stations with the analog signals... most of them quite clearly... I can't pick up a single digital television channel. That by itself isn't so awful other than the fact that the local analog signal has been shut off... at the beginning of this month (September 1st). The city I live in has "officially" already gone through the transition to digital television. I am serious here too... I can't pick up a single channel that even remotely works.
There are some transmitters in a nearby state (about 60 miles away from where I live) that are still broadcasting an analog signal. However, they are about to turn off that signal in about two weeks. Well, I guess I have a good collection of DVDs that I've been buying over the years, and now that most of the decent television series are going onto DVD as well, I can just buy them instead of watching the broadcast television.
What a way to "save" the television industry!
Yes, I have access to things like DirectTV, cable television networks, and other such nonsense. I have my own reasons for not wanting to access broadcast commercial television in such a manner. The point is that it doesn't work!
Oh... about the silly coupon program for the converter boxes. I asked for a coupon back in June... and it never came. My wife (without letting me know first) requested an additional coupon which finally came.... about a month after the switch to digital television. The converter box is about what I was expecting, basically a piece of cheap consumer junk that is completely incompatible with all of the video equipment I have... other than I guess a television signal can get through. My wife hates the thing even more than I do, but at least the FCC can sit back and feel like they have taken care of a family like mine with such a wonderful "improvement" in the technology.
Yeah, right. Improvement. At least I can still pick up gamma rays from the Big Bang on my old analog television, which is as exciting as watching mud dry.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep in mind, though, most of the stations are going to be in the UHF space. Different propagation rules, coupled with the need for adequate antennas (Most of the small off the shelf antennas won't cut it even with the increased allowed power available...), means you're going to have problems.
Most of the indoor antennas being sold right at the moment as "HDTV Ready" are garbage for DTV/HDTV. Honest.
Re:I Live in Wilmington (Score:3, Interesting)
WECT and WSFX are sharing WWAY's antenna, so they're all from the exact same location. The difference is power level:
WWAY-DT 1000 kW
WSFX-DT 80 kW
WECT-DT 98 kW (to boost to 710 kW some time after 09/30/08)
WILM-LD is at 15 kW on the side of the tower which WUNJ-DT is on at 1000 kW, but a lot shorter.
UNC is changing their digital lineup tomorrow. HD on 39-1, UNC-KD on 39-2, UNC-NC on 39-3, all 24/7.
I'm really surprised by this (Score:2, Interesting)
Not the complaints, people love to do that!
But, that people are having a harder time getting the digital signal.
I used to work for the engineer of a radio station. A year or so ago I went back to visit. He showed me their new shiny new digital transmitter. It is putting out a small fraction of the wattage of the analog one into the same antenna. (sorry I don't remember the numbers). Anyway, their digital signal now has a wider reception area than their analog one!
I wonder what is making TV so different...
Re:Hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, for practical purposes, it is so. There are no minor imperfections (bit of snow, slightly fuzzy or ghosting), you either get a perfect reproduction if the error rate is within the error correction's limits or nothing at all. (on/off).
The threshold level of data loss that overwhelms the error correction is MUCH lower than that to make an analog signal effectively unwatchable.
At least on my TV, there is a noticeable delay while the decoder syncs up with the signal as well. That means that loosing the signal for a fraction of a second means a blank screen for 2 seconds. In analog, the same interruption results in an audible pop/burst of static with a matching burst of video snow. It's possible to follow a program through that. It's not possible when there are repeated 2 second drop-outs.