Obama Recommends Delay In Digital TV Switch 589
gregg writes "Six weeks before the nation's television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, the Obama administration is asking Congress to consider a delay. In the most significant sign to date of concern about the impending digital TV transition, the Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are 'woefully inadequate' and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be 'reconsidered and extended.'"
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:1, Informative)
I know many people don't buy TV programming, and for any number of reasons. My reason is that it's a terribly expensive waste of my life and money. I use OTA TV basically just for the occasional news, weather, or PBS show.
I also have a fundamental problem with paying for TV with commercials. Either give me commercial-free TV for my subscription free or pay for my free TV with commercials. Not both. Come up with a new business model. (Preferably w/o commercials - annoying, incessant ads are what drove me away from TV in the first place.)
While satellite TV has solved most problems of reception in remote areas, no TV or OTA is often just fine for those folks.
It often boggles my mind the people who go to food banks because they can't afford to feed themselves, yet pay $100/month for deluxe cable, etc.
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:1, Informative)
There are several shows that are in HD and are not compressed.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
*Everything* broadcast in HD is compressed.
My dad is a digital cable subscriber but still switches to OTA when the show is available because cable has so many compression artifacts.
That doesn't mean that the OTA stuff isn't compressed, just that it's not *overcomressed*.
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:5, Informative)
As for "the government paying for it," it's a small fraction of what they sold the reclaimed rf spectrum for.
NOAA (Score:4, Informative)
In my experience of NOAA weather radios they are far more reliable because with all weather radios I've seen so far operate off of batteries which will allow the radio to continue to operate with or without power to the home compared to that of TVs where well: no power, no TV, no weather information.
I have read a few articles that give the impression that once analog broadcasts are turned off then the digital broadcasts will be allowed to boost their power output, but by how much I have no idea. Hopefully this is true because some stations broadcasting in the same county as on the receiving end is just terribly difficult to pickup. The worst so far is WTVF (CBS) here in Nashville, Tennessee that I have noticed.
Re:Nooooo (Score:3, Informative)
No, congress did both.
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:2, Informative)
because (preemptive "Get Off My Lawn," back in the day when we first got cable, there were no commercials. none. as in, not any.
so all us old OTA (or no tv) holdin' out geezers think that if you pay for TV, you shouldn't have to watch ads. charge more or something. ads suck.
MOD parent Up (Score:5, Informative)
I second that. OTA digital is amazingly good picture quality.
Just pick up a cheap amplified loop antenna. You don't need anything fancy.
Re:MOD parent Up (Score:3, Informative)
That works fine, unless you have the typical issues for digital.
In my area, there are supposed to be 12 OTA digital stations (each running two feeds). I can see maybe 7 due to intervening buildings, even with a nice powered antenna on the roof.
Plus, OTA digital has shorter range the same way FM radio has shorter travel range than AM. Just the nature of the signal and how fault-tolerant it is. Rural areas are more screwed by the change since they could make do with a less-powerful signal before and now just get cut off completely (plus, their "local" stations may not be as money-rich to afford the new transmission equipment).
Re:MOD parent Up (Score:5, Informative)
... Depending on where, exactly, you live of course. I get one broadcast station without a rooftop, or 5 with it. With analog, you can get a fuzzy picture, and nearly always get sound. With digital, you either get everything nearly perfectly, or you get nothing (nothing includes picture freezes and no audio.)
The issue with digital is that people that used to get fuzzy but watchable stations now may get nothing.
As for the converter box issue, the whole situation is partially caused by the fact that retailers were allowed to sell analog only sets if they were under a certain size... And larger sets the requirement was only recent (just a few years.)
Also, converter boxes suck. Yet another remote to mess with (remember the users - those who can't handle programming an all-in-one.)
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:4, Informative)
One of my best friends depends on their rabbit ears, and they're poor enough that the cost of a converter box is kind of a big deal. And before some asshat who knows nothing of poverty opens their yap about how he shouldn't be watching TV, he busts his ass then comes home and would like to relax in the evening, okay? He and plenty of other people are in this position, and they never wanted to have to drop $40 just so the government could raise $20bil.
Re:TV in Los Angeles (Score:5, Informative)
And you can't watch Telemundo and TV Azteca without having seen lots of ads over the last year telling the viewer, in Spanish, changes are coming and you can get a coupon to cut the cost of the box.
It wasn't possible to miss it. I'm tired of excuses.
Re:They've had years (Score:2, Informative)
I think the program is out of money because a lot of people who don't even need coupons are getting them - my guess is that probably half of the people at least do not understand that if they have cable they don't need a different box.
This isn't happening. You can't get the coupon if you don't need it. I mean, I suppose you could lie and say you don't have cable, but the application makes it pretty clear that cable subscribers don't need a box.
Re:MOD parent Up (Score:3, Informative)
you'd think that.... but you need less signal to get a good picture. So in the FCC's infinite wisdom, they decided to drop the wattage by 15% so signals don't "overlap"... because somebody might get a football or baseball game too far away, so we're going to make the whole thing harder.
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not the $6,000 or even $30,000 hospital bill. It's the $500,000 NICU care for a premature infant, $150,000 for a week in ICU, or $100,000 heart surgery. Only the super-rich could take the risk of self insurance.
Re:MOD child Up (Score:3, Informative)
In Oregon, there are very few population centers that have broadcast stations -- but a lot of translators to get the signals out into the vast wasteland I call home. And "home" for me is a city of 50,000 people.
This translator issue is why it was particularly stupid for the government not to include analog passthrough in the eligible converter design until recently. The boxes I could get with MY $40 handouts did not have it; the ones my Mom got do.
She's in an area without translators that gets all the networks in digital fine. I'm in an area where I get ONE station (PBS), even with an inside amplified antenna, but lots of translator stations in analog.
I have been predicting that something was going to stop the switch. I didn't even consider The Man of Change would want the status quo!
Re:Question about DVRs (Score:3, Informative)
Consider the JVC DRMV100B DVD+VHS Recorder. This is a unit with a VHS VCR, a DVD R/W/RW drive, an NTSC tuner, and an ATSC tuner. It's under $200. It's stocked by mainstream outlets like Amazon and Sam's Club. With this, she can program the unit to record her soaps to tape just as she does now. Once she's comfortable with that, she can switch over to DVD RW blanks instead of tape.
The thing even up-converts to 1080p and has an HDMI output, so it will work with a modern display. Or you can get out S-Video, composite video, or, if really desperate, NTSC video on RF to drive the antique color TV in a wooden cabinet.
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:3, Informative)
Libraries are good and definitely should have funding. Unluckily not everyone is a book reader.
My wife for example does not enjoy reading and uses the TV for entertainment. When the power goes out she gets quite stressed out whereas I just light a candle and grab a book.
She is not going to be happy when we lose a third of our TV stations when America switches over to digital.
Unluckily we are one of the households who have no choice about over the air signals, no cable and a mountain to the south so no satellite. Also reception is bad enough with analog that I can't imagine getting any reception with digital.
Also though I just about never watch regular TV, I just found myself doing so due to all the flooding happening around here. The radio just does not have enough info compared to the TV news.
While the switch here in Canada was supposed to be not mandated, being left to the market, the Conservatives gained power and mandated switch over for Aug 31, 2011
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. Now contrast that with the Zinwell box which has a manual clock. I can set it to 8:00 and thereby ensure I have a reliable reference when I want to program it to tape 24, or CSI, or whatever.
Don't buy the DTVpal. Buy the Zinwell instead if you need timers. And if you don't need timers, then buy a Channel Master which has the most-sensitive receiver of all the boxes (it gets 21 stations in my area).
Re:MOD parent Up (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, OTA digital has shorter range the same way FM radio has shorter travel range than AM.
Huh? That's to do with wavelength, not mode or "digital-ness". A few kilowatts at 1MHz will go a damn sight further than a few kilowatts at 100 MHz. Ask any ham. The worldwide contacts are (almost) all under 30MHz.
Re:Really that big deal? (Score:1, Informative)
Some digital broadcasts aren't up to full power yet and so DTV signals aren't very good from them. That should be corrected at the changeover.
Our local Fox is still running low power digital, and the NBC station can't keep theirs running. CBS and PBS are further away but we bring in good signals.
Re:MOD parent Up (Score:4, Informative)
In this case, I think your experience won't translate to the US. Europe uses DVB for their digital TV, with (I think) COFDM as the modulation scheme. The US is using ATSC, with 8VSB as the modulation scheme. From what I've read, 8VSB is much more prone to problems with 'multipath'. If your antenna gets a signal directly from a transmitter, and another copy of that signal (slightly delayed) bounced off of a nearby building, then it might be impossible to decode the digital stream. If the two signals are perfectly out-of-phase, even COFDM should fail (again, an assumption on my part), but COFDM is supposed to be more robust in the face of multi-path signals.