Tuesday, February 26, 2008

will the mandated change from analog to digital tv...


signals on 2.17.09 impact your life?

some of you out there who have studied up on this fill us in.

should the government be in the business of underwriting converter boxes?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I currently have an antenna, only because it was there when I moved in.

I don't watch TV right now so it wont effect me. I would like to have a satellite but don't care to spend the money for it right now.

I don't see were the government has anything to do with HDTV.

What's next? Are they going to mandate everyone to have a Nintendo Wii? Oh wait, just about everyone dose have a Wii.

Anonymous said...

The government is in the business of underwriting converter boxes because once the change is complete from analog to digital tv, you won't be able to pick up any tv station without cable. Which means, fewer sheep to follow the government's and the media's propanganda.

Anonymous said...

you are all idiots. If the government did not mandate the signal of television every company out there would have a different way of broadcasting and we would have to buy a different converter box for each channel or company such as Viacom or cox communication just to watch tv. That is why it is there to protect the consumer.

You guess you numb nuts also think that monopoly laws are none of the governments business, or that there should be no health codes, or how about that damn USDA meddling in the way my meat is packaged. How dare they tell me I can't put asbestos in my house.

Someone please tell me what it is like to have such a narrow mind. I believe most of your would have done society better if you would have been a stain on the wall.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 2:34 PM

You are the idiot! A zombie to the idiot box!

Anonymous said...

I've been in communications engineering almost all my working life. Years ago Prose Walker headed the FCC. Prose was a real engineer. He was involved in communications since he was a child. Most of the commissioners were engineers.

That all changed. Sometime in the 90's lawyers took control of the FCC. Bush appointed Colin Powell's son, a person who knew nothing about communications or engineering, to chair the FCC. Powell resigned after making a shambles of several process, but the FCC is still headed by lawyers. The staff is disenchanted and the FCC is understaffed.

The FCC is representative of other broken agencies such as immigration, the FDA, the INS, and others.

The FCC no longer inspects or enforces rules designed to protect consumers, especially with imported goods. They even went against the NITA (they manage military and government spectrum resources) on critical life and safety issues. This is because of lobbyists and Pac’s who influence Bush. This is all a matter of record.

The reason the FCC decided to give up VHF channels is all about money and political influence. Lobbyists convinced the Lawyers heading the FCC that it was a good engineering decision to turn off all the current UHF and VHF channels and force stations to do a multimillion dollar conversion to digital TV.

This means TV stations that are barely making ends meet will no longer serve the rural areas like ours with reliable VHF transmissions, and the cost to the stations barely breaking even now is many millions of dollars for new antennas, transmitters, and studio equipment.

To quell the uproar from people who own perfectly good TV sets the FCC had to ensure converter boxes would be cheap. Otherwise all the TV's we own would wind up in landfills as we send Red China billions and billions of dollars for digital TV's.

It's ironic that most aircraft still use AM radios from WWII technology that should have been phased out gradually for much more efficient FM or SSB, while the TV stations that are now largely on the verge of collapsing are being forced to spend multiple millions to keep each station on the air.

We are shipping money overseas at a rapid rate just so a few business ventures can profit.

No one asked the American people if TV pictures looked so bad we wanted a new higher definition system mandated. But then this is what happens when Pac’s and money drives our leaders. This is what happens when they appoint friends and family to critical positions instead of people who know how things work or who can do the job.

The FCC is just one agency that is falling apart because of money and poor leadership.

Anonymous said...

Good come back 3:20 did it take you the full hour to think of that.

You will also not need cable to pick up the stations they will broadcast an HD signal. And to tell you the truth It is a much higher quality signal. It is not compressed like satellite or cable. It is true 1080p resolution. Cable and Satellite only transmit at 720p. so if you have the $20 antenna you will get better coverage and a better picture from cable and will not have to pay a dime more.

Anonymous said...

its o k for government to help buy converter boxes....just dont let them into the health care business.......we wouldnt want a big government....we dont the gov telling us what to do.....unless someone with t b get on a plane, then we want the gov to fly him to a hospital way out west and treat him, even if he doesnt want treatment........

Anonymous said...

3:52 sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

Anonymous said...

437PM is wrong on many points.

First, the signal is compressed. That is what digitizing a signal does. Compression has nothing to do with quality by itself. It simply eliminates unnecessary bandwidth by packing the useful information in a smaller bundle. By definition that is a form of compression.

Second, the range will not increase. The higher the frequency band the less range a signal has travelling a path along the earth's surface. Trees and everything else in the path absorb more of the signal. This is why UHF stations, even though they run more power, offer less coverage. This is why submarines used very low frequencies for worldwide non-satellite communications. All things equal a higher frequency signal has less range along the earth's surface. This means signal levels in rural areas like ours will be significantly less. There will be no more watching WSB Channel 2 Atlanta on a small low antenna.

A third and major factor is with digital transmissions the signal at any instant is either 100% or it is gone. The moment any ambient noise (called "snow") or power line noise (that makes the little streaks moving through a picture) appears, the signal will stop decoding. If you have satellite TV you see this effect when hard rain gets between the satellite and your antenna. If you have a digital phone you don't get swishing and a bit of noise, the signal just totally drops. You either have a pure signal or none at all at any instant of time.

As for cable systems, most are linked to the TV stations without using off air signals. There will be little effect on CATV systems other than the increase in scanning lines.

The only major end effect of digital TV will be in rural areas not served by cable. Some people in those areas don't have cable, and need the off-air signal. They will have less signal level and in rural areas largely have no reception until the homeowner upgrades to a better and perhaps much higher outdoor antenna.

There are other technical changes and effects so this is just a short blurb, but the notion everyone will enjoy a better picture is false. The picture will be more accurate when you get it, but receiving the picture in rural areas will become much more difficult.

This is what happens when the FCC is run by lawyers and people picked for politics and money instead of brains and experience.

If they looked at the issue carefully they would have allowed a few big stations to broadcast from tall towers on VHF with conventional transmissions to serve rural areas, less interested people, or poorer people without cable. They could have allowed the market to eventually determine the switch. Instead they assumed we all hate the picture quality of our TV's so much that reducing the signal in rural areas or for people without cable isn't important.

There is a little more to it, such as freeing spectrum for other uses, but this is the true basic overview of effects to the consumer.

Anonymous said...

just as lomg as i can see fox news, so i will know what is best for me and my great country.....i cant read and think for myself, i need the great white talking heads to tell me what i believe and who i should trust

Anonymous said...

dont trust whitey!

Anonymous said...

Must kill whitey!
Must make whitey like Obama's monkey face!
Obama hate half himself for being whitey!
Whitey hate half of Obama!

Anonymous said...

Many people are still confused about the transition to digital television.

Our non-profit, the Urban Progressive Foundation has been actively working with seniors and other groups to provide straight, clear and understandable information to help them through the transition.
I also went to Wilmington, North Carolina for the first full blown transition test-run.
You can read about my experience at the Wilmington test run on my blog
http://digitaldynamo.blogspot.com/.
Or you can visit my website, http://www.transition2dtv.com/,to get info on outreach workshops to keep seniors and others from being left in the dark.