I noticed the price of a television I purchased last year has gone up by about 70 bucks at walmat. I was told it's because they've added the digital receiver to 'em. Seems like a waste unless you use a mast antenna..
I like the (old) CRT types as they react (in spite of all the new technology) the fastest when watching sports etc..
Well, it may not be long until you can no longer enjoy your analog TV (unless you purchase a digital-to-analog converter) as FCC mandated all analog TV broadcasting to stop on February 17, 2009. Well, that's air broadcasting. I'm sure your local cable company will be happy to send you analog signal for as long as you pay them.
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Not if the law stops them. Contact your congressional offices.
Or cable, unfortunately and probably corruptly.
Only satellite is currently exampt from the new HD rules, despite the fact that there is afaik no reason not to exampt cable.
What do you use?
First THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT FOR HD otherwise known as high def!
Congress is forcing the end of analog over the air transmissions but as long as you have cable or satellite it doesnt matter.
digital doesnt necessarily mean better picture quality
locally nearly no one has a over the air antenna, people rightly or wrongly think it looks bad. Here in pittsburgh with the hills you need a really good antenna, with a rotor.
again the change doesnt matter unless you watch tv OTA
Digital! That's what I meant. Sorry.
Someone on this list or more likely sci.electronics.repair said a feww months ago that it applied to cable too, and posted a link to government or at least a serious looking site that gave the text of the reg or statute that required this. It looked real to me.
I've searched for this thread for the last 20 minutes in my old s.e.r posts and via groups.google, and I can't find it.
again, I read otherwise. It seems stupid which is why I called it probably corrupt.
I would suggest calling the cable company to find out, but I don't think that's reliable. Everytime I call my ISP they say an improvement is due within a few months, even though it takes years or forever.
What law is that? The FCC is shutting down NTSC BROADCAST signals, which doesn't say anything about cable. Nor do they care, because the push to go digital is so the FCC can auction off the spectrum now occupied by digital and rake in billions.
Yes, that about sums is it up.
This is interesting:
an HDTV set?
DVD players, camcorders, video games, etc.) will work on digital TV sets, but not in high definition. Their video will be displayed in the maximum resolution that is available with each product.
But what about the opposite question. Will current VCRs and DVD recorder be able to record digital signals off of the cable or satellite? Do digital tv's have an analog output, or will all the analog vcrs and dvd recorders be obsolete for those with digital reception? I think the answer to the first is No, and to the second is Yes.
Well, I've looked for another 60 minutes and foudn some interesting stuff, including several who agree that cable will still have analog, until they stop for lack of profit,
But I've still found no reference to what I know I read, that there is a reg against this.
I would be happy if cable had analog, because it would give me one more alternative. I have a tv in every rroom, a color tv finally, and no way am I replacing all of these, or any, with digital tvs.
I'm sorry you feel that way, but I'm glad to see NTSC go away. NTSC was never designed to handle color data it was added as a "hack" and is a very inefficient system. With the move to HD (really ATSC as it's not a resolution dependant issue) you get the delivery of a channel in much less bandwidth.
If you want to keep your old TV's you will be able to buy cheap converters (just like are used for cable reception) that will convert the new ATSC signal to NTSC. Getting rid of old technology often causes a little hardship but everyone is better off in the end. Example - God knows we should have suffered the "pain" of converting to metric long ago but we can thank the pandering politicians for our current backwards standard.
Last line, "...occupied by analog and rake in billions".
Also, wouldn't NTSC just change its standard and use the same name. Aren't DVDs (digital) and NTSC? (I realize they are not HD)
If nothing else, read the paragraph that begins with *****
I don't care about stuff like that. I don't care about high definition. I don't even care much about current good definition. On some of the tvs on some of the stations, I get perfect pictures, but on others I get various levels of low quality reception, but if it's viewable, I don't even care about that. Usually I just need to know what's going on.
A problem with digital is that when the signal is inadequate, instead of getting a poor picture, one may get no picture at all.
That will work for the ones that are connected to my local network of coax, but it won't work for my 2" TV, or, unless I run more cable outside, the TV I use outside. In this case, there is no good way to run cable outside. Maybe I can buy a second box and tape it to the top of my 12" B&W that I leave outside under a shelf all summer.
BTW, I don't really consider an 80 or 100 dollar box with a 40 dollar discount coupon to be cheap. That's 80 to 120 dollars for two of them, out of my pocket. For some with an ongoing moderate to high income, that's not much, but it is real money to me and others.
*********NO. You must mean ON AVERAGE everyone is better off in the end. When these changes occur, there are almost always people who are worse off in the end. And in this case there will be millions who are worse off.
This is an example of what I'm talking about. I would have gotten no benefit except maybe some slightly cheaper prices on some things by the use of metric. I might have saved 50 dollars in my lifetime, but at the cost of great annoyance and great effort on my part. I would have been worse off, as would have been most people my age or older at the time they started to do this and then didn't (I was about 30).
I believe the new standard is called ATSC or something like that (A for advanced). DVDs are digital, but the normal DVDs have no relation to the new broadcast standards.
NTSC (Never The Same Color) is indeed a hack, but a perfectly good hack. The quality is quite acceptable given a clean transmission.
Bandwidth isn't really an issue either as the voluminous gaps in the NTSC transmission spectrum can be back filled with lots of narrow band digital signals as is done on cable.
Really? Cheap converters? Hardly. I define "cheap" as
bingo, the turn off analog was always about selling the bandwidth for big bucks to make the federal budget deficit look better.
frankly i expect a uproar if the feds proceed with this.......
The spectrum can be auctioned off as soon as the analog TV transmitters are shut down. Cable TV systems already use mostly different frequencies to carry analog TV, and can continue to do so indefinitely. There's no technical reason they would need to stop, although eventually it may be difficult to find TVs with analog cable tuners.
Dave
Yes, the standard used for digital broadcast through the air. Cable and satellite use different formats.
DVD players do have analog outputs, and probably will for a long time. This includes NTSC baseband and YPbPr (component). I've never seen one with ATSC, and don't expect it to be used.
True. Color quality is one of the disadvantages of NTSC. The picture is also never as steady as with more modern systems. I find these problems make more of a difference (between NTSC and something better) than the increased spatial resolution.
And you also get interference from the business-controlled government (DRM).
If you have cable or satellite (which do not ever use ATSC), you're likely to already have a converter (the cable box or sat receiver). If you can continue to use that, you won't need to buy anything else to watch TV. Those converters are mainly for use by people with antennas.
Yes, although one thing that should change is the relative lack of non-NTSC INPUTS, which allow much of the versatility of current NTSC equipment. For example, if you want to add a video caller ID device.
Yes, we could have converted to metric, and also gotten rid on the inconvenient QWERTY keyboard layout.
Yes something I find really annoying when the government announces they just "made" $10 billion from a spectrum auction. They didn't "make" anything since whomever bought the spectrum will need to recover the expense from their subscribers.
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