DTV Transition - One Year Later

commodore64_love writes "One year has passed since NTSC-analog television died (R.I.P. 6/12/09 — aged 68 years), and the new ATSC-digital television became standard. According to Retrovo, the transition had some successes and failures. Retailers saw this as an opportunity to sell new HDTVs and 46 million converter boxes, while cable providers advertised rates as low as $10/month. One-third of the converter boxes the US subsidized — approximately 600 million dollars worth — were never used by purchasers. Overall 51% of Americans felt the DTV transition was good, while 23% said it was not. 12% of respondents report that since the switch they have worse reception. Others received better reception, gaining 24-hour movie channels, retro channels, foreign programming, and other new networks that had not existed under the old analog system."

Fill 'er up!

[Itninja]

The best (read sucky) part are all the perfectly functional, yet completely useless, "old" analog TVs that have been dumped (often illegally) in landfills. I have two that can't even give away.

A/D conversion in macrocosm

[tverbeek]

For me it's been a true analog-to-digital conversion. I no longer sort-of-get any TV stations; I either get them or I don't. The stations I used to pick up pretty well, I now get perfectly. The stations I used to pick up poorly, I now don't get at all.

Debugging problems

[Qzukk]

Nobody seems to know why things go wrong anymore or how to fix them (not that anyone really knew before, other than "wiggle the antenna a bit and then stand right over there"). In my case, I get great reception on most of the channels I got before. The HDTV thinks its getting one channel that I kind of got before (shows up when I scan for channels) but it just shows a black screen for about 5 minutes before it admits that it can't find the signal (same with the subchannels). But the weirdest is one channel (and all of its subchannels) that plays audio properly, but the video plays too fast, before freezing every second or so to let the audio catch back up. No idea if its something the network is doing on its broadcast, a weird artifact of bad reception, or if my TV just isn't processing the video data right or what.

Re:It's great

[jandrese]

It wasn't a waste by any measure. The Government actually made money off of the spectrum it was able to reclaim and sell from the DTV transition. Plus, instead of sending wasteful Analog TV signals over the air, those channels are being reused to provide better cell coverage and other services.

Re:From a Completely Different Perspective

[eln]

This sort of story happens whenever a major technological shift occurs. When TV first became popular people were going out and buying TVs and ignoring their radios, and so programming began to shift from radio to TV. All of the serial programming, news shows, and all the other rich programming that used to populate the radio waves all moved to TV, leaving nothing but political talk and music on the radio. Certainly some older consumers ended up getting stuck because they didn't want to or couldn't move to TV, so they stuck with their increasingly useless radios. People that are having trouble with this switch are people that have had the same TV set for 20 years or more and are still watching entirely over-the-air programming even though more and more programming has been moving to cable and satellite for decades. These tend to be older people as a general rule, although not all old people get stuck. My grandmother has a nice new HDTV with a DVR, and my grandfather just got DirecTV hooked up, although he still uses his old 20 year old VCR.

Technological progress moves on, and you either move on with it or get stuck with increasingly useless old tech that you have to jump through more and more hoops to get to work properly. My TV in the living room died just a couple of months ago, and instead of getting a cheap SDTV I went ahead and bought the HDTV because I figured with more and more programming going to HD, the SDTV will become more useless over time. Eventually as programming continues to move to HD, I'll have to switch out the TV upstairs or end up watching all of my programming with the sides cut off. We grumble about these things, but it would be absurd to halt progress just because not everyone is ready or willing to go along with it.

Re:Fill 'er up!

[Sir_Lewk]

If it continues to work well for you, and you find value in it, then why do you say that it is worthless?

I have computers from several years ago that I'd have a hard time selling, but they certainly are not worthless.

Re:From a Completely Different Perspective

[biryokumaru]

That would only be a comparable analogy if congress had made it illegal to broadcast over the radio once TVs were invented.

Re:A/D conversion in macrocosm

[biryokumaru]

No, that's not the correct response. The correct response is that the new technology is markedly inferior to the old, in that you need additional receiving equipment to reach the same level of operation. If digital television was better, you would get more channels clearer using a smaller antenna, instead of fewer, unwatchable channels using a new, better designed antenna.

Cable Companies pulled a fast one in the switch

[sprior]

In the analog days there were effectively three tiers of programming on cable - broadcast channels, cable only non-premium stuff, and premium channels like HBO. Since it was hard to encrypt a channel the middle tier channels were left in the clear. So as long as you had cable ready TVs you only really needed a cable box for the TVs you wanted to be able to watch the premium tier channels on, secondary TVs like kitchen, home office, workshop TVs could work just fine without one.

With digital that changed, so instead of just switching from analog->digital the cable companies are switching from analog->ENCRYPTED digital and telling the public that it had to be that way all along - it didn't. So except for the broadcast networks which are required to be in the clear soon you'll need a cable box for EVERY TV in your house, not just the ones you wanted the premium channels on.

And what did the FCC do for us on this?? Cablecard was a failure and when they were available at all the only Cablecard equipped TVs were the high end ones - WRONG!!! For the really big TVs in your house having a cable box is less of a problem than it is for the small TV in your kitchen/office/workshop. The FCC mandated that every HD TV have a digital tuner, and that seems to include a tuner for unencrypted digital cable channels, but the cable industry is making sure that there won't be many of those, so that tuner is all but useless unless you get your signal over the air.

The FCC tried to use Cablecard so we wouldn't have to rent as many cable boxes. The result? You'll need more cable boxes than you ever did before.

Re:From a Completely Different Perspective

[LordSnooty]

Maybe you could explain to granny how losing the ability to record two channels at once is "progress" - and how the kind of artefacts seen on digital TV with a poor signal is "progress", when before one could at least watch through the analogue snow. As eldavajohn says, not everyone is suitably comfortable enough with new technology to splash around money they don't have on products with abbreviations they don't understand. Especially when it reduces your choice.

Re:A/D conversion in macrocosm

[frostfreek]

I would be willing to bet that it is not increasing signal, but rather, decreasing the noise coming from the other direction. You could test my theory by trying (just keeping with the cooking utensils) a baking sheet, or a piece of aluminum foil.
I put a wire mesh behind one of these, and it improved my reception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQhlmJTMzw [youtube.com]
(coat hanger HTDV antenna)

Re:From a Completely Different Perspective

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Or, read a book. Less expensive and ad- free.

Why TV Corp believes that it's the consumers' responsibility to provide them with a business model is beyond me.

Re:Fill 'er up!

[commodore64_love]

I hope not. I enjoy getting free TV. If it's phased out, they'll be nothing left but large monthly bills to gain access to entertainment. PLUS broadcast television is more efficient, with the ability for News and Weather reports to reach a million people from a single antenna. The equivalency via internet would need a million wires, or ~100,000 cell towers. The latter is inefficient.

What annoys me is that the FCC is a non-democratic bureaucracy, making plans to dismantle broadcast TV, and there's no way for the People's voices to be heard (either for or against). I feel as helpless as a serf.

Re:Fill 'er up!

[Itninja]

The need to a box has taken the cable television back to 1985. The 'cable ready' television was great because you didn't need a box. Now if you have 6 TV in your home....guess what? You need 6 mammoth cable boxes (or at the very least 6 cable cards). Of and BTW, they cost about $60 a year each. Welcome to the New World Order.

Re:Fill 'er up!

[c0d3g33k]

IPV4? You mean the internet protocol that everyone is still using because it still works and the internet hasn't ground to a halt like all the Chicken Littles predicted?. I find the newest tech inferior precisely because it breaks so blasted soon. You younguns can get all up in my $h!t because I'm so out of touch, but faster obsolescence is hardly progress. Well, maybe for the people that make stuff to sell, but not for people in general. For humanity things that work well for a long time are better, IMHO.

Re:Fill 'er up!

[commodore64_love]

- Well two of the channels I get with my Antenna are foreign programming. Mostly from India and Korea, but also a smattering of Italy, Germany, France, China, and Russia. I've tried to find some of these shows via isohunt, but they either aren't there or lack English subtitles so the local channel is the only real option.

- The other two channels I sometimes watch are Spanish with telenovelas. Same deal - either the shows are not available online, or lack subtitles.

- The Family channel has reruns of Little House, Laverne & Shirley, Happy Days, et cetera which my child watches. Some of these I can rent - others I cannot. He also watches Qubo which is online, but very limited (just a few episodes). And the "this" Movie Channel is yet another channel that displays lots of rare/old programs that can't be found online.

That's about it. Other channels shows Star Trek, Dead Like Me, Deadliest Catch, ..., but like you said those can be found or rented easy enough. I watch Free TV mainly for the 7 channels I just listed, plus local news and weather.

Re:There are major problems with dtv

[Revek]

We don't charge for our hd channels. Off airs and all of the network feeds we can get in the clear are available on any qam capable hd set. Oh and out of that 36% we must keep upkeep on a huge distribution plant pay for vehicles/gas/oil/tires and 400 dollar a pop set top boxes that whining losers like to spill drinks,wax from candles and ashes from incense in. My favorites are the ones that are full of roaches. I like making little money as much as the next guy. I see the books. we don't make out like bandits.