Someone explain this to me? Why does the US need digital TV?

Stimulates the economy and the people that paid for them to be in office want money flowing.

Actually, I'm pretty sure AlienQ invented it.

It's most likely a good thing but I just don't like all these laws telling people how to do business when it seems so unneccesary.

I think the seat belt law is what actually set me off on this emotion.

Seat belt laws save lives. Fact is when some dumb motherfucker doesn't wear a seat belt adn gets inot an accident MY insurance goes up and if he's poor he gets the government to pay for his medical which means ME. Now if you are willing to pay my car insurance premiums and part of my income taxes them I'll be all for getting rid of seat belt laws.

I'm not sure why anyone is even complaining about this? This is good for everyone. Tv stations really aren't out any money because they were upgrading to HD anyways and it's cheaper to send SD signals digitally than it is to send them with analog and then also send out HD signals.

This law actually save Tv stations money because without it they would have been forced to send out SD signals in both analog and digital format so customers that insist on to holding onto their 20 year old TVs can watch their station.

Actually, DirecTv, Dish, etc. can be considered one-way. Once you yank the phone line, they have no idea what the boxes are doing, so when they send down ECM's (electronic counter measures), they have to make an assumption on where the cards are at and hope their counter measures take out the code on the card that isn't supposed to be running and at the same time not screw any legit customers.

DTV also has been learning from mistakes and between their tactics the music industry adopted (sue everybody) and getting better smart carts that can't be glitched, there haven't been any rumblings of their card getting cracked. If it has, it's been kept under pretty tight wraps by those who did it.


Cable boxes on the other hand, if memory serves me correctly, roll on docsis and is definitely two way, so they can query the hardware and have better chances of finding anomalies. Not saying it isn't crackable, it maybe is, but many people are probably less likely to try it since most of the time, the box in question is associated with your name.

Pretty much dead on.

1 television channel is 6 mhz. (assuming non HD).

With reasonable compression (and probably even more now if they moved to mpeg4/h.264 instead of mpeg2 when I last worked with the stuff) is that you
can squeeze about 4 analog channels into one 6 mhz space if you convert it to digital.

Its Simple

All digital broadcasting is UHF

the VHF spectrum will be auctioned off.

its all about money - simple as that.

Companys like Sprint, AT&T etc what that spectrum for their use, they have powerful lobbies that got this pushed threw.

The Television station I work for would have never spent MILLIONS of dollars for digital transmitters if it was not mandated by the government.

YOU=REATRD.

Ok so 12 years ago all these guys spent millions to get this passed and in the end not only do they still have to PAY for this spectrum, but they might not even get it since they have to compete with each other in an auction? Um pretty dumb waste of bribe money if you ask me. Wait 12 years and still might not get any spectrum. THINK before posting next time.

and one thing that keeps getting lost in the public discussion is that it keeps being "sold" to us as "wow, now you'll have HD on all the time, and the regular channels will have digital clarity"... bullshit. The dirty little secret is that your TV stations will look worse than before. I used to work for a major player in the business, and it's relatively simple - analog you can't do much to squeeze extra efficiency. With digital on satellite for example, on one transponder you might have 12 stations in crystal clarity. but you can dial back the quality in the encoder and squeeze in an extra 6 channels of PPV movies or time shifted channels by mixing high complexity signals (sports channels etc) with low and averaging the bandwidth needs of the 18 stations so it effectively gets juggled. BUT, that has a big effect on the picture quality especially when watching on a high quality LED or plasma. So you'll but a great new HDTV, turn it on and see an HD signal full of artefacts from the lossy compression they will use. same thing for standard size channels. They will be digital, but look worse than their analog predecessors.

Cable's days are numbered anyhow, VOIP will render dedicated boxes unnecessary. Youtube's closer to the future of TV than most people think.

This has NOTHING to do with HD and no one is "selling" that. Boy you're a fucking retard.

Once again GOD DAMN you're fucking stupid. Blah blah and you don't even have a fucking clue. First of all an analog signal uses as much bandwidth as 4 or 5 digital channels. Hell even a HD channel use LESS bandwidth than an analog channel. At anyrate what does that rant have to do with the digital transition for OVER THE AIR broadcasts? You get those via ATTENNA not cable or satellite. Also as far as HD goes you can get your locals with a regular old antenna too. You don't need to get those through cable or satellite.

Not only are you confusing cable/satellite with OTA you are confusing HDTV with digital TV. Yes HDTV is digital, but not all digital TV is HD.

VoIP is for VOICE that's what the V stand for numbnuts. Are you trying to refer to IPTV?

Do you ever watch youtube videos? The quality sucks ass even on the "best" ones. There's not any site I know of that steams videos that even look as good as analog SDTV let alone digital SDTV or HD. A HD stream would require a site to stream it at a minimum of 8-9 Mbps no sites do that and even if they did the average American household that does have broadband internet conenction is about 1/3 that speed. Not to mention that 25% of households with an internet connection still use dial-up. Mabe at most 10% of households have an internet connection capable of handling a HD stream. That's assumign they use their internet connection for nothing else while streaming. If you've got 2 computers and a XBOX 360/PS3 hooked up to the internet and running all at once you can forget about getting that HD stream even if you connection was 16 Mbps.

These companies have trade groups that have lobbiest in congress this how it works. the trade group does all the leg work.

At the time (and still today) this was passed on the basis that it would fee up spectrum for the "public good" but as we have seen the spectrum is being sold off ie the 700Mhz chunk that google is going after will be the channels 52 - 69

I promise you television stations got pulled into this kicking and screaming - the last thing we wanted to do was to spend MILLIONS on new transmitters and infrastructure - it has taken this station over two years for the transition.

BTW name calling is usually a indication of low intelligence - you sir are the one that needs to do research before you open your mouth.

Here are some links that will enlighten you - sorry if you have trouble understanding the big words in these articles.

http://www.dailywireless.org/2006/10...spectrum-grab/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...tal_Television

Because the TV makers want to sell everyone a new TV. People already had 3 to 4 TVs in their homes, so no one needed more TVs, they stopped selling, prices started to fall so they got together and said "How can we sell everyone more TVs?" and one asshole in the back said "I know, lets buy off the fucking FCC and get them to pass a law saying that by X, all new TVs must work off this new system we'll call HDTV. It will be a little bit better for the consumers, but we'll get to sell them all new TVs out of it!" and the rest is history.

Its kinda like a toilet brush. You only need a toilet brush for every toilet once. The only way to sell more toilet brushes is to somehow make the old ones incompatible with new toilets.

I hope you're kidding, because you are so hilariously wrong.. I'm beside myself.

any tv with a digital decoder box can show a digital signal. So it must have been the tawianese electronics manufacturer lobby who got the FTC on board so they could sell a few million $1.00 set top boxes.

kinda

Its said that the use will be for public use - first responders and such. but to date I have not seen that happening, not at all most of the spectrum will land up in commercial hands - watch and see. it's already happening. Sprint has already been awarded a large chunk.

Why did they make the ROUND wheel? The square ones were just fine!!!!!