TVSquad

. . . I hope that YOU'RE working on either buying a. . .

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If it doesn't affect cable or satellite users what's the big deal?

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You're right Neil, probably. There's an outside chance your cable/dish company will try to squeeze a few bucks out of you by pulling some scam where they "force" you to switch. But there's no reason they should have to. I'd suggest checking with them sometime in 2008 just to be sure.

But for the vast majority of TV Squad readers, this is a non-story.

http://popculturejunk.blogspot.com/

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Stop screaming chicken little, the sky isnt falling. This will in no way effect the 90% of us who receive our tv via cable, satellite or fiber. This will only impact those who receive their signals over the air.

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Well isn't this a scare piece. If you're going to do a piece on the DTV transition the least you do is put a link to the actual page about it by the FCC http://www.dtv.gov/

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Assuming that those of us currently getting analog cable on our analog TV sets aren't forced by our cable companies (cough, COMCAST, cough) to switch to more-expensive digital cable when the time comes. Which I fully expect to happen.

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Hmm. I think this post is wrong in a couple of ways. First if you are getting your signal from a local TV station you have an antenna on the roof picking up the analogue signal which you can then distribute by coaxial cable to all the TVs in your house, because in every TV there's a tuner decoding the analogue signal into the information for the cathode to display on your TV screen.

Now everything changes to digital and the Tuner in your TV is absolete. But if you buy a new TV set, you'd then have to have a tuner which is able to decode DIGITAL signals (usually DVB-T, right?).
The advantage of this is that a small antenna right in the new TV set is able to pick up the signal anywhere in your home even if you have concrete walls, the signal is pretty strong.

But why do that? Just keep your old TV-set and buy an external device with antenny and a digital to analogue converter, with analogue outputs which you can then attach to your TV - because since the number of people really needing a TV-set with built in digital tuner and antenna is so small that TV-sets with this built in will be more expensive than a TV without one built in with HDMI (digital inputs with copy protection for HDTV) and analogue inputs (most likely SCART, Composite and S-Video)

Additionally the cheaper the TV set you then buy is with built-in digital tuner most likely what happens inside that box is the signal is converted from digital back to analogue and then internally handed over to an analgue input where it is again converted into the digital format the TV can display with it's built in output chips, with the result usually looking worse than if you just keep your old analogue TV-set and buy an external decoder box.

So the whole change will most likely cost every home which is still getting an analogue signal via a house antenna about a hundred box per TV-set. Far cheaper than getting new TVs and actually not that big of a problem considering you then get about four to five channels (digital) in place of ONE former analogue channel which is a big plus.

We here in germany had this change for the last five to six years now gradually all over the country, television tower after television tower because we don't have local stations but rather five to seven channels from our government run TV stations which are broadcasted all over germany (same content everywhere). Because, you know, we here in germany are forced to pay 50 bucks a month to get those channels no matter what - it's THE LAW (tm) :-)

So after the change to digital all those old channels are packed in the space of one old channel and you usually get 15 to 20 additional, private run (commercial) channels whereever the market justifies it (so usually in the areas with dense population, for instance in the far north close to the border to denmark you don't get any additional channels at all) - but in areas like Berlin or Munich you now get 20 more channels and all you had to do is pick up a small box for a hundred bux and you are all set and ready to go while the 40% of homes who get their signal via cable have to pay 15 bucks a month for the same channels.

(of course the other 40% who get their signal via Satellite don't have to pay anything either but there are a lot of landlords who don't allow a dish outside on the wall).

So the change to digital actually is pretty neat - also you can watch the channels in your car because compared to the old analogue standard, that was close to impossible due to the nature of analogue transmitting. You can pick up smal LCD TVs with built in DVB-T (t is for terrestrial) decoders and watch crystal clear TV almost anywhere outside within the range of a television tower. There are also about a dozen USB sticks on the market you can attach to your notebook - a digital decoder with small antenna all in a small 2 to 3 inch USB-stick, those are about 80 bucks at the moment.

Pretty great technology if you ask me :-)

So stop staring people :-) This change is good :-)

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Small P.S.: Strike the first sentence, there's nothing wrong with this post I simply used a very old text I wrote a couple of years ago when people here in germany wondered what the change would mean for them.

What I wanted to add is that there is nothing scary about this - the whole thing you need to know is:

buy small converter box. Attach box to TV once signal is digital only. Done.

I don't really know what the whole fuzz was about here and now is over there because you actually get rid of the TV cable and simply get a little box attached to your old TV set and that's it. Nothing more.

All the other stuff is for tech geeks only or for people who think about watching TV outdoors. I don't really get the whole last pararaph to be honest all that happened here is people getting a very short letter in their mailbox telling them to get a converter box and that was it. No uproad no complaining people really liked the fact that they got additional content and as far as I understand it there are a great number of TV stations in the US who already broadcast digital side by side with analogue who also think about adding additional content because it won't cost them more money to add another channel to their digital transmitter.

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Funny. I just got a mail this week in which Comcast IS forcing it's users to get digital converters if you want to watch anything other than the small selection of basic cable channels they plan on keeping analog for the time being. So, now I have to get boxes on every television in my house if I just want to watch the Cartoon Network, MTV or FX.

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my biggest issue is, the cable companies will still chrage for extra boxes. but without them they aren't providing service. I already pay a premium for my all digital service. a premium that should be dropped for me as the whole thing goes digital

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None of this mentions how Cable TV is nearly as lame as analog TV transmission. Between my PC and Blockbuster, I get all the TV I need. Why should I spend an extra $60+ for a hundred channels I never watch?

I do like using my bunny ears on occasion, though....

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The idiotic thing is that every time you switch the medium you have to get new boxes. There are different standards for digital cable, digital satellite and now (then) terrestrial digital TV (also there are now different flavours to digital satellite TV because HDTV would take up to much bandwidth if still transmitted the "old" way).

So in case you move you will have to buy everything new again - just happened to me last year, my new apartment doesn't have cable but rather satellite so I had to buy another box. Most likely when I move again I can't use my old cable box because they now also start switching again to another standard to be able to charge people on a more detailed basis (for each channel, for a select number of days/hours/minutes or shows).

And every time it's you who has to pay. I can't wait until this all merges into the Internet because frankly - all I would need is ONE device running a configurable OS like Linux or maybe even Windows. I would _definately_ not mind installing another program and watching TV on my computer. With Intel's Core Duo processors which are fast enough to do all this even without a large fansink or fast running fans, I would simply add another cable from my PC to my TV-set and that would be it (frankly I did all this already to watch stuff I get from the Internet on my TV-set so I am kind of already set and done and would only need the software to get my cable or satellite programs via the Internet... which is a series of tubes ;-) - still love that joke :-) )

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