DTV delay - Does it matter?

Some people won't be ready no matter when the change takes place. At some point you have to get on with it, and people who have delayed and delayed and delayed will finally have to take some responsibility themselves (what a novel idea!). I'm sure lots of people in the computer programming field wanted to delay the Y2K stuff, too - but at some point don't you have to move on???

 

I think the delay is great. I would like to see the stations disable analog in a spread out fashion though. The pressure to handle the DTV conversion would grow incrementally, instead of overnight. Like it or not, the complexity of the change is more than many people can handle by themselves. They're going to need a technician to at least advise them, and maybe a house call. This all takes time, and there are only so many technicians available at any particular time. Spread out the work.

The best presentation I've seen on DTV conversion is the half hour show on PBS. They make it seem so simple. The only problem is that they didn't address the all too common situation of having multiple devices. Is it beyond belief that someone would have an analog TV, a VCR, and a DVD player? They didn't touch on such a situation in the half hour show. Systems tend to grow with age, and people may not understand exactly what they already have, let alone how to integrate something new into the mix.

I looked on the back of my new LCD television with all the current bells and whistles. There are 27 signal input jacks. Just a few more than the single "Antenna In" connector that the educational campaign addresses.

They say that about 5% of people haven't made the conversion. That sounds optimistic by a long shot. I think the sh*t isn't going to hit the fan until they turn it ON (or OFF in this case...).

 

Hi RobH,

I think the delay is worthless. The change is going to happen. People who were not ready because the card program ran out of money, are not going to get a card either. They should have refunded the card program, and did the change on time.

A stratified change is not possible. ALL these stations are ALREADY transmitting DTV, but in a wierd mish-mash of channels. For example here in Chicago Channel 2 will be going to 12 (its on low power on channel 3 right now), and Channel 12 is occupied in Milwaukee (I think, or somewhere else close) by an analog station. So Channel 2 can't switch until the Analog station gets out of the way. There is going to be all sorts of coordination issues like this. If the changes do not just happen simultaneously, there will be all sorts of interferance.

Technician, smecknician - most times a smart teenager will do. Just plug the antenna into THE Antenna IN jack, and start the setup and go off and read the manual for all the other details, while you enjoy DTV over the next few weekends. You can ignore all the other stuff until you read up on it.

As far as VCR OTA recording, all one needs to do is set the converter box to the channel to be recorded. One of the converter boxes has a programable channel/time feature. BTW, how long do VCR's last anyway? Here the experience is just not been that good. The next one will have a DTV tuner.

All these devices are daisy-chained. Just put the output of the converter box into the antenna in jack at the first device. Its still the same RF spectrum, amplified by the same RF amplifier.

 

Easy. Those stations that need to coordinate can just agree among themselves on the changeover day. Other stations will hopefully choose other dates. People who lose access to their favorite channels will feel the heat, but still have access to remaining channels while they try to figure it all out. Apparently some low power analog stations are not even scheduled to make the changeover at all.

Smart teenagers and friends are the primary resource. People who haven't changed over yet probably don't have much money for expensive technicians.

Sorry, but the single line instructions just don't cut it. I set up my sister's TV because she didn't understand where to start. She has the TV, a VCR, a DVD player, and an AB switch. The TV has both an antenna input and RCA jacks. The VCR has ANTENNA IN, TV OUT, RCA VIDEO OUT, RCA AUDIO OUT, and a switch for selecting channel 3/4 TV OUT. The DVD player has RCA VIDEO OUT, RCA AUDIO OUT, S-VIDEO OUT, FIXED LEVEL AUDIO OUT, VOLUME CONTROLLED AUDIO OUT. The converter box came with a coax cable for the antenna connection, plus RCA cables for using that connection.

The first thing I had to do was to figure out how the whole mess was connected. The next problem was getting another AC plug, since the one in use was already maxed out. Since you get a better picture using the RCA connectors, I chose to use that type of connection between the converter box and the TV. But that messed up the VCR function. So then I connected the coax output from the converter box to the VCR ANTENNA IN. And then connected the coax output from the VCR to the TV ANTENNA IN. That left the DVD player out in the cold. So I reconnected the converter RCA output to the AB box, the DVD player output to the AB box, and the AB box output to the RCA input on the TV.

I think that covers all the connections, and it was a whole lot more complicated than just daisy chaining the converter box into the antenna wire. One function that was lost is the ability to record one channel on the VCR while watching another on the TV. And forget using the VCR tuner to select the channel. If she wants to record one channel while watching another, it will require an additional converter box OF A DIFFERENT BRAND. Otherwise, the remotes will get confused.

Confused yet? One of my greater satisfactions is that a particular English teacher who hated geeks is going to have to figure this all out. I hope she has a miserable time.

That's good to hear that there is a converter box with programmable channel/time. If there were more time available, perhaps that could be documented by organizations like Consumer Reports. As is, most people just have to get the one converter box carried by the first store they find it in. The range of devices available has not been generally documented.

A VCR with a DTV tuner? Now that's a bridge product. I'd like a DVD recorder with a DTV/QAM tuner, but they are still rather pricey. And Blu-ray is lurking at an even higher price. I've got a media computer with several tuners and software to record/playback from multiple sources. It's way too involved to operate the thing, and a dedicated DVD recorder looks more attractive.

That's one of the options, but not the best. And the DVD player doesn't even have any coax connectors.


DTV provides a major improvement in picture quality, program selection, and spectrum utilization. It's worth doing, but there is no reason to make the conversion more difficult than necessary. Providing some adjustment time to work out the kinks is just a reasonable way to handle the situation.

 

for those who are interested, the fcc has the official list of stations that will go digital on feb 17th. but there is no information in the list about any dates between now and june.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-221A5.pdf


according to Kteh and Kqed (for you bay area folks) there hasn't been a date agreed between the bay area broadcasters for when rest of the market will go digital.

it is believed to be sometime before june 12th

kofy kfty kcns and kicu will turn off thier analog signals on feb 17th

http://www.kqed.org/tv/help/dtv-transition.jsp

The column labeled Nite Lite indicates whether the station plans to keep its analog signal going for 30 days past the February 17 analog cut-off date in order to provide emergency and DTV education information.

 

So a handful of hillbillies haven't prepared because you need basic literacy to read the announcements. Oh well

I have an elderly neighbour who likes to watch over the air broadcast from North Dakota. He became concerned a couple of years ago, and had already received his DTV box when I moved into my current house.

I thought the install was very easy, he claims he could have handled it too.

 

We're doing a rolling shutdown. It started at the end of last year (excluding Whitehaven in the Lake District in 2007) and will take four years in total, with Ulster (Northern Ireland) switching over at the end of 2012.

The free-to-air DTV system here has been available since 1998, although that original system was a market failure until the BBC-backed Freeview started in October 2002. 42% of all TV sets are already Freeview-enabled, either by set-top box or as integrated digital TVs. Terrestrial is still the predominant way that UK viewers get their TV - terrestrial analogue-only makes up nearly 28% of the share (still to be converted). Satellite covers 22.3% of the sets (+1% free-to-air satellite), cable only 6.2%.

The actual frequency selection and system design has been pretty good, to avoid interference from digital signals on the existing analogue network, but the cost has been that digital signals have been very low level. Most transmitters will at least double in power when the analogue signal is switched off.

There are a few benefits to switching over early. The main one is more channels - only five channels are available on analogue, with more than 30 on digital. (These are all free and unencrypted, some more are available with a subscription card.) When it does work, the picture is normally a lot better - when it doesn't work, of course, it doesn't work at all.

The US problem largely seems to be the limited voucher scheme, which was underfunded and vouchers have been taken by people who didn't need them.

Most modern TVs here, built within the last 20 years, have several SCART connectors on them. SCART makes hooking up AV devices very simple as you just have one plug. In general prefer component to composite video, and composite video to RF connections.

 

It just boggles my mind what a big deal is being made about it. They're using words like "vulnerable," and "important" and "leaving people in the dark" as if being without TV for even a short while could be considered a big, bad scary thing.

It is TV folks. Nobody ever died or even got ill from not having it. In fact, we could probably do the country a favor by turning it all off.

Sorry. Grumpy today. Do we REALLY have the time/money to be screwing around with this right now? Are there not WAY the hell more important things that our gov't should be dealing with?

 

I'm that way all the time, and I prefer to be too

No. But we can't discriminate against semi-illiterate hillbillies

Yes

 

It is really important. TV is the largest group think mechanism in the world. Without the common force, people might think more for themselves, or at least chose a wider variety of leaders. If you're a corporate communicator or politician, losing TV access to your targets is a major hit.

Take your Soma Darrell. Then watch some afternoon soap operas. You've been doing too much independent thought lately. Just think "we need more oil, we need more oil...".:smash:

Actually, there are some decent shows on TV. I just discovered that I can get the Create channel (DTV 22-2 in Cotati) with my new DTV setup. Cotati is about 75 miles away, and the 4-bowtie antenna picks it up fine. That makes about 8 PBS channels I can get now, 3 of which are not available on cable. I grant you that most of the network shows are worthless, but there are a few worth watching.

 

The horror .... the horror

 

Religion used to be the opium of the masses. Now it's television.

 

Hi RobH,

Its not just two stations off on the some planet independant of all others. Its a ripple effect. Say channel 2 switches to Channel 12, from 3. Then Channel 12 switches and interferes with the channel it shows up on. That channel changes, and so on. Its a game of over-the-horizon dominos going on. I'm somewhat familiar with such things having been a Ham Packet Radio network operator. Your dealing not with your immediate area, but stations you cannot hear or see hundreds of miles away. Its really all or nothing.

Get up a few hundred feet in the air with an antenna, and its much more apparent what is going on, as the over-the-horizon stations will fade up and down and you learn where they are. With an rooftop antenna, its just not apparent how interlocked all the allocations really are.

And from that you can see why its so wrong to put off the date that has been planned for for years. Remember, some of the allocations are going away for ever. So rather than just switching onto their old Analog allocations, some stations are getting shoe-horned to a shrunken spectrum. But thanks to digital its possible. For example Weigel broadcasting in Chicagoland has 4 channels (24 MHz) of analog right now. Its mostly oldies-TV, plus one channel for the foriegn language locals (it switches nationalities thru-out the day). After the conversion they will have one powerful station with 5 channels in one 6 MHz space. They actually are increasing their number of channels but reducing the spectrum used to 1/4th. So this makes spaces for the stations that were up above 700 MHz, and the other spectrum that is getting taken away from TV. But you can see, Wiegel has no impetus to take down the analog signals, until the governments says "do it". And at this time, its just wasting spectrum, because their 5 channel single allocation station is up and running great.

 

Oh I totally agree that some TV is worth watching. I just don't see any of it as "need." You know - like food, water, education, housing.

Hell, I'd like some government assistance to help me pay for going out to a movie and dinner! Of course I'd also settle for a Tesla model S that I'd have trouble affording otherwise.

When did the ability to watch TV become an American "right?" Not every two people who love each other can get married, but we'll make sure your TV is never interrupted! I'm just glad we have our priorities straight.

 

Um, it's the same problem here in Canada. Gotta keep the masses entertained, fat, dumb, and happy

 

Hmmm. If only that made me feel better.