The Demise of Analogue TV

[grgeliz]

The big cell phone industry is taking all the bandwidth to develop even more mobile devices using more bandwidth and they're taking it from network broadcasters. GREED, GREED. The government is getting billions from these cell conglomerates and they have powerful and greedy attorneys helping the telecos with the switchover. Broadcasters are going BLACK.

[EXTREME4YEARSTOCOME]

goodbye analog. ill miss you.

[mattfox14]

My area switches over fully tomorrow

[mknomad5]

Digital is a "better system". That's the only explanation given? What is the real story? This changeover is very fishy, the party line official story much too lean and clean to be real. Something is being covered up and I want to know!! lol

[MIKON8ERISBACK]

With DTV, you can get interference, but instead of static, you get mosaic-like squares on the screen, and the audio cutting in and out.

[APyleOfVinyl]

@MIKON8ERISBACK Ahh technology. I am going to start my own analogue TV station in the future. I do not care if I go to prison, I want to get my voice heard.

[kakureru]

isnt "plays for sure" in itself DRM?

[MrPomponous]

TV IS NOT A NECESSITY

[jason24568]

I saw a Nokia receiver. Nokia make it everything not just for mobile phones.

[AquaCherokee27]

Why the switch? What really happened? Who is using Analog now. I doubt if it was fully trashed. Is Analog being used by the Wold government and Military? I find it quite strange that we in the US had less than 2 years notice. Not much media on the subject. This issue still bother me today. Digital is not good here. Blocky pictures and sometime a strange static screen as if it were still using Analog.

[AnthonyUK]

MPEG2 Standard Definition is blocky,poor and is not good;MPEG4 is better and can carry more channels including HD with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound

[laurdy]

around collage the tv reception was OK but after the changeover there is NO TV AT ALL!!! on the occasions that digital is picked up we get a screen of Huge Pixels and a chirping sound for the audio, there is no cable i the area(switched of i the 1960's) and too many trees to recive satalite, the only way we could see the huge pixels and chirping for digital is with a high gain amplifier connected to a rooftop antenna and were still expected to pay a licence fee for this!!!

[drradio2003]

hay we went digital here in the US a few mos ago. it sucks. im an engineer and you cant tell me that 1.2MW erp to 13kw erp???? what??? and the electricity these transmitters use is 3 times than the power of the aniloug transmitters. digital is only 12% eff. ntsb. is 67-80% please tell me what is going on??a watt is a watt, is digital this much metter? no from an engineers aspect. hell and I have no idea as to what to fix when it break's.

[billsnitzer]

okay.. it's June...

[johneymute]

what a good joke, the hicher bandwitch broadcasters want for their tv channels,the more they,ve to pay for it,and thus hicher quality.

but there,s a simple effective save cost solution.

by using the losseless compression methode they only need litle bandwitch will preserving maximum quality

[cutemi2]

I hope the Philippine Government support Digital TV as soon as possible

[wrestlingnewsdesk]

going digital doesn't mean you have to pay for services like in the uk you can get a cheap box from £15 and thats called freeview and the only charge is you brought the box and that is it.unless you opt for top up tv a few subscription channels on freeview.

[Raquelota58]

I want my analog! I feel that we need to have a choice!

I do not think having digital should be the only choice, we need choices not to be forced into digital.

I do not want to pay for the services, I feel that it is actually a scam, I wonder how many government officials have had donations for their campaigns. I wonder how many gifts and vacations they got before they decided what is "best" for "everyone". Their has to be someone out there who wants to still be a analog customer like me!

[christopherve7alb]

In most parts of the world you do NOT have to pay for DTV OTA. Digital OTA is received exactly the same as analog OTA except that the signals are ATSC. Most of the time you will not even need to upgrade your antenna. If it can receive UHF analogue signals then you're fine. The only thing you will need is a converter box for your TV to change the digital signals to analog ones. These boxes are usually pretty cheap and in the US you can even get a government coupon to help with the purchase.

[xpidf1]

In July 2011, Japan will kill off all analouge transmissions from fuul and low-power TV Stations, especially in the Hokkaido area on which the transition began months and years earlier

[GotRiceBish]

We know that Luxembourg, Andorra, The Netherlands and Finland are already digitalized.  In the USA all transmitters must be digital by February 17th of 2009. In Canada the date of digital transition is August 31st of 2011. In the UK the digital switchover is ongoing and it will be done by 2012. Full digital broadcasting will begin on December 31st 2015 in the Philippines.

[xpidf1]

on July 2011, it will be the turn for Japan. Hokkaido began first

[MaTchBoOkPoEt]

fucking rippoff shit,just a way to fuck you outta more money for hours of shit that makes you more oblivious to the nwo lol suckers

[andremp04]

It's not a rip off. You could 4 full resolution good bitrate SD widescreen channels from 1 analogue channel frequency thats a good deal.

[MaTchBoOkPoEt]

what about public access tv... a forum for anyone who wants to speak there mind ...

if digital tv is so great why is public access abolished??? wake up

[andremp04]

If a broadcaster wants to create a Public Access channel, I'm sure they could with digital, if it's essential needed.

[christopherve7alb]

Who watches public access. Here in canada all public access is is a 30 min tape run all day long. Useless.

[rnr04jul79]

Another reason for the switch to digital is that as people become more mobile they need more cellphone channels,more channels for data transmission and wifi.The old analogue tv channel frequencies will be reallocated for more two way radio use,cellphones and paging.Frequencies in the gigahertz range will continue to open up and with digital signals,they occupy less bandwith and better signal quality.

[98770]

we have coupons for converter boxes

[wilkes85]

I live in Canada, and i didn't know that our analogue TV wasn't shutting down until 2012. i thought ours was shutting down in 2009 with the americans. well we got 4 more years of free TV before the media starts ripping us off by forcing us to pay for TV. [the reason why people still have analogue is because they can't afford cable TV, now those people are being kicked around. it's all a moneymaking scam, u know.

[lkjbcfbgjklc]

Once the digital switchover comes into effect there will still be free TV with off air antennas- Only one exception it will be digital. Off air TV is still free you just need to buy a fairly inexpensive converter box to change the digital signals into something older analogue TVs can understand.

[wilkes85]

you mean all i need is to connect a set of rabbit ears to this little box, then hook up the little box to the TV, then everything will be exactly like it was before? I can still use the knob on the TV to change channels and everything? well, it sure is good news, considering when they first announced this digital thing, they said all our analogue TVs will be useless no matter what and we all are supposed to buy new, digital TVs. What an evil, moneymaking scheme, eh?

[lkjbcfbgjklc]

I do agree with you the digital switchover is a useless and expensive plot. Many people aren't going to realize that older TVs can be adapted to tune the digital signals and are going to go out an buy a $1000+ DTV set - good news for the manufacturers. As for your question the converter will act like a regular satellite/ digital cable box. You have to watch your TV through that tuner. The channels you receive are still free though.

[miniclip876]

@lkjbcfbgjklc it's called a aerial

[miniclip876]

@lkjbcfbgjklc by the way it's called a aerial not antenna

[piplol2468]

whats wrong with analogue tv seems fine to me it's proven reliable

[simonfox82]

Very true, however digital is significantly more efficient in terms of the radio spectrum it uses and the switchover will enable a lot of this to be freed up for other services.

[piplol2468]

yes but you get a poorer picture quality and insteed of the picture quality geting worse from time to time it will just pixel up or stop like a scratched up dvd.your are right it will free up more space but the down side is the picture, i think the tech is not ready yet and its weird i shoudn't it be the broadcasters coice to switch not the gov. as of now i just hope they don't do the same for radio

[rep0eagle]

by the year 2012 ALL analog signals wether it be tv, radio, old cell phone networks, walkie talkies, w/e, will all shut down. Technology is advancing.

Soon we will be able to go food shopping through the internet

[piplol2468]

well what about the amateur radio bands there still wildly used there are a few digital transmitting devices but there is still more analog radio besides the only big radio i see coming is wifi radio because it gives you as much or more radio stations than serious or xm radio plus wifi radio is free but analog radio has been around for all most a century and will continue to be here

[rep0eagle]

and another thing i'll say and i know more people will agree with me, with digital signals you get WAY less channels than with analog. With my tv's analog tuner, i pick up about 15 stations. Yes, fuzzy, but watchable. it doesnt bother me. With digital, picture is 100% perfect. EXCEPT, i only get like 1 channel. 7.1. in other words, you need to live across the street from the tv station or your not gonna get anything. With analog i can pick up stations over 40 miles away.

[rep0eagle]

On antennaweb, it says i live 28 miles from the main city where all our local channels are. Boston. I live on the first floor, so maybe thats why, but i know for sure that analog transmits in watts up to the 2,000's+ while digital transmits under 800. You can look up the station and check how many watts they're using. but theres nothing i can do about it until i move to a different house.

[christopherve7alb]

Pixilation only occurs when you live a fair distance from the broadcast transmitters. generally speaking you only experience it when your signal drops below 30% In terms of analog reception that would be almost unwatchable. All you need is a fairly good antenna and your reception should be fine. I can pull in DTV stations with less then 30KW power output form transmitters over 40 km away with a small rooftop yagi antenna.

[davba2]

Not true. Poor reception would cause picture freezes and breaks in sound.

Pixelation is caused by pictures with too much detail and movement. The MPEG compression is shared across the channels within a multiplex. so there isn't enough bandwidth to handle detailed pictures.

[christopherve7alb]

I watch HDTV over the air all the time, in fact it is the only HD that I have and the only time I have Pixelation is when my signal is weak or breaking up. OTA actually has MORE bandwidth than cable and thus the quality is better than cable HD.

[davba2]

HDTV over the air? I take it you're from the US. In the UK, we don't have terrestrial HD yet although it's being tested in the London area.

I was referring to the way UK standard definition is transmitted. The 40 or so channels are transmitted over 6 multiplexes and they all have to share the bandwidth.

[christopherve7alb]

OK I get what your saying now, yeah with that many channels I can see why bandwidth would be an issue. Yes I live in Canada and we use the same system as the US although we have fewer HD channels.

[Zlaja16]

...its free for the consumer

[wilkes85]

exactly! I have digital cable in the living room, and I always get problems.. the screen would scramble sometimes, the picture would occasionally go blank, and on top of all that, the picture quality of analogue is actually better than digital... if you look closely at certain images on the screen on digital cable, it looks all pixelated, like a youtube video.

If you could still get analogue cable where i live, I would still have it. No damn converter box wasting space and a power outlet lol