Analog nut, Mark Shubin. “Where’s my pizza?”
Beyond the Headlines September 25, 2005 — This is total BS and another delaying tactic in the implementation of DTV.
Sometimes the politicians in Washington need a reality check when it comes to the transition to digital television. Mark Schubin, an Emmy-Award-winning Fellow of SMPTE (and a well-known TV trade journalist), is challenging Senator John McCain’s call for speeding the DTV transition. Schubin said that the Hurricane Katrina disaster clearly illustrates that shutting down analog TV broadcasting will endanger lives rather than protect them.
Shubin presents himself as the worlds greatest TV engineer and has been a stooge for anti-HDTV forces since day one. He once said it was impossible to shoot in HDTV. More recently he said that LCDs and plasma monitors were of such poor quality that they were useless as monitors and HD tubes were too heavy. So this was a huge problem now, according to Shubin.
Now suddenly it’s a public safety issue. What is the logic here? You lose all your power and somehow analog TV becomes more important? How about radio for public safety information? I smell Sinclair Broadcasting lurking somewhere in all this.
There is a nut claiming to be a tech guru? When did that happen? Seriously, folks like this have been around since the stone age. Remember the “scientists” who claimed cigarette smoke was actually beneficial because it raised your resistance to carbon monoxide pollution from car exhaust. Or the Laser Disc manufactures who said DVDs were to problematic and would never take off as a consumer product. Sometimes these guys are to influential to ignore, but they are always to biased to take seriously.
Gee, did you even read what you linked to?!
The vast majority of people still have analog TVs. Thus, in a dangerous situation, if you want to get news out to the public, the best way to do that is via analog broadcasts.
The costs for converters are VERY high. How are the poor supposed to afford these? In times of crises, when it’s important to get news out to the public, are we really supposed to ignore the poor?!
And getting reception for over the air digital broadcasts is difficult. With digital, either you get a perfect signal or you get nothing. With analog, the picture may be fuzzy, but you’ll still get it.
And you talk about power going out, well, name ONE HDTV that works on batteries?! Guess what, they don’t sell them! However they do sell VERY cheap battery operated analog TVs which are great for emergencies involving blackouts. I’ve used mine several times during storms. (In case you don’t know this, most TV stations have power generators and can broadcast even through blackouts!)
So I’ll say it again, if you want to disseminate information to the public during an emergency the BEST way to do it is via analog TV.
All you do is throw out some ad hominem attacks against him, never addressing what he clearly says! Does he have a bias?! Sure. Does he have an agenda? Sure. But guess what, BOTH sides have biases and agendas. When the analog airwaves are freed up, there are billions to be made. Don’t you think that could lead to little bit of dishonesty on the digital side?!
Have you watched HDTV? Unless you’re watching sports or a movie there’s absolutely no point to it. Trust me.. I work at a TV station.
-A
What a lout. When my OTA reception was limited to the local dog-in-the-manger analog telecasters, I could get a couple of channels clearly. The rest were crap!
Now, that my rig is set-up for HDTV and I’ve acquired a receiver that also receives digital OTA from the same channels — who, not-so-incidentally, broadcast at about 25% maximum power — I can receive every one of them, loud and clear, with a dinky $25 antenna sitting on my amp. From almost 50 miles away.
Of course, now that I can watch “local” TV for the first time in a decade, I see it’s worse garbage than was available before. It’s like 50% infomercials. And almost half the channels don’t push out the HDTV they have available from their networks. They’re too busy leasing out the bandwidth to even sleazier OTA operations.
Note: our local PBS channel is absolutely the exception to all this foolishness. They set the standard for our “leading” commercial networks in New Mexico.
I watch HDTV, Alias, movies, all sorts of things besides mere sports is excellent. I’ve had it for almost two years and it’s great. I’ve worked at a TV sation too..so what? Who hasn’t?
Wait a minute Imafish. What about the thousands if not millions of people that have no analog service of any kind like myself?! If an emergency broadcast happened over analog, I and anyone with digital service would never get it. I don’t even know anyone that uses analog service anymore and I can’t count how many years it has been since I saw an analog antenna.
This guy is a quack and no we shouldn’t rely on TV of any kind in the first place! By FAR the BEST way to disseminate information during an emergency is RADIO, not TV (analog or digital). It should be expected that your TV might not work during a crisis. However, radios with batteries that are the size of a credit card are widely available. Everyone’s car has a radio. Let the networks decide how they are going to broadcast information. As to the government, they should stick with radio.
Y’all are missing the larger point:
WHY should politicians be deciding for all of us, how we can and can’t receive communications signals?
SO WHAT if some people still want to transmit analog video signals, and some people still want to receive them?? LET THEM, ALREADY. WHOSE BUSINESS IS IT, THAN THEIRS, ANYWAY?
John McCain should have no more influence over what we watch, and how we watch it, than he does over when my alarm goes off in the morning…
Everybody seems mighty confused. People keep describing the negatives of HDTV. The act McCain supports is to requre digital TV. Perfectly functional on many pocket sized over the air televisions. The digital switch will also free up many radio channels for emergency services. Don’t think high def. has anything to do with the proposal, as it does not.
One thing he doesn’t tell you is how many people get their signal from Cable. I thought it was around 75%+. Why do people want to keep the US in the dark ages on tech use? These are the same kind of people keep us from having Fiber Optics to our house.
Very interesting.
Could you please cite a reference for any time I have said:
– that I am the world’s greatest TV engineer, or
– that it’s impossible to shoot in HDTV?
I’d really appreciate it.
For the record, I’ve been using HDTV cameras since 1973. The first HDTV show I engineered went on the air in June 1989.
Oh, and my last name is spelled Schubin.