Digital TV Designline – 02/08/2006:
The following statement was issued today by Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) President and CEO Gary Shapiro in response to President George Bush signing into law legislation setting February 17, 2009 as the date U.S. broadcasters must end transmitting analog television signals. This act establishes a hard date for the final step in the nation’s transition to digital television (DTV). Shapiro issued the statement while attending the bill signing ceremony at the White House:
“With today’s action, President Bush has set a hard finish line for the nation’s transition to DTV. CEA has long supported a hard cut-off date for analog broadcasts. This deadline will provide certainty to manufacturers, retailers, consumers and all others with a stake in the transition.
Of course this only applies to broadcast television. Who knows how long cable companies will allow us to connect analog TVs to so called “basic cable.” I’d guess they’re chomping at the bit to get everyone switched over to money making set top boxes.
And why couldn’t this have been settled by the market?
I hope the cable companies switch over to Digial only soon, or offer to the customers a Digital only service (no analog) but not nessasrly HD.
The sole reason the feds are involved is because they want to give the analog frequencies to various corporations.
Sad but true.
Isn’t this “spectrum exchange” the roadblock to solving Public Safety communications problems which were documented by the 9/11 Commision, and the review of the Katrina [lack of] response?
i.e. federal/state/local agencies can’t communicate with each other, so the broadcasters are being given a deal on digital spectrum in exchange for “returning” the analog spectrum – which will then be “sold” to Nextel [so their ‘walkie talkie’ phones stop ‘walking’ on Police/Fire communications].
Depressing that it will be a little over 7-years after 9/11 before we can start resolving one of the major weaknesses identified in our response to that tragedy.
I don’t see how this is a bad thing.
To Mike Voice (post #4)
The problem with the 9/11 communications problem were solved by ham radio operators, many hams helped the public safety people in the recovery efforts, that is one of the reasons that the FCC allows the Armature Radio Service to exist, we help out in disasters. The problem with the Nextel “walkie talkie” feature is the same problem that the police and fire had when the towers went down then, also the same with Katrina, with them you NEED an infrastructure to support them, with hams you don’t need an infrastructure they can go point to point, so if you have 2 hams that have “HT” radios, they have a communication path open up now. Also hams are trained on how to work with many many people on the same freqs.
How do we hams get this training, well we work other public events, such as I am one of the many hams in the Pittsburgh area helping out with the St. Patrick day parade.
Hams helped out with the recover after the hurricanes.
73 de kb3hcg
PS. for more info you can see http://www.arrl.com for the Armature Radio Relay League, or http://www.qrz.com a Slashdot like blog for ham radio operators (if you go to QRZ don’t talk about CW, aka mores code, you will start a firestorm of a holy war. The emotions on both sides, aka drop the code requirement and the keep the code requirement, are very high and the flames will happen
At least all the technology will be well tested. We’re only three years behind Japan on the switch.
I am less sure about the corporate giveaway of the analog TV spectrum. spectrum sales are a big honey-pot that Congress dips into. yeah, at least some of it is supposed to go to first-responders, but it would surprise me a great deal if they did not sell off at least some of it for big $$$.
I know you commented that ‘his only applies to broadcast television’ but what happens to all the tv sets in all the households in america when we go to digital?
Will there be no way for them to work anymore?
Because theyre gonna have to use all of New Jersey as a big landfill to get rid of all the non-digital tv’s (I can not think of one person I know who has HDTV yet most have a minimum of 2-3 tv sets in their house.)
Personally, I could care less.
I havent watched tv in over 2 years. Between DLing 2-3 tv shows online (Atlantis, Name is Earl, Dr.Who), and online programming whether it be mp3 or video based RSS delivered, I always have tons of things I just dont have time to listen to. (Lugradio, Diggnation, Twit, DL.tv, Nerd.TV is my tech programming and barely get to listen to all of it) an this is not to even mention that I rarely have time to browse through audio-video treasure chests like archive.org, ubu.com and others.
Why the hell do I need a tv, never mind HD?
mark
I only watch about 2.5 non-documentary hours of television a week, but that is primarily because after you take out commercials, that is all they broadcast worth watching each week.
The only cable I have is to use a cable modem , that costs me 65 bucks a month for rotten service, 256 up and LOL a theoretical 6MBPS down. In case you are in doubt Comcast is the suck. When they go without letting me plug the cable easily into the back of my VCR for the 19 channels I get analog, I will keep cable only for broadband and their settop box of monthly fees can go directly to hell.
It all comes down to what Leary said, “He who controls your eyes controls your mind
Michael L. Reed; where do you live, I will admit I have good service from Comcast, I get 7.5 Mbits (I will admit not quite the 8 Mbits I pay for, yes I spend the extra $10 for 2 more Mbits)
Also when I first got the cable modem and the basic service I was only paying $58, I ask because it seams that you are not getting the best deal since you don’t watch TV.
I have Digital Plus & Cable Internet (second tear 8Mbit/s) & DVR and I only pay $97 (I also have the NHL Center Ice pacage, but that is a one time charge)
I will admit the DVR is nice, I don’t have to watch TV on the channels terms, I can watch what I want when I want w/o the stupid ads, I can watch a full Hockey game in about 1 hour 10 minutes.
Mike & Michael
It is a myth that there were radio problems between the different agencies on 9/11. The problem was cultural. The Police had never felt they needed to talk to the Fire Department or EMS. The Fire Department didn’t feel any need to talk to the Police. The EMS didn’t want to talk to either. They had radios that could communicate, but did not use them. There was plenty of spectrum available, and still is, for interdepartmental communication. The spectrum argument made for an easy excuse for why no one wanted to talk to any one else. If anything, there was information overload on those making decisions at the WTC.
Using ham radios will do very little to help. Basically, they will be stuck in a base station and not where the “action” is. If they do get to the action, they would then need to make contact with another operator who would need to contact the corresponding emergency personnel. During most emergencies, ALL emergency personnel are too busy to be responding to items they are not directly involved with.
As more and more people use cable and satellite for TV and broadband, we will see the broadcast stations become less and less relevant. I predict that in less then 25 years, we will see the broadcast stations start dropping their antennas, as it is not cost effective to maintain them.
Like most of us, when I watch TV at all, it is cable TV. Here in Halifax we have dozens of channels — including the US networks — and there is hardly anything worth watching. And when there is, the artistic content is usually spoiled by an excessive quantity of tasteless commercials.
We keep up our cable subscription by force of habit more than anything else. Right now our viewing consists almost entirely of DVDs. When Canada’s cable networks follow the US, and require us to buy a digital TV (as they most certainly will), we’ll likely give up TV all together.
I suspect that commercial TV, as we know it, will go the way of music CDs.
It will be no great loss.
The problem with the 9/11 communications problem were solved by ham radio operators, many hams helped the public safety people in the recovery efforts, that is one of the reasons that the FCC allows the Armature Radio Service to exist, we help out in disasters.
I don’t understand your use of the word “solved” in that context.
I agree that the ARS and MARS communitees are an excellent resource during emergencies like Katrina/Rita, but I don’t see them as being the solution to a large city’s internal communications problems.
If I remember correctly, there were NYPD, FDNY, and NYC Transit workers who could not communicate directly with each other [outside their own organisation] – even if they were on the same floor of a building – but had to relay information through dispatchers and/or Hams.
with hams you don’t need an infrastructure they can go point to point, so if you have 2 hams that have “HT” radios, they have a communication path open up now.
And where are those two Hams located, relative to the on-scene responders? How many people are involved in relaying info from one group of responders to the other?
Why don’t the responders have their own version of an “HT” radio, to eliminate the end-user frustration inherent in a human-relay based system?
The lack of dedicated spectrum for such a system is the main delay in us ever having that capability.
I believe a lot of Homeland Security money would be better spent on “HT” radios, and training in their use, than some of the “pork barrel” rescue equipment which has been purchased.
The reason that the radios for the police and fire are licensed by the FCC for only the freqs it is allowed to be on, also the Public safety groups don’t want to waste their freqs on an every day basis, so they put repeaters up for all their bands so that they cover a larger area, and that is where the problem comes in. The user of these radios can not change the freq for what ever freq that would be use full, they can only change the channel. A ham radio HT (HT is short for Handy Talky, aka a hand held radio, the term HT can be used for any hand held radio, so the police and fire already have HT’s just not Ham Radio HT’s) can be tuned to any Freq in the allocated band, lets say on 2 meters I can tune to any freq from 144Mhz to 148Mhz in 0.05Mhz steps, there are radios that can do smaller steps, also there is a convention that 146.52 is the “National Calling Freq” Also to locations, that depends on the bands, 2 meters and 70 centimeters are local while 20 meters is pritty much Nation Wide. 40, 80, 160 meters are world wide bands. See http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/bandplan.html for the bandplan for Ham Radio.
The main problem is that the Police, Fire, and other Public safety groups plan for every day issues, which they must. But when the 1 in a million event happens they might not have the equipment ready.
Also Ham radio operators help out the NWS with our Sky Warn system, we help them track storms and damage. Also non-hams can help out with Sky Warn you can not operate on the radios, but you can call in (on the phone) your reports check out http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/html/skywarn.shtml for more info But if you want to get into SkyWarn I would encourage you to get a ham ticket, it is easy and fun, and you can use it to talk to many people on the air, it is a great hobby, plus you will get chances to help out your community.
Michael P. O’Connor – I live in Flint, Michigan ( and yes Michael Moore is a lying Piece of Trash) and Comcasts basic service is channel 2-29 ( of which 7 are Home Shopping, 2 are local filler, 1 is the woo Comcast channel etc. For a grand total of about 10 functional channels. We even have 2 sets of channels that are the same network so they are blocked most of the time.
My net service and those channels that I do not want are mandatorily bundled by comcast at 65.70 a month, I lose connectivity an average of 67 minutes every 24 hours and sometimes it goes out for 2-3 day periods. My best upload speed to date ran 38kbps, and my best download speed to date was 409kbps. I had to stop playing MMORPG’s because the latency makes it an unacceptable proposition. But there is no limit on them, and nothing makes them upgrade their service. They have no motivation to improve, their only competition is SBC/ATT/Yahoo DSL, and I tried that for a few months until I realized that while DSL in Cincinnati was far superior to cable, in Flint the telco lines are actually in worse shape than the cable lines.
The next upgrade level pushes me to 100 dollars a month for more channels that I do not want. If given a choice I want BBC3, BBC4, Sci-Fi, History, Discovery, TLC ( when I can stand how dumbed down their shows are), UPN/WB, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, and AMC. But to get those specific channels my bill would be at $200 a month.
The thinband future of the US is not a possibility, it is a fact.
This has been coming and coming and coming and coming for ten years now just because Bushie siged his john henry does not mean it will become a fact anytime soon.
I would also encourage all to take the time and STUDY for your Ham License Test and PASS so you can help out when the time comes as so many of us have over the years and helped out at different tragedy’s as well as Parades,Races, as well as Sky Warn.
Folks who think TV are “going dark” in 2009 are forgetting that you can purchase a set-top box to receive the digital broadcasts and watch them on your existing analog sets. Buy a digital set later, when you’re ready to replace your existing TV. Or don’t. Your choice. More than 90% of the US is covered by digital transmissions now, and with the hard deadline set, broadcasters have to switch over to digital in order to keep their licenses. That’s part of the deal with the FCC.
The set-top boxes are available now – I’ve seen them at Wallymart. You don’t get much more “available to the average person” than that.
If you’re not on cable (and I’m not receiving my local channels through cable or satellite), the advantage of switching to digital receiption now include –
1. Sub-channels – 24 hour radar, news, alternate programming – some stations run one to three extra channels, along with their main programming
2. Reception clarity – you either get the signal, or you don’t – no halfway, no snow, no lines on channel 2 from a “distant station”. Houstonians know what I mean about that.
3. Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and HDTV – yes, widescreen broadcasts with DVD-quality sound, now. If you don’t have a widescreen set, then you can watch the show letterboxed, like a DVD movie.
So, just trying to point out that, with a minimum of effort, you can improve your local channel reception and not have to be on cable or satellite to do it.
To Pat, Steve, and Michael P. O’Connor:
Thanks for taking the time. Some good info I wasn’t aware of.
Michael L. Reed
I really feel for your cable connection. Whenever I hear about such rotten service, it makes me appreciate my own cable company, MediaCom all that much more. TV is something like 65 channels and the broadband with three home computers for $92, including tax.
I regularly get 1meg + d/l. Last week the broadband was down for about an hour; I was going nuts trying to figure out was wrong on my end because I am so used to their quality of service. I phoned their tech line and a notice came over the phone telling the service was out.
I sure hope your service improves.
Aren’t you always claiming about how backwards technology is in the US?
>dropping their antennas, as it is not cost effective
Has CBS done this already. Their signal is always the weakest in every city.
This may be great for those of you that live in or close to bigger cities. At my house I cannot get cable or DSL. MAYBE by 2009 we MAY have cable and DSL.
Now for the expense of going out and buying a TV that can receive digital sinnals. They are pretty expensive, espically on a small budget.