What I think about in asking this is how local TV stations have a mandate until 2009 to switch to turn off their analog signals and go only with the new digital TV signals, requiring everyone without cable to have a converter or a digital tuner to continue watching TV. Now in all seriousness, with cable and satellite reaching around 85% of the nation, and the internet fast becoming a new alternative for watching TV shows on demand, do you think that broadcasters are kidding themselves with the notion that they can take their dinosaur age television system into a new era when everything is multi-channel as it is? They say it will allow clear reception in areas that always had to rely on cable, but why would people in such places give up the amount of choice that they have only because of an improvement in a LIMITED service? I think it’s a wasted effort especially since it’s been shown that many consumers are getting what they pay for with their entertainment, so what’s the point?
One other thing, I know that it’s necessary to free up bandwidth for new uses, but that’s not the real question at hand, it;s about the worthiness of keeping broadcast TV for what it’s worth these days.
I think that you are correct. True, the switch to digital frees up spectrum but as you note, people have been moving away from the networks for a long time. The reception argument is pretty lame. Another one that you will here is that the digital switchover will allow the broadcast networks to increase the amount of content it makes available. They haven’t been all that creative with the content they have now, and what is available is overloaded with advertising and promos. Not to mention the 10 years of whining they’ve done about the expense of the switchover.
bottom line, programing in the US has always been consumer driven (ads, subscriptions, etc). The networks lost their profitability a long time ago.
Actually, the government is making them do this as they want to reclaim the bandwidth currently used by analog so they can use it for something else.
The picture quality is a lot better on Digital/HD and the cable companies want to move to all digital to relieve the stress on their networks running both analog and digital presents.
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they need to kill the analog TV to use the frequencies for new things, like wireless internet.
MIKE
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I think that you are correct. True, the switch to digital frees up spectrum but as you note, people have been moving away from the networks for a long time. The reception argument is pretty lame. Another one that you will here is that the digital switchover will allow the broadcast networks to increase the amount of content it makes available. They haven’t been all that creative with the content they have now, and what is available is overloaded with advertising and promos. Not to mention the 10 years of whining they’ve done about the expense of the switchover.
bottom line, programing in the US has always been consumer driven (ads, subscriptions, etc). The networks lost their profitability a long time ago.
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Well FCC is the government entity that mandated it. Its not the TV Stations or Sattelite/Cable providers fault but they are making the money on it. Contrary to most reports, the reason the FCC is doing this is to free up the frequencies for Emergency Services and First Responders to use in emergencies. They used to tell people that the cable companies would have to lose a VHF channel to make room for the new added HiDef channel. Nope. They are just dropping the frequency and surrendering the channel to the FCC. It has nothing to do with the adding of another HD channel since they cannot make a Digital channel from an Analog signal. They can go backwards and make 5- 6 analogs from digital, but they wont. DVD’s will probably destroy TV broadcasts anyway. You’ll watch sports, News and maybe educational programs but people will probably wait and just buy the DVD’s rather than watch the shows in their first run anyway. It is predicted that with HD and BluRay. Movie theaters will probably cease to exist by mid/late century as people will watch first run movies in their own home and the desire for watching movies on big screens will slowly dicipate.
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I work for Best Buy Home Theater, we heard all of this in a recent training.