Yes there's a parliamentary inquiry on at the moment
looking into why more people are not purchasing digital
set top boxes....
In other words a great piss up for the people involved LOL and
nothing constructive will come out of it IMHO......
But the one question I'd like answered is why?
Why do we have to go to full digital TV?
This is a forced death for the existing system which seems
to work dam fine in other parts of the world so why change
it?
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The benefits that I can think of off the top of my head are
MUCH MUCH less power used at the transmission sites, (for the same
given range) and I think you can even run many different stations from
the one transmitter unit whereas now you need a separate transmitter
for each station (all coupled into the one transmission aerial in some
cases though)
+The cost savings at a typical transmission site would be enormous
when you also take into account the extra energy used in air
conditioning, fan cooling and such that's needed to get rid of the
heat from an analog transmitter.
+Much better picture quality. Waste of time for most people that use
a 14"-20" (maybe 26") set - but with a big screen or projector system
it is a huge advantage
+Less use of the broadcast band
+Easy to improve the system by simple upgrades to the software at both
ends. Less need to replace the entire transmitter/receiver, or major
parts of it, however in our modern throw-away society - it probably
doesn't matter that much anymore in the market place if something is
obsolete and gets discarded..
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The downside is that any digital system could be used by unscrupulous
operators now or in the future to select who is going to view what,
and to charge exhorbitant prices for access rather than the "free and
open system" that we have now where for the cost of a TV set - you can
view whatever you want to view for no charge for the life of the set.
(well - until FTA is finally turned off for good)
Sadly - the way the laws are made here - I can't see much good coming
out of all this for the consumer at the end of the day
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My experience too (as a consumer) with the digital STB is that, just
like pay TV units and such, you have this stupid hillbilly system of
having only one channel being output at one time from the box - this
means another remote control to fiddle with, another ugly piece(s) of
shit to sit near the TV (and wire into the system) the inability to
record one program while watching another, and if you have one of the
Picture in Picture sets - that function is rendered useless too. To
most people, including myself - its just a bloody hassle that I don't
want or need, and that in this day and age of cheap hi-tech electronic
devices - simply should have been fixed long ago. for non-technical
consumers - it must really give them the shits having to go through
such a rigmarole too if they ever want to do anything more than just
watch the one channel on the one set at the one time.
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if STB's did rebroadcast all (or at least several user preselected)
channels down to the UHF band - so you could easily select them from
the TV with your exitsing TV remote, (as you can currently do now
with FTA programs), it would make a big difference.
Make a "rebroadcasting" unit like I described - and install it into
the residence out of sight and out of mind and "trasparent" to the end
user and I feel it will eliminate a major obstacle to consumer
acceptance rate of digital would improve.
Let's face it also - except for the extra TV channel (abc kids
programs) - and one (not bad) ABC radio station that I get on mine -
there still isn't a huge incentive for the average person with the
average relatively small screen to buy one.