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US digital terrestial TV a disaster?

J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
**** Post for FREE via your newsreader at post.usenet.com ****

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/technology/circuits/24hdtv.html

You need to register with the NY times, but it is free.



A quote:
"Digital converter boxes are getting better," said Ken Holsgrove,
an HDTV consultant and an AVS Forum moderator.
But for customers who expect current over-the-air digital TV to
work like regular TV, he had some advice:
"I'd steer clear of it. The technology will not support their expectations."

end quote

So, it seems the European system was better after all (multipath).
You guys in the US got stuck with market protection measures it seems


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P

PaulCsouls

Jan 1, 1970
0
It's a plot. The cable and satellite companies don't want the
competition and are out to kill free television.

Paul
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Paul,
It's a plot. The cable and satellite companies don't want the
competition and are out to kill free television.
They might have won over a lot of people already so that I am a bit
skeptical whether there really is much of a market left for terrestrial
HDTV or even SDTV. In our neighborhood we are the only ones with an
antenna as the sole source of TV out of about 20 families that we know
well. Many have antennas but they use them for local channels, if that.

Then there is the obvious question: Does mankind need terrestrial HDTV
or SDTV? For us I can reply with a resounding no. But we aren't typical.
The ultimate powers to be will be the marketeers. How much added revenue
does that generate via commercials or other means? If that ain't enough,
why would anyone want to invest in it? Can they win folks back to
terrestrial? After seeing how hooked some people are to soap operas that
you can only see on cable or sat I would think that chance is rather slim.

Regards, Joerg
 
P

Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Jan 1, 1970
0
PaulCsouls said:
It's a plot. The cable and satellite companies don't want the
competition and are out to kill free television.

No. Its a plot. The major movie studios are attempting to undermine the
concept of 'fail use' as it applies to broadcast content.

Or: Its a plot. Various wireless service providers and digital content
providers (major ISPs) are attempting a grab of the current frequencies
allocated for broadcast in order to add them to their voice/data
bandwidth portfolio.
 
M

Martin Riddle

Jan 1, 1970
0
The 5 or 6 channels I get here on LI NY are great. I'm even in the fring area.
Thats with a WINTV card. Real clean pictures, STV like. Get a Dish and a reciever that has a HDTV tuner and your set.

Cheers
 
M

Mark Maupin

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm a newbie, not in electronics, but I really enjoy my 45" Samsung HDTV
with progressive scan. The scan doubler is unbelievable making regular
digital TV almost as good as HDTV. But really, the video quaality...which
varies...on HDTV is breath taking when you have good source material like
Discovery HD. I submitted a proposal for HDTV to the EIA in 1989 that
turned out to be close to what we have now.

Mark
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Mark,

Agreed, HDTV is nice. I have seen a demo and it is indeed like photo
quality.

I am not at all representative since our TV consumption is maybe an hour
a day if that. Just the evening news. We even didn't have a TV for eight
months after a move and kind of forgot about setting one up. What most
people out here want to see in hi-res is stuff from the video store
(rented DVDs) and sports. That's usually it. Only the sports part is
transmitted. And lets face it, after half the poporn and beer has been
consumed the difference between a regular big screen and HDTV starts to
"blur".

At the end of the day it's going to be a marketing game. It is about
whether and how quickly the investment in licenses and technology
returns a profit. Europe had its bout with HDTV in the 80's and it
flunked. But that was analog D-MAC and they are not always as willing as
we are to shell out enormous amounts of money for TV.

Regards, Joerg
 
F

Fiberman

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Joerg,

I only paid $1299 for my 45" Samsung. For what it does, that very cheap.
It also has a silver molded plastic case which sits on a stand that puts the
16x9 viewing area at eye level.. I've been very happy with it.

Regards,

mark
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Fiberman,
I only paid $1299 for my 45" Samsung. For what it does, that very cheap.
It also has a silver molded plastic case which sits on a stand that puts the
16x9 viewing area at eye level.. I've been very happy with it.
That seems like a good deal. Still, I won't bite. We paid $250 for a 25"
TV seven years ago and it's just fine. Then again, as I said before we
are not the typical consumers when it comes to TV.

If they start showing movies like "Once upon a time in the West" in 16x9
hi-res on terrestrial channels I might be tempted though. But that's not
likely.

Regards, Joerg
 
P

PaulCsouls

Jan 1, 1970
0
No. Its a plot. The major movie studios are attempting to undermine the
concept of 'fail use' as it applies to broadcast content.

Or: Its a plot. Various wireless service providers and digital content
providers (major ISPs) are attempting a grab of the current frequencies
allocated for broadcast in order to add them to their voice/data
bandwidth portfolio.

Sounds about right. The major movie studios, wireless service
providers, and the cable and satellite companies are all the same
companies.

Paul
 
P

PaulCsouls

Jan 1, 1970
0
If they start showing movies like "Once upon a time in the West" in 16x9
hi-res on terrestrial channels I might be tempted though. But that's not
likely.

PBS here, in the Bay Area, shows alot of old movies and they are
transmitting four DTV stations.

Paul
 
D

ddwyer

Jan 1, 1970
0
PaulCsouls said:
Sounds about right. The major movie studios, wireless service
providers, and the cable and satellite companies are all the same
companies.
In the UK we are catching up with the US as per the number of channels
available.
Assuming that there is a fairly fixed revenue for programming the money
available for the program material is 1/the number of channels. So our
program quality is deteriorating to US levels.
High definition rubbish is still rubbish.
 
M

Mark Zenier

Jan 1, 1970
0
The 5 or 6 channels I get here on LI NY are great. I'm even in the fring area.
Thats with a WINTV card. Real clean pictures, STV like. Get a Dish and a
reciever that has a HDTV tuner and your set.

If you have a dish, it's not terrestrial DTV.

Terrestrial DTV is broadcast on (mostly) the UHF channels by the
TV stations off a tower, serving just the local area.

Mark Zenier [email protected] Washington State resident
 
M

Mark Zenier

Jan 1, 1970
0
No. Its a plot. The major movie studios are attempting to undermine the
concept of 'fail use' as it applies to broadcast content.

Great typo.
Or: Its a plot. Various wireless service providers and digital content
providers (major ISPs) are attempting a grab of the current frequencies
allocated for broadcast in order to add them to their voice/data
bandwidth portfolio.

But with terrestrial TV, they get most of that. Analog TV is so
prone to interference that about 2/3rds of the channels in any
given area can't be used for anything else, but when they
all go to ATSC, it's not supposed to be as interference prone
so that the unallocated channels can be used for other things.
(And the TV stations themselves may have spare bandwidth in their
signal).

The main problem I see is that 1) the standard is so gold plated that
set top boxes/HDTV chipsets cost too much, and 2) the satellite/cable/DVR
companies are all subscription based and can give their hardware away
and give a kickback (er, sales incentive) to the big box discount stores.

The local stations are stuck paying for a new transmitter and antenna,
and all their studio gear all on their own. Hard to pay this with the
declining viewership because the networks are run by bean counters
pumping out the cheapest crap possible.

Mark Zenier [email protected] Washington State resident
 
J

JeffM

Jan 1, 1970
0
The major movie studios are attempting to undermine the
concept of 'fail use' as it applies to broadcast content.
Paul Hovnanian

"Fair use", but yeah.
....and we all know that DRM == Denial of Rights Mechanism.
 
P

Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Jan 1, 1970
0
Mark said:
Great typo.

Hey, my spell checker says its OK. ;-)
But with terrestrial TV, they get most of that. Analog TV is so
prone to interference that about 2/3rds of the channels in any
given area can't be used for anything else, but when they
all go to ATSC, it's not supposed to be as interference prone
so that the unallocated channels can be used for other things.
(And the TV stations themselves may have spare bandwidth in their
signal).

The main problem I see is that 1) the standard is so gold plated that
set top boxes/HDTV chipsets cost too much, and 2) the satellite/cable/DVR
companies are all subscription based and can give their hardware away
and give a kickback (er, sales incentive) to the big box discount stores.

I really wonder how much it will cost to add a broadcast TV demodulator
to 'standard' TV sets. IIRC, there was a thread here a few weeks ago
where someone had located a single chip solution. Maybe not one
sufficient for a HD monitor, but it will suffice for all the old TV sets
when analog signals go dark.

As a set top box, there is much more to this than the single chip. But I
think that's because the typical set top box (for CATV/DVRs) has a lot
more functionality built in than the bare minimum needed to select a
channel and demodulate it. Most of these functions are subsidized by the
subscription based business models. This may be why its easier to get HD
as a part of a service contract, either through digital cable/satellite
or an add-on terrestrial digital tuner attached to these services. If
there is any collusion to keep terrestrial DTV broadcast tuners off the
market, proving it and finding the guilty party(ies) will be difficult.
The local stations are stuck paying for a new transmitter and antenna,
and all their studio gear all on their own. Hard to pay this with the
declining viewership because the networks are run by bean counters
pumping out the cheapest crap possible.

The networks appear to have spent some of their own money on HDTV gear
as well. Quite a few network produced shows are going HD. Its the movie
studios that are dragging their feet, claiming fears of piracy. But
their piracy fears don't seem to hold water, since pirates are doing
pretty good business selling low quality product (camcorders slipped
into theaters, etc.). I doubt that there are too many additional
customers for illegal product that are sitting it out just because of
the low quality.

In fact, studios would be better off if the pirates started distributing
digital content directly. It makes digital watermarks and other
technologies for tracing content easier to implement. It wouldn't be
long before the detection of such content
on the internet was coupled to automated systems to request ISPs to
terminate accounts and electronic civil suits being filed would be
implemented.

Its just my opinion, but I think the studios are dragging their feet on
HD broadcast content until broadcast TV can provide them with a fee
structure similar to subscription distribution systems. This is one of
the technologies Microsoft is hard at work on. Secure computing, which
depends on a central key authentication service, makes a great place to
collect monthly fees. It would be simple to extend this technology to
set top boxes so that you must keep your subscription current or both
your PC and your TV will go dark.
 
Y

YD

Jan 1, 1970
0
In the UK we are catching up with the US as per the number of channels
available.
Assuming that there is a fairly fixed revenue for programming the money
available for the program material is 1/the number of channels. So our
program quality is deteriorating to US levels.
High definition rubbish is still rubbish.

Around here the free channel programing is so atrocious I'm fairly
certain it'a a plot to force the move to paid serice.

- YD.
 
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