The Switch From Analog To Digital

[Glenn B]

I LOVE the new digital system. It is great, change is good. Some of you remind me of Eagle (5-90 for one, even though he is just a young buck).

Have you tried it? I have, and the things they do with it are just great. Instead of just Chan. 4, I get 4, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 etc... with local programming and superior quality.

Either buy a digital TV tuner capable TV or get one of those boxes. Either way, you are set.

Yeah, yeah, I know... an old 486DX2 does what you need, why change. LMAO

 

[TunaSoda]

As far as I know the switch over is to free up the analog band for the FCC to use for other [FONT=&quot]purposes[/FONT]

 

[5-90]

Control, much more granular control that cable has enjoyed for several years. It allows the advertisers to put much more local content vs several hundred square miles. Ever notice that when a commercial comes on and a quarter second later it turns into another commercial, thats local market advertising kicking in when the key sequence is either missed or poorly timed. The local hardware store and reach the market thats local instead of a radius area which also brings down the advertising prices quite a bit.
That key sequence is what allows my replay and mythtv boxes to edit out the commercials on the fly when I record a program, it tells the system when a broadcast program is breaking for X amount of seconds for the local stations to put in their advertising.

Oh. Goody. Instead of "generalised advertising stupidity," I can get "more localised/locally pertinent advertising stupidity." Just what I always wanted.

If you really want to impress me, how about a key sequence that allows me to entirely edit out commercials while viewing. The first button on my remote to get the ink worn off of it is "Mute" - even though I don't watch much TV (my wife watches more than I do - I'm content to fire up RealPlayer and let it have at my 6-8Gb of .mp3s. No commercials, and I can edit the playlist at will.

(I wouldn't mind commercials so much if they didn't cater to the "lowest common denominator," and people weren't, in general, so damned thick-headed and dim-witted. Tell me, whatever happened to thinking?)

It's not that I take issue with new technology - it's just the omnipresent feature creep that keeps screwing things up (take Windows, for instance - why do I "need" Vista? Is there a way to strip all of the crap out of it that I don't need, and don't have any use for, so I can reduce operating overhead? Why does an operating system need 1Gb of RAM to run effectively? How can I reduce that? Just because a feature is available doesn't mean I want it - I could do without antilock brakes; I'd have to check, but I think even the second-gen "advanced" airbags are more likely to injure my wife or myself than the roads incident that deploys them - we're outside of the envelope on first-gens by a wide margin; daytime running lights have been shown to be ineffective - but they're still mandated; you get the idea.

(Speaking - however tangentially - of airbags, here's a fun one to throw out. I saw a billboard to-day saying that, by law, booster seats are required until you've grown past 4'9" in height. I had a girlfriend who was 4'9" - does that mean that she would be required to have a booster seat while driving? Hmm...)

Glenn - I don't have anything against technology (although technology should never replace skill. Safety lies between the ears,) but we keep getting all of these "features" thrust upon us, and there are a good many of us out here who neither want nor need them - but we aren't given a choice. Smacks of "the Tyranny of the Majority" to me...

 

[Glenn B]

The simply tune out and turn off. You might think you are being forced in to Digital TV.... yes, you are. But it was approved by congress many moons ago, and it is a good thing. The benefits are awesome.

You may not want the "features", that is great. Do not turn on your old B&W TV Jon. Easy as pie.

Airbags and short people? How did you manage to bring that in this thread? Are you related to Randy Newman?

Jon, you do not NEED Vista, nor do I. Not sure what that has to do with DIGITAL TV signals either. Have you tried it? Digital TV that is... not your play OS obsession.

Jon, yes, safety is between the ears. When you get a few more years on you, you might see that not everybody is out to get you or your mind. :twak: I know you think you have some great skills, but come on Jon. You live with your mother in law, right? And you still brag about your special military skilzzzzz. Jon... we are all not in awe of you and your SF Bay Area lifestyle.

Glenn - I don't have anything against technology (although technology should never replace skill. Safety lies between the ears,) but we keep getting all of these "features" thrust upon us, and there are a good many of us out here who neither want nor need them - but we aren't given a choice. Smacks of "the Tyranny of the Majority" to me...

 

[Jester99]

Awesome opinions thanks everyone! For the record, I already have an LCD Tv and am a digital cable subscriber. It is awesome, especially when watching shows like Planet Earth. My tv went out months ago and I didn't really see a point to buying another analog tv. I was just wondering what the negative implications are of this newer technology, if any.

 

[Root Moose]

FWIW, I've dumped TV. What I watch I download from the torrents and stick on the iTunes server that feeds the AppleTVs throughout the house/shop.

I figure we are on the cusp of a "paradigm shift". Converting to digital TV is just one of the last death throes of that technology.

As far as negatives of digital TV in general, targeted marketing is the biggie. It's relatively benign if you understand technology and how to work around it.

 

[RichP]

Jon, you do not NEED Vista, nor do I. Not sure what that has to do with DIGITAL TV signals either. Have you tried it? Digital TV that is... not your play OS obsession.

Thats funny, I'm in to some major refresh operations for HP right now, I'm doing between 30-80 workstations per weekend at Morgan Stanley offices, 30+ that are here in PA, No Vista on those machines, all XP pro even now. I'll be doing another office on Friday for another overniter.
Personally I don't have anything against vista, I have an Ultimate box running here at the house.
Oh well, I'm off for a while, just downloaded fedora core and picked up a extra hard drive for my T30 and I want to see how it works on this laptop.

 

[WB9YZU]

Technical opinion:

The FCC has been pushed for some time, especially in large metro areas for available bandwidth (Analog not Digital). So I believe that one of things that sold the FCC on this whole HDTV gig was infact the freeing up of the entire VHF TV broadcast band for other uses. Even if a station decides not to buy into the whole HD broadcast thing, you can fit around 6 SD (standard defintion) digital broadcasts in the space one analog station took up.

To answer the questions about interlacing:

NTSC TV signals do show at 30 frames a second, but that is really a misnomer. What actually happens is that you are shown on field, which is about 240 lines, and then 30 seconds later, the alternating field of 240 lines. Your brain assembles this information and you perceive 480 lines and no flicker. (Yah, I know the spec says 520 lines, but that includes sync, other data, and overscan) If you sent a whole picture every 60 seconds, the picture would appear to flicker. This "feature" has been used to flash images for subliminal processing in experiments, but I know of no real life application of it. Standard definition DTV adapters will stay with this convention for their output because that is how the set they are hooked to works.

CRT based HD sets, are capable of displaying 1 complete frame every 30 seconds. It is able to do this because of digital processing (between the analog front end and analog output), and increased horizontal scan frequencies. SD broadcasts are digitally processed in a process called "line doubling". Line doubling uses an algorithm to make up lines between the lines, which expands the 480 lines to 960 lines for display. HDTV is displayed at 1 frame every 30 seconds to avoid flicker, changes are displayed in the next 30 second display. This results in seemingly seamless picture with more total data displayed.

Direct view and projected Digital sets, including LCD, Plasma, and DLP, all are direct to screen digital. The only analog is in the front end. Sets with ATSC tuners process that signal digitally from start to finish. Analog input is converted to digital for processing and direct to screen output.

 

[dennis461]

..and then 30 seconds later, the alternating field of 240 lines..

Slipped up here fella.

 

[WB9YZU]

NTSC TV signals do show at 30 frames a second

Actually, that's the typo. NTSC is 60 Frames a second with an alternating field every 30 seconds.

 

[Tdad]

There is some misinformation in this thread.

Current NTSC TV picture is made up of 525 horizontal lines, although only 483 are visible on the screen. In computer terms, think of it as 720 x 483. In other words, let's call it 480i. The I is for interlaced - i.e at 30 frames per second, each frame is made up of 2 fields. The electron beam paints all the odd lines, travels back up to the top and paints the even lines, 30x/sec. (another way - each field is 1/60 sec)
"Persistence of vision" is what makes it look flicker-free to the human eye. As a point of reference, the films in theaters run at 24fps and anything over about 16fps will work. TV's 30fps rate is based on clocking the signal off of the 60Hz line rate of the AC grid. (remember this was designed in the 40's)

Most people associate digital TV (DTV) with HDTV, but they are not necessarily the same. There are still 17 different HD Standards, but the 3 most common are 720P, 1080i, 1080P. The P in this case is "progressive" scan. Lines are scanned sequentially from top to bottom - 1,2,3,4,etc.
Over the air HD will be either 720P or 1080i.
You can multiplex (6) HD signals in the same bandwidth as a NTSC signal.
Interestingly, 720P @ 60fps, and 1080i @ 30fps use the same bandwidth.
720P = 1280 x 720 pixels
1080i = 1920 x 1080 pixels

Bandwidth is the big issue driving the DTV change. Don't forget the govt "owns" the licenses of the airwaves. The analog space has long ago been chopped up and auctioned off. NYC is already building a city-wide EMS system that will allow all EMS vehicles to be online anywhere in the city, even though they can't turn it on until 2011. The cable guys are happy too, because they can jam more channels, internet, phone, over the same pipe.

We can start a whole 'nother thread about aspect ratios and other fun stuff.

Two good reference sites are the FCC's page and DV InfoNet

 

[RichP]

The cable guys are happy too, because they can jam more channels, internet, phone, over the same pipe.

The issue with the cable companies is their cable modem infrastructure runs off the analog portion, I forget the two channel, on up one down stream, Blue Ridge and other PTD subs use two cable channels for the cable modems. Cost to convert that would choke a horse and with our providers being slightly tight with money I think it will be a while. I think they may get serious if FIOS ever starts getting deployed but even then they will have 3 year breathing space based on Verizons ability and history to field that kind of deployment the last mile. Everything else for FIOS is already in place from when they pulled the MDF frames out and replaced them with the fiber slic's.

 

[WB9YZU]

There is some misinformation in this thread.

Current NTSC TV picture is made up of 525 horizontal lines, although only 483 are visible on the screen. In computer terms, think of it as 720 x 483. In other words, let's call it 480i. The I is for interlaced - i.e at 30 frames per second, each frame is made up of 2 fields. The electron beam paints all the odd lines, travels back up to the top and paints the even lines, 30x/sec. (another way - each field is 1/60 sec)
"Persistence of vision" is what makes it look flicker-free to the human eye. As a point of reference, the films in theaters run at 24fps and anything over about 16fps will work. TV's 30fps rate is based on clocking the signal off of the 60Hz line rate of the AC grid. (remember this was designed in the 40's)

Most people associate digital TV (DTV) with HDTV, but they are not necessarily the same. There are still 17 different HD Standards, but the 3 most common are 720P, 1080i, 1080P. The P in this case is "progressive" scan. Lines are scanned sequentially from top to bottom - 1,2,3,4,etc.
Over the air HD will be either 720P or 1080i.
You can multiplex (6) HD signals in the same bandwidth as a NTSC signal.
Interestingly, 720P @ 60fps, and 1080i @ 30fps use the same bandwidth.
720P = 1280 x 720 pixels
1080i = 1920 x 1080 pixels

Bandwidth is the big issue driving the DTV change. Don't forget the govt "owns" the licenses of the airwaves. The analog space has long ago been chopped up and auctioned off. NYC is already building a city-wide EMS system that will allow all EMS vehicles to be online anywhere in the city, even though they can't turn it on until 2011. The cable guys are happy too, because they can jam more channels, internet, phone, over the same pipe.

We can start a whole 'nother thread about aspect ratios and other fun stuff.

Two good reference sites are the FCC's page and DV InfoNet

Sure looks better than my hosed up explaination. Good Job :yelclap: