Precious few years. I have seen smaller TVs in stores as recently as
2005 that did not have a digital tuner. Some larger ones read "DTV-ready" on the info sheet but upon asking I was told that you'd have to buy a module once those are ready. When they would be ready or what they'd cost was unknown to the sales person. Great, huh?
I would not be surprised one bit if the modules for some sets never materialized. But IMHO the worst is that obviously the proper amount of multipath field testing seems not to have happened. My wife says there's two good Westerns on Ch-29 Saturday. Chances of the DTV signal falling apart are roughly 50:50, depending on cloud movement. So I am not getting too excited just yet, maybe we'll be playing pool.
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You must be a young pup. My memory of the early days is quite diff rent. Hell, with a small effort i can timeline the changes that helped make it what it is today. But this NG ain't worth it today.
Not to rag on fast food, but whenever I heard the term "50-50" now, I think of something a good frined of mine said recently:
It's a 50% chance you'll order will be right, and 50% that it will still be hot. (He's a senior executive over at Checkers...)
IIRC, sets over a certain size were required to be DTV-ready by x- date. That would likely not have included sets already in inventory by x- date, which has the effect of tolling out the actual compliance date. Smaller sets were unaffected by this regulation.
I doubt "DTV ready" could be applied to a set for which some future module would provide compliance with the directive (for larger sets), but for smaller sets this could certainly have been the case. I think by larger, the FCC meant 42", but I would have review that. The directives were via Public Notice, so it's a simple matter to look them up a fcc.gov
Having deep ties to the broadcast industry, I can state with some authority that it is a GOOD THING the FCC is finally sticking by a deadline. Otherwise, the transition would never take place. It took nearly 2 decades just to get the NTSC-color transition done. --and that was a compatible format change!!
In some ways, it "should" be eaiser today. Even though there are more actual TV sets today, the majority of viewers get their signals via satellite or cable. In most cases, only the Over-the-Air folks will affected directly by the converter-box requirement.
IIRC the size requirements were ratcheted down in stages as Feb-2009 drew closer. But non-compliance was rampant AFAICT.
It would have been good if they had done more extensive field testing. That would have shown the multipath problems and there would have been time to fix stuff. Now it's too late.
Lots of those out here. During an evening stroll a short while ago, and this is no joke: "By the way, did you guys already get TV converters?" ... "For what? We don't need no set-top box because we use an antenna." ... "Well, otherwise your TV will quit in February" ... "WHAT!!?" ... "You can get two coupons, I'll email you the link" ... "Coupons? Really?"
Then, once the converters arrive, a sober awakening begins. Every other night the audio cuts out, video becomes blocky, then it stops with a Picasso-style screen, then blue screen "no signal". Now everyone including us just switches back to the analog channel which always works. But guess what'll happen at the phone bank of their congress representative in February?
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Sure, but: In Europe they didn't even have color TV at that time. IIRC color TV came out at the end of the 60's over there but PAL sets were so prohibitive in cost that very few people had one until a decade later. The early sets were also quite fickle so you better had a cousin who worked in radio/TV repair or cost would go up even more.
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The "BIG BANG" conversion technique so loved by expensive management consultants. No safety net or adequate system testing so that when it all goes pear shaped you have to fork out for more of their over priced "services" to undo the total mess. I guess the current administration is not expecting to win and are leaving a time bomb for the new lot.
The UK which is a much smaller proposition is converting to digital gradually. And I expect the major cities and London in particular will be the last areas to lose their analogue feeds. So far the test zones for switch off have been in the northern boondocks.
Incidentally Joerg if you already have broadband are there no ISP based DTV on demand services in the USA?
You don't think they'll be enough continued demands for over-the-air reception that chipsets will, over time, improve? Or you think the problem is so fundamentally tied to the choice of modulation scheme that it's unlikely to get much better than it already is?
My wife's grandmother (who's 80ish) knew about the changeover when we talked to here about it some weeks ago, although she does have numerous tech-savvy grandkids...
Modern ones do. But the US made sets even as late as the 80's were pretty appalling.
It was broadcast colour from about 1967. I distinctly remember watching parts of the moon landing run up from Apollo 8 onwards in colour. The colours in those days were pretty pasty as they hadn't properly figured out how to remove impure yellow emssions from the blue phosphors. The fickle behaviour of the early colour TV sets led to several guys making a fortune renting out TV sets with a combined repair service. The foremost practitioner of this art made enough to found a new Cambridge college - Robinson (aka Radio Rentals) college.
My uncles set spectacularly caught fire showering sparks and molten innards on the carpet. From looking at the shielding of the EHT unit I got the impression that the X-ray dose to service engineers was non- trivial.
ISTR it was only in the mid to late 90's that Japanese manufacturers accepted liablity for failures in their TV sets burning down houses in the domestic market.
Yes, some specialized ones. But broadband out here means about 1.2MB/sec sustained. Not quite enough. Also, AFAIK some ISPs begin to moan and groan (and place a cap on you) when you burn off too much bandwidth all the time.
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The little I know about it suggests that the chosen modulation scheme is inherently more sensitive to time-variant multipath than the EU system. IIRC the trade-off is that the EU system isn't as capable of sustained high-def as ours. I mean, "Dancing with the Stars" in 1080 resolution is truly stunning. If the signal hangs on for the two hours, that is ...
Future chip sets might improve that marginally. But the fact of the matter is that the boxes people will use Feb-2009 will not contain any better chip sets.
The topper here was a family who truly believed that there will be absolutely not OTA reception of anything after Feb-2007 and I was unable to convince them otherwise. This may be rooted in a IMHO shady ad by a cable TV company saying something like "If you watch TV over an antenan, come February 2009, you've got choices to make", then immediately saying the solution will be cable. Oh well.
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IIRC it was also 1967 in Germany. But only doctors, dentists or lawyers could possibly afford a set. And yes, some did catch fire.
A service tech friend of mine asked. He was told that it wasn't so bad, that really all that happened would be that he and his wife possibly won't be able to have kids ... that floored me.
That all depends how good the forensic experts and lawyers are. How much liability they will accept is usually handed down to them by a judge.
AFAIK the worst reputation was with those humongous Raduga sets from Russia. Probably that's the only ones folks in the former eastern block could buy.
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On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:01:19 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :
????? There is no limit except the transponders bandwidth. And we have DVBS2, and the new standard with S2 has been accepted for terrestrial too. I'd say we are a generation ahead of the US :-)
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I am not sure how much longer the 'united states' will last. Just now the state New York asked for Federal financial help... Paterson Calls for Federal Rescue Package for States:
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If for any reason the federal government cannot, or does not want to, help, then states may well go their own way, with their own currency perhaps ;-) AND their own TV system.
On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:02:40 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :
Maybe you have an old link? Th word 'progressive' is not on that page, and neither in the editorial.
You do not even have 1080 lines on your LCD. And how do you know it was progressive?
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Iceland? Seems even some Dutch provinces had their money invested there.
This whole money thing is surreal. It is the Repugeblican Bush panic making, same he did after 9/11 (that he probably organised himself, with his Saudi friend Osama).
But this whole hedging thing, as you perhaps know, when buying or selling options, you need to show to the bank you can pay if things go the wrong way for you. But banks played their own lottery, started with that French guy who lost a few billion... then everybody lost a few billion, now states are a few billion short. Just pull the plug on the computa, and all debt vapourises :-)
As to your subject line, that box is nice, that you selected, but it does not do much more than a simple PC with a good sound card, actually less. This confirms my theory that we should use simple PCs for all that stuff. 'PC as media centre'.
Sez in the info box. No, our set interpolates a little but for some reason there is a marked difference between 1080 and 720. Huge. Sets 42" and up to have high enough native resolution and with some bargain hunting you can get those for around $1000 now. I don't need one.
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probably
billion short.
less.
Which box? The MP3? Thing is, we want something simple. This is for church so you want to be able to call anyone regardless of skills and ask them to press the "REC" button when pastor comes in. And that's what it does. No booting, not massaging, no error messages, it'll just work.
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On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:46:24 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :
Very nice article, nice history too.
It seems to me that 720p on a 720 lines LCD screen cannot make a lot of difference over 1080p, on the contrary, as 1080p on a 720 lines screen causes aliasing (so you need to sort of low pass). But the increased bandwidth will perhaps give better motion and resolution. So what you see is basically bigger bandwidth, not the effect of 1080 lines. Well, that is my view anyways...
actually less.
Yes.
Small box running Linux with hotkey, can boot in 15 seconds. But most important: You can modify it to your needs.
Also that thing of yours comes with an USB cable.. do you need a PC next to it? ;-)
Also pretty sobering about what's going on, and what's not going on.
Ahem, technology out here has progressed past that kind of resolution a long time ago. Big time. AFAIK even the rather modest set here is
1366 x 768. Your typical 50-incher has a whole lot more.
Also, they are chock-full with image processing ASICs with rather nifty inperpolating and extrapolating algorithms. This ain't grandpa's TV no more ;-)
All I can tell you is that when our nature/history channel switches from
720 to 1080 the jump in picture quality is nothing short of stunning. But as I said the price for that performance is that it cuts out when the Fedex freighter lumbers into Mather. And it's 10 minutes from here to touch-down, all smack dab in the path. OTOH next Tuesday that same freighter will bring the bare boards from the design I just finished.
actually less.
Try to get that slim-line 19" form factor with one of those. Plus we don't want yet another hobby project. We'd like somthing where you tighten four 19" rack screw, plug it in, set the timer and walk away.
Nope, but you can. There actually is a PC to run the hymn projector but we absolutely will not rely on that for recording. To download later, yes. However, we'll use the LAN connection for that. If the LAN is down for some reason one of us just take the SD card home.
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