Bit off topic ...

Lets hope so because at the moment although I get a great analogue picture, freeview is less than satisfactory, I`m not that far from Winter Hill.

Ron(UK)

Sorry if I stuff up the posting, I am still new to this. Something that has been left out of this digital transmission is the problems that occur in aus (I am not sure if it happens over there or not) is that we get problems of dropouts, freezing, slicing of the pic and the ocasional crashing of the stb which needs the full reset job. The pic is always good, that is when you get a pic unlike the old analogue which you would still get even tho it was rather snowy but still a pic. The question really is who is benefitting out of this and why we need to take a step back in technology. Please let me know if I am incorrect in any of this in your country. Ken.

STBs vary enormously in quality - not surprising given their very low price. If it crashes and requires a reset that's the box rather than the system. Same often with freezing, etc.

I much preferred the poor analogue signal problems. First the colour goes then snowy pic getting worse and worse along with the sound and then lastly the sound disappears. In my opinion the encoding/decoding for Freeview (UK) type digital processing is the reverse of this. The sound is about the first thing to disappear and of course it is total loss not distorted. I can follow a film without a picture but not without sound, not being a viewer of "action " films

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Strangely, NICAM digital stereo is the last thing to go on our analogue system. Seems they had their priorities right in those days.

My main issue with analog is not snow or signal strength, rather multipath. Careful adjustment of the antenna (rabbit ears at the moment) minimizes but does not eliminate that. Apparently that will go away with digital?

jak

We can almost 'see' Sandy Heath from here, and the digital signals are garbage. Also, in many parts of the country, the multiplexes are split from one end of band IV to the other end of band V, and transmitters are often not co-sited with their analogue counterparts, which virtually guarantees that a special CAI approved wideband 'digital' aerial will be required either to receive digital at all, or to suplement analogue reception. Considering how cleverly conceived and executed the UHF analogue channel allocation system was, I think that the digital mish-mash that we now have is a travesty. I too have read that transmitter powers will go up when the analogue goes off, but they've already been jacked up once to try to overcome the shortcomings of the transmission system ( which it was never going to suffer from in the first place as I recall ... ) and I don't trust that once someone else has got their hands on the spectrum space, they will allow much further increases as part of the deal they agree for buying it. When the RA was in charge, that may well have been the case, but now it is Ofcom, which is really just a government puppet department, I suspect that the situation may turn out to be rather different. We have already seen some pretty far reaching changes to amateur radio licensing, introduced by Ofcom, which are completely financially and commercially motivated.

Arfa

Don't believe that for one minute ! This was one of the trumpeted 'advantages' of the 'super robust' digital signal. Ha! I say. The signal is nothing like as robust as they would have you believe, and multipath is just as big a problem for it, as it is for analogue, except that when you get it on analogue, you can at least keep watching. If multipath screws up a digital signal, you're into freeze territory again. Many of the so called 'digital' aerials that you see here now are of the old JayBeam X-element anti-ghost design. If you struggle with analogue now, I think that it's unlikely that you will receive digital transmissions reliably.

Arfa

"Justy" wrote in message news:4676af0e$0$84083$ snipped-for-privacy@auth.newsreader.octanews.com...

That's about the same here. For sure digital allows a greater choice of stations within a given bandwidth, but that is a dubious advantage, given the garbage that they transmit on many of them. The BBC have a whole suite of quality stations now on digital, as do Discovery, but many of the others are a waste of transmission resources. As far as stuffing up a thread goes, there aren't any hard and fast rules as to how you post or reply, just a few conventions that help with keeping the thread readable if it gets quite long. It's normal to preserve the whole post, if you are replying with a general comment, and to place your entry at the bottom, rather than the top as you would when you reply to an e-mail, although some people prefer to top-post in newsgroups. This can sometimes make a thread difficult to follow, if several people do it, and on some newsgroups, you will get told off in no uncertain terms, if you do top post. Most of the people on here are pretty friendly though, and won't comment on top posting unless it becomes a problem. If you are replying to a specific point in a particular post in the thread, it's often convenient to just 'snip' out the bit that you are replying to. Also, some people like to place their comments in amongst the ones that they are replying to. For the most part, this works OK too. Just follow a few threads for a couple of weeks, and you'll soon get the hang of it. If you are using OE as your newsreader client, for example, you can follow threads by placing a 'watch' on them (click under the goggles symbol). You can set the watch colour in tools. Then, whenever there are new posts to the thread, they will show up in bold in the watch colour.

Arfa

It was until Ch5 came along. It really could only cope properly with four channels. Not enough for today, I'm afraid.

In general I'm happy with digital. Of course there are some motion artifact problems - accentuated by sometimes the recording and post mechanisms and some TV set types. And fewer colours. But then analogue wasn't perfect all year round with all 5 channels - and I'm in a good reception area.

I seem to remember, back in the early 80's, that you were supposed to be able to spread peanut butter and jam on a CD and it would still play.

Then again, according the the science magazines of the 50's, we should be flying to work in our personal flivvers today.....

jak

"jakdedert" wrote in message news:DMJdi.330$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews4.bellsouth.net...

We used to have a really good 'everyday science' programme here on TV called "Tomorrows World", which sadly, has gone now ( I was even on it once ! ) I can clearly remember that exact demo being done on both a vinyl record and a CD. The presenter took one of each, that he had previously shown playing, then smeared jam, and tipped the contents of an ash tray, on to each. Then came the clever bit - he wiped them both off with a cloth ... Of course, the vinyl no longer played ... But I bet it would have, if a little care was taken over giving it a warm water and soap wash. The other one that I saw demonstrated, was a CD with a quarter inch hole drilled in it, showing how good the error correction systems are. Vinyl couldn't survive that and still play !

I guess it looks like I'm a bit of a Luddite regarding digital stuff, on this thread, but actually, I'm not. I think that for the most part, digital equipment is really excellent, and that any shortcomings that a particular item may have, are often well outweighed by the benefits. Digital cell for instance. Can be a bit metallic sounding compared to an analogue landline, but look how versatile and useful it is. CD. If you are an audiophile, some content sounds a bit 'bright' or harsh, but just look at the advantages. Likewise, DVD over tape, and computers and computer display technology, are nothing short of 'magic', given their complexity. I even don't have a problem with digital TV when it's done right - ie allowing sufficient bandwidth to not have to compress the signal enough that high data rate areas of the picture generate significant motion artifacts. There is of course space to do this up on the sat bands, if you've got the money to lease a high bandwidth transponder. I don't have a problem at all with movies being received by my sat box, and displayed on my analogue CRT TV. Where I do have a problem, is when the digital technology does not enhance the experience, and where its shortcomings actually detract from the experience rather than being 'neutral' or even masked. Current public entertainment, and the display / reproduction technology for it, seems to fall into this category. Digital radio, for instance, employs such high data compression rates at some times of the day on some stations, that it's like listening to a Dalek. LCD and plasma TVs generate all sorts of unwanted artifacts, that become even worse if displaying a low data rate digital channel. Which brings me right back to digital cinema projection, but probably, 'nuff said now, as this was an OT thread that I started in the first place ... d;~}

Arfa

Yup! An everyday occurance, that! snurk.!.!.

Jonesy

Allodoxaphobia inscribed thus:

Yes ! But what a con ! Since the CD plays from the centre out to the edge, if you only have one or two tracks, you can stick as many holes as you like in the disk, as long as they don't go through an actual track !!

Ron(UK) inscribed thus:

Isn't there a greater implication to switching off analog TV, at least in the UK !

How about Since its digital, every receiver will have its own digital ID at some point in time ! Then when they tie the TV Licence to your digital ID, Oops... No TV ! Someone forgot to pay their licence fee !

Thats just for starters ! I can think of other uses for social control of the masses. What I frightening thought !

This point about the privatisation and sellling off of the airwaves with multiple digital stations in mind is indeed true. I didn't mention it earlier for brevity's sake, but since we're on the subject... ;-)

I don't want to be too pessimistic - of course, there will be access to many decent new programmes from overseas - but we need to be realistic. Paradoxically, despite the greater number of channels, I think UK TV will become even less diverse and representative of the society it purports to serve.

I did some work in this area many moons ago and was once at a conference where it was revealed from empirical evidence that since the 1990 Broadcasting Act , and the birth of countless new channels since then (including satellite, cable etc) non-news factual programming had gone DOWN by over 70%- and the largest increase in programming was repeats of old nature films. So much for greater choice!

And the reason? We're becoming less informed simply because these channels in private hands (usually transnational organisations and big business consortia) based not on a public service commitment but sheer profiteering, buy in cheap US material at a fraction of the cost of the domestic stuff. This unfair competition undercuts local production and influence , limits the scope of the content and hence gives rise to new forms of 'cultural imperialism' - all ironically dressed up as 'choice'.

Monopolies like that of Rupert Murdoch, who has a personal fiefdom involving media in almost every country, (with an extreme right wing bias to boot) must be rubbing their hands together as they dream of increasing their stranglehold on the media. As others so far in this thread have pointed out, the 'digital revolution' is in their interests not ours!

just my tuppence worth.

-b

No, no con, and obviously, not a real world "everyday occurence". You really can drill a hole right through a part of the disc that's carrying data. It was supposed to be a graphic representation of how much missing data could be tolerated by the error correction systems. I happen to think that it is a rather good demo at that ...

Arfa

Nicely put, and pretty much all agreed with ...

Arfa

Sorry but to reply to a message I can't keep any of the previous message unless I retype the whole thing, I am using newsleecher and when I reply all I get is a new box to type in :(. I am going to try a later version soon, poss they have fixed this or am I doing something wrong :s. I also tried a copy/paste but it is not allowed, damn computers. Also back to the digital problem, I am travelling out to the country a lot and started moving out there, the repeater stations for the free to air use some sorta digital repeater but retransmit on analogue, That becomes evident when there is a storm, rain or any other interference we get pic slicing and breakup. Looks weird on analogue to me but they are used to it out there so my theory is if they can't get it to work properly on their repeater stations how can they get it right for normal transmissions. Another possibility is that they don't worry about the small numbers in the country that use this technology, Only about 500 people in the villiage and situated about 100 kms from a major town. The powers to be tell us that all this latest technology is better for us and that we "Want / Need" all these channels so we can keep up in the world, I am sure it is only to profit the major stations to allow more advertising income from the channels. Remember U can only watch 1 channel at a time and the rest of the time there is work to be done. All that is required is a reliable service. Ken.