It Was To Good To Be True - DTV May Be Delayed

[...] Was DTV too good to be true? [...]

The FCC and broadcasters have apparently been playing up the possible benefits of DTV while hardly mentioning the technical downsides that will adversely affect millions of viewers - one can’t help wondering if technical considerations were pushed aside by hidden financial and political pressures (does that sound familiar?). To begin with, engineers foresaw the reception problems and urged that more U.S. studies be done on the various methods of broadcasting DTV signals; regardless, 8VSB (or 8-VSB) modulation was quickly adopted rather than COFDM (or OFDM) even though the latter is in use in Europe & Japan and has demonstrated somewhat superior performance in regard to multipath distortion and signal fading due to weather and distance from the station. A Google search will turn up numerous references like the one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8VSB

DTV’s increased vulnerability to weather and distance, combined with the move to mostly UHF channels with their shorter range, is going to leave millions of viewers in near-fringe and fringe areas with intermittent or no over-the-air TV and drive them into the costly arms of cable & satellite companies (or maybe many will go back to reading books, but that is probably too much to ask for). Viewers can find out if they are in a TV station’s predicted area of good signal coverage by going to the FCC TV Query database at http://www.fcc.gov/mb/video/tvq.html and entering the call sign of a station in their area, click Submit, then on the next page click on the highlighted call with DT Service, and on the next page scroll down to “Area: Service Contour Map” and click on that, which will bring up a map with a large blue circle showing the area of coverage.

A couple informative news articles:

“6 million may lose digital TV reception” at
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/02/11/6_million_may_lose_digital_tv_reception/

“Digital TV Transition Not as Easy as Advertised” at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/19/AR2008051902730.html?sid=ST2008051902978

Delay it forever, if they refuse to address the reception problems! I picked up 5-6 stations pre-box and only 2 post.

And I’ll be damned if I’ll fork out the cash and effort to get an antenna that may or may not help, and I’ll sure as hell not support the cable/satellite companies!

Screw ‘em! Their programming quality and entertainment value is marginal at best–it may be time to break the TV addiction and go totally net.

I seem to remember Howard Stern remarking on how in the world anyone could not have heard of AIDS.

This seems to be even more obvious, as if you watch TV (especially broadcast) how could you NOT be aware that the change is coming and that there are proactive steps that you as an individual have to take.

But I suppose there are still some people who think that it is the governments responsibility to send a technician to their home with the converter box, install it for them, serve them meals, and hold their body parts for them when they have to relieve themselves!

Thanks for the comments and for sharing your thoughts.
Regards, Ron

The transition came too fast with not enough discount coupons. I feel that Obama & co. should focus on delivering fast internet before the Dtv plan. With ppl possibly getting hispeed internet it may influence them to get cable television from their hispeed providers (cable networks). I am guessing that the hispeed users will view the programming over the internet instead of viewing an actual television.

Honestly I am looking forward to the ( “free” so called) broadband internet. My question is since adult sites should be blocked will that increase bandwidth by limiting “porn advertising” and will it be faster/ quicker without the adult popups and would a proxy server be a possible work around of the porn free internet?

Hi Robert,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. It is appreciated. Regards, Ron