[rollei_list] Re: Very OT: Going Dark
- From: Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:32:11 -0400
I know local stations operations very well, and know of no station
that wanted the digital conversion (except Bud Paxson, and he went
broke with his station group long before this day became a reality).
Digital was the concoction of the FCC and the set manufacturers, who
many years ago when this all started thought it could revitalize the
domestic industry. From a station POV, digital is the answer to a
question no one asked. Now, twenty years later, we have an answer to
that non-question...
Eric Goldstein
--
On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Richard Knoppow<dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc James Small"
> <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 1:14 PM
> Subject: [rollei_list] Very OT: Going Dark
>
>
> The US Federal Communications Commission and
> Congress and our President agreed that today is
> the day for the conversion from all analog TV
> broadcasts to digital. Most stations seem to
> have switched before their morning broadcasts
> this day, though some may push on 'til Midnight.
>
> Digital has some advantages but I suspect the main one here is revenue
> for the owners of whatever patents are involved and TV stations who think
> they can make more money from the auxilliary channels possible with digital.
> Digital will make good pictures from signals that are just hash on an
> analogue set, provided its strong enough. If the signal is too weak the
> digital converter box will present torn up or freezing pictures, or just
> give up. In fringe areas with clear but rather weak signals an analogue set
> with a good front end will give you a noisy but viewable picture where the
> digital converter will just complain to you that the signal is too weak.
> Despite the campaign to get people to obtain converter boxes and prepare
> for the change-over I suspect that a lot of people have either not gotten
> the boxes or can't make them work right. Broadcasters make their revenue by
> selling the audience: if the audience shrinks, for whatever reason, revenue
> drops. I don't think digital will increase the audience size although the
> total audience, including all eight possible digital channels might be
> larger. Note that the more channels the station sends the poorer the quality
> of each. There is only so much digital bandwidth available and the more its
> split up the less is available to any one channel. The usual symptom is
> motion artifacts, that is, still pictures look fine but, as soon as there is
> some movement, the image will begin to pixelate or motion will be jerky or
> some other similar effect. These are, at least to me, particularly
> noticable.
> Good digital should look better than analogue, eliminating a lot of
> problems with ghosting and certain types of noise, but like the little girl
> with the little curl, when its bad its horrid.
> An historical note: When color television was introduced in the late
> 1950's it was not welcomed by broadcasters. The reason is the one above, the
> audience size remained the same. Stations and networks could not charge more
> for color commercials or programs because the audience size remained the
> same. The cost of converting to color was enormous- nearly everything in the
> video chain had to be changed and the new equipment was substantially more
> expensive than B&W had been. So, the industry was slow to change over. The
> standard adopted by the FCC at the time was such that existing sets were
> compatible with color but that is not the case with digital although the
> converter boxes are cheap enough and coupons for substantial discounts are
> easily available.
> BTW, note that digital TV is NOT high-definition TV although _that_ is
> also digital. For HD you need a complete new TV set. Expensive and there is
> not that much true HD on the air or on cable yet.
>
> --
> Richard Knoppow
> Los Angeles, CA, USA
> dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ---
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