Posted on 01/01/2008 9:12:40 AM PST by Pikamax
You should be able to get more channels. Each broadcaster that presently broadcasts an analog signal also has a digital transmitter up and running, on a different channel. The digital channel can send up to about three programs simultaneously, and the new tuner can receive any of them.
For instance, if you are used to watching channel 8 now, the new tuner will feature digital channels 8.1, 8.2, and possibly 8.3. The first one will be high-def, but I think the box will down-convert it for your old set.
An interesting twist is that the station's digital transmitter isn't really on channel 8; it can be on any channel at all (as prescribed by the F-CC, of course), but it will identify itself as "channel 8" to your new digital TV or tuner because that's how the station's viewers are used to thinking of it.
Another amusing twist will occur in some cases: The historically-channel-8 station will be transmitting its digital signal on some other channel X, and then as of February 2009 will turn off its analog transmitter on channel 8 and at the same time turn off its channel X digital transmitter for good, and simultaneously bring up a new digital transmitter on---channel 8. But your digital TV tuner will track this change, and will still identify the stations's digital signal as "channel 8" all the way through!
You should be able to use your old antenna, whatever it is; just hook it to the box instead of your TV.
Unfortunately, the main chip in your 300 dollar DTV tuner went the way of all complex electronic chips. Over time, cosmic rays transmuted the Silicon into Unobtanium.
1. Everybody and his dog is trying to jump on the purported, Real Soon Now, "Wireless PDA Revolution." They need, or think they need, lots of bandwidth and are willing to buy it at auction.
2. Homeland Security. Public Service Communications analysts are certain that every policeman, fireman, EMT, and National Guardsman needs a frequency to him/herself. They're gonna need lots of bandwidth for this too, and communications radio vendors are drooling over the potential revenue $.
The ardor of the first group mentioned may be cooling because of crisis in the credit markets due to the subprime fiasco. Venture money is being more cautious than a couple years ago for some reason <}b^)
Got mine no problem. Sell you for 100 bucks....
I wonder about that. I upgraded from analog to digital cable last September. Currently the first one hundred slots are still analog and pass straight through the cable box. I have passed the signal to two older TVs in the kitchen and den and they currently work just fine. I asked the cable service guy what was going to happen to the first hundred slots in 2009 and he said that Time Warner was planning on going 100% digital and if I was going to continue to use the analog sets I'd need converter boxes. I pointed out that TW could put one converter box on their end of the distribution amplifiers and make a lot of customers happy. He looked at me like I was crazy and said "that is not going to happen". So it looks like tens of thousands of cable customers will need converter boxes to continue to run multiple sets as they have always done before bill clinton made all those sets obsolete "with a stroke of his pen."
Regards,
GtG
PS I finally got thru on the web site, it must have been at capacity and doing a brisk business when I first logged in.
Something else I learned is that what the converter box is, is essentially a digital tuner. If someone has a digital TV that does not have a digital tuner (and apparently a lot don’t), they too will need a converter box or a new TV.
The Cable Guy may not have made it clear that the converter boxes he was talking about are not the converter boxes that the Gubmint is subsidizing.
The cable systems use a different encoding and modulation scheme than the broadcasters and will continue to do so. They take whatever signals from broadcast stations and cable networks and convert them to their own standards.
Therefore, all TVs of any kind will need a cable service provided box that will convert only the cable system's signals for your TV, just as the Gubmint-subsidized box will work only on over-the-air signals.
Some HDTV receivers have provision for a small circuit card that in theory can provide the demodulation and decoding of this or that cable TV service. The idea is that you would buy or rent the decoder card and stick it into the slot in the TV, thus avoiding the "box."
However, the idea does not appear to have caught on. The cable industry, like the satellite TV industry, is avidly interested in renting every single customer a box for extra bux.
That argument might have worked on a big radio owner general manager, but it still doesn’t fix the problem.
That is not currently true for the first 100 channels as a totally standard NTSC over-the-air broadcast set will receive the first twelve channels (2-13) with no problem and that compatibility goes all the way back to your old B&W DuMont. Later (mid 80s) sets were sold as "cable ready with a switch to shift from cable to OTA tuning. The cable setting added channels above thirteen by a direct progression of the lower channel carrier frequency allotment, bandwidth, and channel spacing, encoding and modulation remained NTSC. That scheme has been extended from 53 to around 120 additional "VHF" channels. UHF channels became a curious anachronism and have faded away.
The cable systems did not use a different encoding and modulation scheme. Their system was NTSC standard except for the actual carrier frequency of the additional channels. The OTA broadcasters were constrained by the original spectrum allocation for twelve channels whereas the cable system operators were not so limited.
The question now is "What are the cable operators going to do with the first 100 or so channels?" Are they going to use the OTA standard (modified for digital encoding) as they currently use NTSC? Or are they going to set out on their own as you suggest? If you are correct and this is a done deal we can kiss "cable ready TV sets" goodbye!
One last question: does anybody make a digital ready TV w/o a converter box? If so how much are they asking for it? If not, why not? We have been kicking this can down the road for ten years and so far we don't even have the converter box in production. It looks like this first serious deviation from strict rearward's compatibility has become a "Mongolian Cluster F***".
Regards,
GtG
Lost of the cable companies will probably go all digital because whether it’s over the air or through a coax digital takes less space than analog. They might keep the really really basic cable around in the old analog format so your “cable ready” analog TVs can get that. But in the end they love to rent converter boxes so they’ll find a way to push as many as possible.
Oh and I should have answered your final question: most of the TVs being sold today are digital ready, they can handle digital or analog signal, you pretty much have to go out of your way now to buy a new TV that isn’t digital ready. As for how much they cost it doesn’t look like the dual signal capability is adding anything to the cost, even the little under $100 13” jobs at WalMart are digital ready. The switch is actually going very smoothly, especially when you consider that it’s still a year out.
UHF is still 300-3000 MHz and will still not penetrate behind hills and in low spots. Low spots are often along river and lake shorelines and ocean coasts, and that’s where a large percentage of the population lives within a few miles of. There ARE going to be some very irate viewers with outdoor antennas, and some very irate owners and managers of TV stations, when they can’t get the analog signal anymore. Not very many stations are returning to Channel 2-6. They may still call it NBC4, but if its really on UHF it will be like putting lipstick on a pig.
Nonsense. With the converter boxes, the old NTSC TV sets are usable until they wear out. Heck, I might get another one if someone leaves it on the curb and add another converter box.
If the digital signal is not there or too weak, nothing will be seen off air. If the signal is operating in the 600 MHz range, it does not matter if you still call it Channel 2,3,4,5 or 6, you still won’t get it off air in many locations you could have seen it before.
I guess I failed to make clear that I was talking about digital cable systems, not analog.
It’s my understanding that they have no plans to put ATSC (i.e., over-the-air digital type) signals on their cable systems.
As to the availability of TV sets with ATSC tuners, they have been on the market for a couple of years. This Christmas season, any LCD, plasma, or DLP set you could by had an ATSC tuner in it. I believe the industry marketers have decided on the terminology “Digital Ready” to mean that you have to have a digital tuner box, and “Digital TV” to mean it has the tuner built in. For at least six months, I have seen no sets with the new display technology that did not have the ATSC tuner built in.
Now, HDTV had-disc recorders are still almost unobtainable, except for the ones that you can rent from your cable or satellite provider. I can’t prove it, but I have a hunch there are lawyers involved trying to stick it to us poor schlubs who don’t want to pay somebody a monthly fee for the privilege of time-shifting our over-the-air DTV viewing.
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