I responded to the author of this article. I did not like her calling our analog televisions "old-fashioned". I would hope that we all can fill her inbox with hate mail. :D I can't wait till the first television virus hits the network. :naughty: Some lawmakers are proposing a free converter box to everybody that requests one. :scratch2:

polaraman

My reply to the analog TV hater!!!


Marilyn,

I for one will NEVER own a digital television. I am a TV collector and love my vintage television sets. I will never give them up. I was sort of offended by your "last granny" hurdle comment. Many of us who own the "old fashioned" analog televisions really enjoy them. Many younger folks do not even know or realize what a marvel TV was. I would suppose that you are fairly young to make comments like that. If you were older you would appreciate the "old fashioned" technology. It is amazing that folks do not demand more for their money. It is real insulting to even look at those sterile plastic televisions. Do you really think they are worth thousands of dollars? I often wonder when the environmentalists are going to stand up and demand that they be made of recyclable materials. WHY? The newer sets are made to be used and tossed. Ever pay to get a new set repaired? The repair will cost more that the set is to buy. One concern that many have not addressed with the new Digital television. I can't wait till somebody comes up with a damaging virus for them. That is going to be real interesting. I am going to send your article to my fellow TV collectors. I would suppose that you may hear from a few more of us.

polaraman

The main thing I don't like about digital TV is that in a fringe area you'll be totally cut off from broadcast TV. It's all or nothing. If you get a snowy picture now you probably won't see anything in digital. I also wonder when there will be a portable battery operated digital TV. It seems like a ginat step backwards that the only digital TVs are expensive, large and heavy.

Yeah, the condescending stuff bugs me too.

I only hope they standardize on something that will down-convert cleanly for our older sets. One of the biggest problems I see today is finding a source (other than dvd) of sufficient quality to make a good picture. Cable isnt that good. Antenna here is worse. Digital cable has motion artifacts in it. Mini-dishes also do.

I might even like digital tv if the converter box will provide a clean high-quality NTSC source. It might be better than what is available now.

As for the set-top box, having to use one won't bother me too much. I have been using various converter boxes for years (most recently a vcr). I don't think my silvertone has been off channel 3 in the last 20 years. :lmao:

Granny John

I'm one of the 21 million households that only get free tv. I don't consider myself poor, nor my parents elderly. I simply feel that there's nothing on television worth paying for. My life is busy enough so that I don't have time to waste sitting and vegetating in front of a television set, drooling and slackjawed. "Lookit the purty movin' pitchers!"

A better picture isn't going to make me want to rush out to buy a new and very expensive TV set, or even to subscribe to cable. I've repeatedly checked the TV listings for programs that might seem worth my time. Newton Minow was right 40 years ago in saying that television is a vast wasteland... he just didn't know how much worse it was going to get.

If there's such an almighty rush to move to digital television, then GET THE ANALOG SETS OFF THE SALESFLOORS NOW!!

Tom

I have a lot to say about that but I will stick to ONE point that has lost ground in the recent past, the supreme court upholding eminent domain comdemnation of private property for PRIVATE use when there will be an increase in the tax recipts for that property..
The loss of use of our "free" tv's is a "taking" which is a legal concept which can be traced back to the 4th amendment, the seizure part.
Old example: near an air force base the fighter planes were scaring the farmers chickens and they stopped laying eggs... He sued and won under that principle.

Congress is "taking" the public airwaves, and they know it.. as they are trying to appease the public by providing the "poor" with ONE converter...
If they get away with that instead of one converter for ANY working set for free... welll.......

Imagine changing the fuel available for our cars, so that if we don't get a converter, the cars we have won't work... but after we get the converter they will work "better"... they couldn't get away with that.....
...

BUT They have a precident.... they took channels 70 through 83 in the uhf band years ago and gave it to the cellular phone bands....
They enacted the electronic communications privacy act which then made it a crime to listen in on them (800 mhz) although it was VERY easy.
Later they banned the manufacturing of any scanner that could receive the specific parts of that band which were cellular (which is why scanners have several "holes" in their published specs.

Not everyone wants to (or can) pay the cable or satellite company to supply the available programming...

When I moved I "dropped" cable ( I had it if for many years) and invested in a roof antenna 12 years ago.

I HATED the way the cable companies jerked me around, like i was a captive "audience" (consumer?). Just as bad as the phone companies were and sbc is now.....

The biggest advertiser on the local tv station is itself, running ads promoting it's digital twin, where to buy sets or convertors, etc. I could live with a convertor I guess, but you would need one per set, right? I would then need to shell out for at least 3 (living room, bedroom, & a shared unit for the tv room). Of course, I am in no hurry to see NTSC die. I feel it should be allowed to go on open-ended. When the market will no longer support tv stations broadcasting analog they will just shut off that transmitter.

I cut off the cable a couple years back with no regrets. Though I have this room full of televisions I hardly watch anything. My wife has the tv on for most of the evening but I just find it annoying. More & more when I watch one of the old sets its just to watch a tape. (I need to pick up a second DVD player for the tv room)

This fall something will happen that might force us into a decision. The aforementioned tv station simulcasts in digital but also has a second station which is digital only. They have been promoting it nonstop (its a UPN affiliate) & recently they mentioned that 2 of my dear wife's favorite shows-Wheel of Fortune & Jeopardy-are moving from the crosstown competitor to this digital only station. Guess I'll find out how much she wants to watch those shows. Might have to buy the set-top box. Or I could invest in a good roof antenna so I can pick up the Baltimore/Washington stations.

I will own an HDTV someday-when I can get one for under $100. I have never paid over $100 for any tv in my life and that seems like a worthy goal to stick to!

Truth be told, I have not watched antenna TV for more than 6 months...Wheel of Fortune, Oprah Winfrey Show, the news, and Jeopardy were about the only shows I would watch. I got Direct TV because I really do like to watch TV and I do not mind paying something to receive programming I actually want to watch.

I remember when TV stations actually used to broadcast shows I would watch...Macgyver, star trek TNG, Falcon Crest, Kate and Allie, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and others (don't comment about my taste in TV shows!, but these were shows I enjoyed and most of them I can still watch on Direct TV)
Now there is just a lot of reality junk shows...or on the comedy shows, they are just so crude.

It honestly doesn't matter a whole lot to me what happens to the format of broadcast TV...as there is hardly anything I want to watch on it. I'll still watch my collection of old TV's and just continue to use the satellite to feed them the programming.

I refuse to pay money to watch television (I'm funny that way). We got cable Internet access last summer, but I skipped the cable TV part.

The notion of "broadcasting" that was so revolutionary in the 1930's has changed dramatically.

One thing I can say is that those converter boxes DO work very well. They function just like a cable box, or satellite receiver except they get the signal from a regular antenna.

If you're in an area with a strong signal the picture will look much better, even on an NTSC TV. It looks better than a DVD assuming the TV station isn't screwing up the signal before broadcasting it. There's absolutely no ghosting, snow, or color smear which is almost unavoidable on NTSC unless you're lucky.

It could improve the selection of tv programs because they can broadcast something like 4 or 6 NTSC resolution channels over one carrier instead of one HD signal. I'm pretty sure they will do this most of the time so they can get 4 or 6 times as many ads on the air and only switch to HD for prime time.

I won't get too excited until there's a way to time shift using a tape, or disc (not a PVR). They really don't want you to be able to record and save programs. There's a lot of technology to prevent unauthorized recording which may lead to people moving away from broadcast TV completely. I can see myself dumping cable, satellite and broadcast and just downloading the things I want to watch. You can already do this and it looks better than cable most of the time.

I couldn't really read the article, but from y'all's replies, I already think I don't like this woman very well... Thing is, digital TV was 5 years away 20 years ago, it was 5 years away 10 years ago, & methinks it's still 5 years away....-Sandy G,

I doubt the FCC will kill analog in 2009. Digital TV's got little inertia now (most are sold as fancy DVD monitors), and the broadcasters aren't going to just lket the feds take away their viewship - especially given that their most important viewers are the ones WITHOUT cable.

And, not having cable's not a sign of being poor - my parents don't have cable still, and I'd hardly call them poor...

The main thing I don't like about digital TV is that in a fringe area you'll be totally cut off from broadcast TV. It's all or nothing. If you get a snowy picture now you probably won't see anything in digital. I also wonder when there will be a portable battery operated digital TV. It seems like a ginat step backwards that the only digital TVs are expensive, large and heavy.

I had the same qualms myself for people in fringe areas, with digitial, you either GET THE SIGNAL OR YOU DON'T, there is no inbetween. At least with regular analogue TV, you can still get a watchible picture with some snow. Count my in on the question of portable battery powered HDTV's, I was wondering the same thing a I was playing with my Casio TV-30 B&W "pocket TV" from 1987. I do have a 1966 (give or take) Sony portable 9 or 10 inch B&W TV, I guess to make it battery powered and portable, I'll need an HDTV converter box and use a voltage inverter.

Call me weird, but I think my 1982 Zenith has a good picture rivalling many HDTV's, then again, my eyes are shot, terminally nearsighted (-6.25 and -7.00 diopters) along with astigmatism. ;)

I have an HDTV set with a built-in tuner. It is the only way I would buy one. It is a 27" Samsung table model and the color on the digital channels is unbelievable and when HD is on, it's even better. I still don't want NTSC analog to go away. Although HD is technically better quality, I still think analog is good enough. I don't plan to put HD sets throughout the house so the other TVs will have to get converter boxes.

My biggest gripe about this whole thing is that the lack of backward compatibility is going to render my portables useless. Converter boxes are fine for table sets but I collect small, battery powered TVs and I have a couple of handhelds that I use regularly. There will be no point in keeping them when analog stops. I have an inquiry in to Casio as to when they plan to offer a handheld TV with a digital tuner. If they reply, I'll post their answer here. I would hope Sony would make one but they seem to have left the miniature TV business.

I think there will be digital portables. In fact I thought I saw on Ebay recently an Audiovox handheld LCD set with an ATSC tuner but I have not been able to find it again.

You may be able to use a mini TV transmitter kit to feed a signal to analog portables..just feed the transmitter with video from a digital convertor

Here is one I found:

http://store.yahoo.com/electronic-kits/tvvidtrankit.html

This will not really help for outdoor use but will enable the sets to be functional in locations inside the house.

That TV transmitter is a neat idea. I may look into something like that when the time comes. I received a reply from Casio regarding digital portable TV. Here is what they said:


As of right now we do not have information on when or if that will be out. I'm sure we will have units that will be capable but right now we don’t know when. Please keep posted on our website we will post a press release when available.

Thank You,
Lisa Bayliss
Casio CSR

For those of us who use a portable TV as much or more than the big set in the living room, It seems like there will be digital portables available. I guess I'll just break down an buy a new set when the analog service is ended.

I think the big problem with portable DTVs is the power needed. It's probably going to be a while before we can receive and decode ATSC on 4 AAs. Has anyone ever tried running an ATSC set top box in a moving car? Is it even possible to receive it unless you're standing still?

I like the way the UK is handling digital TV. They have added digital channels to the analog carrier, but still have the analog signal. All you do is plug a digital box into you existing antenna and you can get more channels for free plus digital copies of the analog channels and a program guide. They will eventually turn off the analog signal, but by then everyone will be able to receive digital.

They can do this because the TV network reallly is a network that coveres the entire county. Everyone can recieve the same 5 broadcast channels clearly.

I think the big problem with portable DTVs is the power needed. It's probably going to be a while before we can receive and decode ATSC on 4 AAs. Has anyone ever tried running an ATSC set top box in a moving car? Is it even possible to receive it unless you're standing still?

I like the way the UK is handling digital TV. They have added digital channels to the analog carrier, but still have the analog signal. All you do is plug a digital box into you existing antenna and you can get more channels for free plus digital copies of the analog channels and a program guide. They will eventually turn off the analog signal, but by then everyone will be able to receive digital.

They can do this because the TV network reallly is a network that coveres the entire county. Everyone can recieve the same 5 broadcast channels clearly.

Good thoughts. I know there have been stories where the Feds who used the digital mode on their walkie-talkies complained the battery life was short so they used the analogue mode for comms unless the digital encryption is really needed. Everything uses power and to use a computer to decode and decompress the HDTV signal will take its share of power along with the RF circuits to receive the signal in the first place. Mobile reception of HDTV, would be interesting to try, maybe in an urban/suburban area, it would work but if you're out in the sticks, I think it would be tough.

FDNY and Motorola are tangled in a few lawsuits over digital walkie talkies. Apparently, the things don't work very well (or even work...), though my dad (retired FDNY) pointed out to me that the old radios didn't work very well either...

HDTV IS a better picture than analog/std NTSC, but is it REALLY worth all the hate & discontent it's gonna cause? Virtually EVERY TV set in the country is gonna be obsolete overnight-I don't care how much they advertise it, that's gonna cause mass confusion on a huge scale-and it's been proven people would give up easily-available food & water before they'd give up TV. As usual, people in government have not thought this one out very well. But we all know the gummint could f!ck up a 2 car funeral....<grin>-Sandy G.

I don't care how much they advertise it, that's gonna cause mass confusion on a huge scale-and it's been proven people would give up easily-available food & water before they'd give up TV.
I don't know what are the plans for changing tv norm in the U.S.. We have already digital tv on air since one year. But on satellite tv we have both, the analog programs and the digital programs. Only 10 percent of the people watch tv by air antenna, and they have to buy the set top box.
A great problem we have with the landwide distribution of the digital broadcasting. Many parts of the country can't receive tv on air because digital tv doesn't reach so far, the transmitting power was underestimated. Does you government switch off totally analog NTSC or can you get analog tv still via satellite?

HDTV IS a better picture than analog/std NTSC, but is it REALLY worth all the hate & discontent it's gonna cause? Virtually EVERY TV set in the country is gonna be obsolete overnight-I don't care how much they advertise it, that's gonna cause mass confusion on a huge scale-and it's been proven people would give up easily-available food & water before they'd give up TV. As usual, people in government have not thought this one out very well. But we all know the gummint could f!ck up a 2 car funeral....<grin>-Sandy G.

That's the problem I see as well. The US Government ought to be thankful my maternal grandmother passed away in 1997 at 85, otherwise whe would put up a fuss and stink about not getting her stories on her 1962 RCA B&W portable. My father is still around and he thinks it is all a conspiracy to just make money for the movers and shakers behind it.

I do agree that people would give up food before TV, heck in the 1930's, they did or would do the same for radio. I dunno of HDTV is worth all of that, to me, I'd rather have a Chevy that hardly breaks down and does what I need it to do than a Rolls Royce that is in the shop every other Tuesday. Then again, a lot of TV programming, well, frankly sucks, you need to go to places like cable/satellite to find anything decent.

Maybe a better solution would have been to accolate a certain number of UHF channels for HDTV or go by satellite/cable while leaving the VHF spectrum and part of the UHF spectrum to analogue TV. I do remember stories that the old CBS color TV system was to be broadcast on UHF only and leaving NTSC on VHF.

I think we could be going down the same path that killed AM stereo to where you had a trainwreck of various systems instead of just one system, I do see a trainwreck here. The only people I know that have an HDTV is my neighbors and he bought that after winning the lottery for $20K plus. Well, I guess i'll just keep my 1982 Zenith going and if need be, use a convertor box. I wish i did have my father's 1979 Zenith, almost a carbom copy of mine for spare parts though. ;)

FDNY and Motorola are tangled in a few lawsuits over digital walkie talkies. Apparently, the things don't work very well (or even work...), though my dad (retired FDNY) pointed out to me that the old radios didn't work very well either...

I think I heard that somewhere. I know there was talk for a while about Pittsburgh Police going to 800 Mc, although it would still have been analogue, but the deal fell through and they are still using their old 453 Mc system they had since the 1960's. I know New York had a lot of commo problems and when the Twin Towers fell on 9-11, it made them a lot worse.

HDTV IS a better picture than analog/std NTSC, but is it REALLY worth all the hate & discontent it's gonna cause? Virtually EVERY TV set in the country is gonna be obsolete overnight-I don't care how much they advertise it, that's gonna cause mass confusion on a huge scale-and it's been proven people would give up easily-available food & water before they'd give up TV. As usual, people in government have not thought this one out very well. But we all know the gummint could f!ck up a 2 car funeral....<grin>-Sandy G.
Got that right. How many analog tv sets are in use in the US? 200, 300 million?
Imagine what that will do to landfills. Imagine the lead leaching into the soil. Bet the geniuses didn't think of that.
Tom

This sucks for serious vintage TV collectors, or even someone with just one cool old TV they like to play with - I'm not in that situation but I really sympathize with you guys. Even with a free converter box, it kinda ruins it to have to stick some cheep plastic box on your set. I suppose you could hide it, though. And would they be usable with some of the older sets out there?

The government will likely be very successful at pulling the plug on standard def. After all, aren't they the ones that got rid of all our English measurements in favor of metric by the year 2000? :rolleyes:

Why not allow standard def. amateur broadcasts? Now, that would be cool! Probably wouldn't be too common, but it would be kind of fun to see what pops up out there.

I do agree that forcing everyone to go to digital HDTV and such is a problem.

Thing is, I hardly watch any cable TV or whatever at all, except on Sundays in the evening. The rest of the time, my daily watcher set is used for playing DVDs or video gaming or playing back my mini-DV tapes, etc. I've also been buying a lot of the TV shows I enjoy on DVD anyhow. I have about 100+ Beta and 150+ VHS tapes I am restoring to DVD with my computer of TV shows. Another thing is, up until the mid 1990s, I could probably watch 6-7 hours of TV a day. Now I watch maybe, if I am lucky, 2 hours a week of broadcast TV.

I do in the next few years want to upgrade to a bigger TV with HDTV and such. Mainly for the upcoming HD-DVD and/or Blue Ray format, and for gaming and such. But I won't just go out and buy one just like that. It may be several years before I do that.

As for my 20+ collection of TVs ranging from 1960-1982, I actually don't even have it set up to receive any over the air signals as is now. I have 3 8-output distribution amps hooked to a DVD-VHS combo unit which also acts as an RF output for my other equipment I own. While that may not be as fun as tuning in over the air signals and such, there really is nothing on broadcast TV I watch. As for portables, I do have a cheap TV transmitter that broadcasts on channel 5, but not that good. I plan to build one of my own design, but that won't be for a while. Another advantage with my setup is it saves wear on the tuners. Just leave them all on channel 3.

So even if this does happen, I will still be using my old TVs. Nothing will stop me :)

Why not allow standard def. amateur broadcasts? Now, that would be cool! Probably wouldn't be too common, but it would be kind of fun to see what pops up out there.
They got 'em already, John!
"Amateur television (ATV) is used on four UHF channels just below 14, especially for repeater output and direct communications. ATV repeater inputs may also be on other channels not near the broadcast bands." (from http://www.answers.com/topic/north-american-broadcast-television-frequencies )
So that means you can find present-day ATV broadcasting between 447MHz and 471MHz :) This corresponds to the CABLE channels 62 through 66, approximately, NOT the over-the-air channel numbers. Any cable-ready TV or VCR will be able to get these channels. (from http://www.jneuhaus.com/fccindex/cablech.html )
If you have an outdoor antenna or rabbit ears, just switch the TV or VCR from over-the-air reception to cable reception and try to see what you can get... if anything. Transmitters are from what I recall about 100W max. Usually this will be near larger cities.

Tom

HDTV is only a marketing tool to get everyone to switch to ATSC. The real driving force is money. What we will see is not only the end of NTSC broadcasting, but the end to free tv broadcasting. Maybe not at first, not until sufficent market saturation. Since networks can put multiple Standard def programs on one digital channel, How long do you think it will take them to start charging you to receive the signal. That is what digital cable does now with addressable decoders. You may not only need a set top box, but an addressable set top box. The technology is already there. Remember the networks were not to happy with the cable superstation networks, after Ted Turner was charging for what they were giving away. It's all in the money.

Our government never learns from its mistakes. They approved FM, then after Sarnoff complained, they moved the FM band where it is today, but didn't require manufacturers to make recievers. Look at UHF. After the freeze, stations got placed on UHF, but nobody could recieve it. HDTV will not be any different. I think the majority of TV viewers will be out on the cold when the switch takes place. Thank goodness for DVD players. If the networks had to depend on me for revenue, they would join Enron in bankruptcy court.

I couldn't make out the scanned article at the beginning of this thread, but based on what other posters have said, that reporter is a total dweeb. Our recapped tube sets are not obsolete. They will still work, unlike this cheap foreign slave labor shit that passes as a TV reciever today.

End of rant.

This rant was brought to you today by Lite Beer.

Big companies are always changing formats. Nothing new since RCA and CBS fought it out to see which color standard would prevail in early 1950's. I hope no one has spent big money on a tv in last 5 years. Any system not compaiple with NTSC in some way would obviously cause mass discontent as everybody needs to buy tv. RCA was smart enough to make sytem compatible w/ B/W TV sets. Not to mention all those VCRs with tuners that also work same standards.

I still think HDTV is kinda an answer to a question nobody asked. Do we REALLY wanna see how many shaving nicks John Madden has today ? It would be kewl, I guess, to see if Janet Jackson really has a girlie moustache when she has her next "Wardrobe Malfunction". And another thing-there ain't gonna be much to watch on HDTV for several years until Hollywood & the networks get a library built up. OK, NTSC does have it's limitations-but I think it's pretty darn good & throwing the baby out w/the bathwater is a crummy idea. -Sandy G.

Actually, HDTV content isn't a problem. The majority of TV shows made in the last few decades were filmed on 35mm film (the same stuff hollywood uses). The resolution is there, it's just a matter of converting the original film to HD video. This is something the TV studios are already doing in order to preserve it. Some stuff like the Cosby show was video taped, but things like Star Trek, The Brady Bunch and ER are on film. In many cases, the editing was done on tape and will have to be redone, but it will be done. Pretty much all recent prime time TV shows are already in HD. I'm looking forward to seeing just how crappy the set and props on the original Startrek are!

I agree that NTSC can look fantastic. I'm using an old Sony computer video projector for TV. A good DVD palyed in progressive scan looks excellent. It's hard to tell the difference between true HD and a good DVD.

The idea of telling TV stations when they must stop analog broadcasting is just a bad, very bad idea. When color came around in 1955 and has served us well for fifty years one of the rules was that existing black & white TVs must accept and show the picture and sound without set top boxes. The system had to be backward compatible. I firmly believe that any new digital HDTV system should follow the same rules. That way the millions of battery portable sets and all the TVs in the home execpt maybe one in the family room will not become scrap.
Sincerely,
Richard Dalkranian.

OvenMaster: I knew ATV existed in some form, but I assumed they would be forced to go HD as well (and therefore, the vast majority of them would just be forced to shut down due to the cost).

Or is this not the case? Are they still going to be allowed on those cable frequencies? And for people with REALLY old TVs, I suppose they'd still be SOL without a converter.

I think digital TV might just kill broadcast TV in the US. If you have to have a box, it might as well be a satellite box, or cable box. I think a lot of people would rather get a free cable, or satellite box and free installation of the dish than have to buy a digital TV box for ever TV and install an antenna on the roof. I'm sure the networks will stay around on cable, satellite and the internet, but how few people need to be using their broadcast signals before they decide to turn it off?

First off, I was amazed how you guys sounded like a bunch of Luddites! You are supposed to be INTO technology, so embrace it. Open your eyes and look at this incredible stuff. Once you see it, you can't go back to crappy 1940's technology.

I understand there are collectors out there. An interesting obsession. You can't hold back the main stream, though. You may need to make RF out of an old VCR or DVD player.

Really guys, you owe it to yourself to check out what video looks like on a good set. 1920x1080. That's a lot of pixels. I bought a Sony super fine dot pitch 36" TUBE (I like tubes) set. Those little pixels are hugging each other very nicely. Find one of these and look at it (make sure it says "super fine dot pitch").

The content is there too. The bigger movie channels, INHD 1 and 2, Discovery, the major networks. The cable box is OK. You can even rip this stuff to your PC with the right setup, and play it back through a DVI or HDMI cable. HD-DVD formats are forthcoming in the next year.

There is a good chance analog broadcast will die when it was supposed to in May 2006 because congress wants to sell off the bandwidth. The cable world will hardly notice.

Schoolboy, I love new tech when it's true progress. This is just change for change's sake, in order to accomodate government demand for spectrum space. Change does not automatically equal progress.

I've read books on how HDTV was conceived. The ONLY reason we're getting it is because broadcasters did not want their precious spectrum auctioned off; they're very possessive. They've had this license to print money since 1946. Then Uncle Sam comes along and says they want it. The NAB meetings came up with HDTV solely to hoard their spectrum, to placate the government. The subsequent hardware and software development was like a Keystone Kops film, riddled with bungles and compromises and mistakes.

Yeah, the programming is out there... if you like lame "comedies", sports, copy-protected movies, and news broadcasts where you can see the newscaster's nose hairs and cardboard sets. The programming is there, yes... LOUSY programming! As David Letterman once said, "Most TV is trash. But that's a good thing. If TV were actually good, we'd waste even more time watching it!"

John, I have read nothing about ATV going hi-def. I should do more research on this. But don't get me started on the future of amateur radio... if there is indeed a future for rich, retired guys yakking about their rigs and antennas.

Tom

We go from 153,600 pixels technology from the 1940's to either 921,600 or 1,036,800 depending on the HD format. How is that not progress? Are we supposed to keep the old format forever?

The content is not bad (granted, some is horrible). As paying customers we really don't care about copy protection, do we. We are not thieves, and we can't just make up our own terms for the use of someone elses' intellectual property.

Seek out one of these super fine DP sets and look at it. They aren't really very expensive and you can chuck that old low resolution set.

schoolboy: Vintage electronics is indeed an odd hobby as far as attempting to categorize it. It is nearly an oxymoron. (Yes, in some cases, it is an "obsession" as you called it. But not all of us are that extreme. Well...OK, maybe the vast majority!) In some ways, it is more closely linked with the antique world than it is with technology, and certainly has nothing to do with "progress", except that many of us question whether any has been truly made in these areas.

Having said that, I have to say that I like the move to HD, regardless of how it went down. I just want to make room for both, so those cool old 1950's sets can still function, as well as the cool new plasmas and LCDs, even though they're expensive and they degrade faster. (You can have those rear projection things though. Horrible off-axis viewing and the lighting is uneven if you have to get close.) Yes, I guess that problem is solved with a converter box. But who wants to either shell out the extra $ or accept government money just to do something as sick and wrong as placing a 21st century BPB device on a 1957 television? Talk about a clashing view!

I goofed. I said this:
This is just change for change's sake, in order to accomodate government demand for spectrum space.
What I should have said was:
This is just change for change's sake, in order to accomodate government demand for spectrum space in order to sell if off for revenue.
Sorry for the confusion.

Also:
As paying customers we really don't care about copy protection, do we.
The day I am forced to pay to watch television is the day I yank the antenna wires out, pull the plug from the wall, and toss the set on the trash heap.

Tom

"
The day I am forced to pay to watch television is the day I yank the antenna wires out, pull the plug from the wall, and toss the set on the trash heap.

Tom"


DITTO.

This thread has been good reading on all sides. As someone coming at it from both the hobbyist point of view (from 20's mechanical sets to 60's solid state sets), and as someone who works in the industry (design of video editing hardware), I can safely say I am in no hurry for this change.
Since I am on the side that believes 99% of television programming is crap, I use VCR's and DVD's to watch my old sets. If the need arises after the switch over, we can always run our old sets off an ATSC tuner.

Surprisingly what I haven't seen discussed here is the difficulty in receiving ATSC signals. I live near Detroit, about 10-15 miles from all the main towers. There are 7 main US stations and 1 Canadian station locally. I have a roof antenna on a two story house in a flat area. I purchased a Hitachi ATSC tuner just to play with. It has been an abysmal failure. On average, I can get 3 of the stations most of the time, 2 others about 50% of the time, and the rest rarely or never. At the same time I can get a watchable picture on their analog equivalents through the same box. I watched the recent FCC hearings about the change over, and this fact never seems to get mentioned. For me, ATSC is useless, and I'm in a prime area! I do believe this is being driven to a great extent in an effort to end broadcast television.

Just a couple of other comments:
While most "filmed" television shows from years past were done in 35mm, most episodic television today is done in Super16 due to cost. While this format is adequate, one only needs to look at a true HD feed compared to a telecined Super16 HD feed to see a dramatic difference. While I would also love to see classic television shows telecined from the original 35mm negatives, I am not optimistic on how much this will actually be done.

Also, while 1080i HD has a theoretical maximum resolution of 2,073,600 pixels (not 1,036,800 as previously stated), this is not the actual resolution beyond an uncompressed editing suite. HDV is becoming the main acquisition format, and the first thing it does is cut the horizontal resolution from 1920 to 1440. Next it compresses it fairly heavily. After editing, it is then severely compressed for transport. The resulting effective resolution is about 3 times what good NTSC is. (NTSC is 349,920 pixels as defined in IBU601, not 153,600 as previously stated)

All this means that cost, not quality dictates HD's performance.

While cable or satellite fed HD images can look very good (on stationary images anyway :-( ATSC will be the end of broadcast television, and I for one will not be paying the broadcasters to watch commercials that the sponsors have also paid for. Collecting it from both ends is the epitome of greed!

Darryl

Don't be critical since you don't appreciate vintage formats. Most of us are techies at heart who enjoy new and old. Majority of us expressing unfair on consumers --as forcing us to buy new TV receivers/equipment if Digital TV isn't backward compatible to NTSC. And, YES we would like to use are old TVs without special boxes--the way they were designed to. How would audiphiles feel if new digital format for music made all your current stereo equipment obsolete??? It seems like industry just switches formats to make us purchase more equipment.


:thumbsdn: :thumbsdn: :thumbsdn:

Digital may well get slow start as did NTSC color TV in 50's do to TV receiver costs/swithover costs for networks. 350 K resoultion for 50 year old format is still marvel of technology. How many people are willing to pay just to watch TV????

:no: :cry:

I'm not concerned, worried or anything else about this analog to digital changeover anymore, as if worrying about it will change anything. (It doesn't and will not, of course). I called my cable provider (Comcast) the other day and asked how they would handle the analog-to-digital switch when it supposedly arrives in 2009. The representative I spoke with told me it is far too early to tell what will happen. If and when, I will get a notice in my mail about how the situation will be resolved at their end (and what it will mean for subscribers). As I understand it, the cable company will provide converters for people such as myself who still have analog TVs as part of the cable service itself, as they do now, so there is no question or doubt as to whether subscribers will have the required equipment; there will be the usual rental fee, of course. Using a cable box with my TV doesn't bother me one bit. I have Comcast digital cable and use a converter ahead of my five-year-old RCA analog TV; the picture on all stations is great. As one other poster to this thread pointed out for his analog set with a box, my own TV has not been off channel 4 for at least a year. I will probably get a new flat-panel HDTV, however, once the price of 20" or larger sets becomes reasonable (to me, that means well under $1,000) or when my analog set goes West, whichever comes first.

One other thing about digital (LCD and plasma) TV vs. CRT analog: At this point, CRT sets, especially the larger screen sizes, still deliver picture quality far superior to even the best LCD/plasma panels. The flat-panel widescreens are simply too new yet; the technology is still evolving. I'm sure in 10-20 years the flat-panel sets will be as sharp, bright and clear as any good CRT analog set is today, but the technology of FP (flat-panel) hasn't reached that point just yet. This is another reason I intend to hang on to my analog CRT RCA set as long as it works. As I said earlier, my set delivers an excellent picture when fed from the cable system here; as far as I am concerned, that's all that matters to me.

Being able to tape shows from TV is becoming less and less important to me as the quality of network TV continues to worsen--there is, IMO, simply very little worth taping and saving anymore. I still have a VHS VCR and a rack full of previously-recorded tapes (shows and old movies I taped from off-air and cable TV 20 years ago) plus a DVD player. I subscribe to Netflix, so if I want to see any particular old show or movie, all I need do is request it on their website (www.netflix.com). I can see a day coming when I won't even bother to replace the VCR when it goes (except perhaps to get a combo DVD/VCR deck), preferring instead to watch my favorites on DVD. I was in a discount store the other day and saw new Emerson VCRs going for $23.88, and combo decks by the same maker for well under $100. At these prices, it hardly pays to have the old VCR repaired when it eventually bites the dust, so when my Panasonic VCR finally dies, I think my choice is clear (unless, of course, other manufacturers' combo DVD/VCR decks are this dirt-cheap by then, as they may well be as DVD becomes more and more widespread and popular). I have even toyed with the idea of dropping my digital cable, going back to basic, and watching movies on my DVD player. (Comcast, and probably many other cable providers with digital, can downconvert local TV channels at the head end without the use of a converter ahead of the subscriber's TV, even HD channels, to channels analog sets can receive.) Heck, even if the record function of my present VCR eventually quits (but the unit still plays back OK), I'll probably keep it just to watch my old favorite VHS tapes. With this combination (VHS and DVD, plus the RCA CRT set as a monitor), I wouldn't need cable anymore, except for local channels. The only real reasons I am holding on to digital at this point are the digital music channels, the National Geographic Channel on channel 109, and NBC Weather Plus on channel 208. If not for these services, I'd downgrade my cable service to basic in a New York minute.

Since I am on the side that believes 99% of television programming is crap, I use VCR's and DVD's to watch my old sets. If the need arises after the switch over, we can always run our old sets off an ATSC tuner.

Surprisingly what I haven't seen discussed here is the difficulty in receiving ATSC signals. I live near Detroit, about 10-15 miles from all the main towers. There are 7 main US stations and 1 Canadian station locally. I have a roof antenna on a two story house in a flat area. I purchased a Hitachi ATSC tuner just to play with. It has been an abysmal failure. On average, I can get 3 of the stations most of the time, 2 others about 50% of the time, and the rest rarely or never. At the same time I can get a watchable picture on their analog equivalents through the same box.

For me, ATSC is useless, and I'm in a prime area! I do believe this is being driven to a great extent in an effort to end broadcast television.

That's interesting. If you are in a prime signal area, within say 15 miles of all major Detroit stations, you should be getting excellent reception from all seven of them (plus CBET-9 in Windsor), especially if you have a good high-power rooftop antenna. Why you get such poor reception on certain of Detroit's digital channels baffles me. If you are that close to the towers, all your area's channels, digital as well as analog, should be received equally well. If you lived as far from the stations as I do from Cleveland's network channels (45 air miles), it would make sense that your digital reception is so poor on some channels. Again, however, being only 10-15 miles from the towers, you should have almost more signal than you can handle on both analog and digital channels. The only other things I can think of are your ATSC tuner is defective or has been damaged, or else your antenna is damaged or the feedline is cut or shorted. However, if you can receive the analog channels well, I don't know. I am not sure how powerful Detroit's digital transmitters are, but it is almost certain they are much less powerful than the analog stations. CBS, which owns Detroit's WWJ-TV (CBS 62), recently rebuilt that station's transmitter, which may now have the most powerful analog signal of any television station in metro Detroit; however, I don't know if the digital transmitter has been upgraded the same way. The other Detroit stations (2, 4, 7, 20, 50, 56) may be operating very low-powered digital transmitters compared to the analog ones; this could well be why your reception of those stations' digital signals (the four you say you receive 50 percent of the time or rarely/never) is so poor. It could also be that your particular ATSC tuner is poorly designed; I'd try a different brand, if possible.

As to your comment on using older sets with external ATSC tuners, that is exactly what I intend to do if I still have my RCA analog CRT TV in 2009. This set still makes an excellent picture with its inline CRT and automatic color controls (I have digital cable with a converter, a VCR and a DVD player; therefore, I am accustomed to using outboard units with the set and leaving the TV itself on channel 4), which is one big reason I am not about to get rid of it as long as it works as well as it has over the last five and a half years.

If and when the analog stations go dark .... oh, the heck with it. I'll deal with that when the time comes. As I see it, there is no sense worrying about something that isn't even here yet. As Marshal Sam McCloud (Dennis Weaver's character in the McCloud mystery movie series on NBC in the '70s) said in one episode, "The Indians have a one-word philosophy--now. The past is old and dead, and the future is new and not born yet." The point was that there is absolutely no sense being concerned or downright worried about the past or the future. The former cannot be changed; the latter isn't here yet. In this discussion of the FCC's plan to end analog TV some four years from now, this means we really shouldn't worry about something that isn't even here at this time. Who knows--the FCC (or Congress) may push back the cutoff date for analog yet again, to 2015 or even later. Knowing that the government operates extremely slowly, this wouldn't surprise me. In any event, it's not worth worrying about.

BTW, I almost hate to think what it will mean for those of us with many old TVs if we must use ATSC tuners to get reception on them. Today, ATSC tuners are relatively expensive, so many of us may not be able to afford more than one at this point. Second, it may be all but impractical to split the output of one ATSC tuner among several sets; the output will be progressively weaker at each splitter output (not counting cable losses), with the sets furthest from the tuner getting the weakest signal. Conversely, the sets closest to the tuner may get more signal than they can handle. This was also a problem in master TV antenna distribution systems years ago, as well as the first cable systems in the '50s which were little more than glorified distribution systems. The best way to get HD on your old sets is to use individual ATSC tuners with each set; as the prices of these boxes become more reasonable, the cost won't be as much of an obstacle as it may be now. Another alternative is to have your cable company put ATSC tuners on your old sets, splitting the cable output among them (Comcast and possibly other cable providers will install additional outlets at no charge, but there will be a monthly charge for each HD cable box; this could make this approach all but impractical for those of us with more than two or three TVs). Comcast will also permit subscribers to install their own cable wiring, but the installation must conform to FCC standards for RF leakage and so on, so perhaps it's a better idea to have them install the wiring and as many outlets/converters as you may need for your vintage sets. The only problem, as I mentioned above, is that Comcast (and very likely other cable operators) will charge a monthly equipment rental fee (in addition to the charges for the cable service itself) for each ATSC cable box in your home; these fees could spiral well out of control if you have more than two or three such converters.

BTW (2): If your over-the-air digital reception is so poor, why not get digital cable? All cable systems today carry both analog and digital signals, so if you had cable you can get every one of Detroit's digital stations just as clearly as your analog stations are now. Just a thought.

BTW (3): I agree with your statement that "ninety-nine percent of TV programming is crap . . . " I too have a DVD player and VCR hooked up to the TV in my apartment, with a subscription to the on-line DVD rental service Netflix (www.netflix.com). I watch a lot of the old crime dramas and mystery movies I grew up with, like the old NBC Mystery Movies of the '70s, Quincy, M.E., with Jack Klugman, et al., many of which are now on DVD. I have to say I've never enjoyed watching TV more. Let the networks air their often bottom-feeder programming. With a DVD player and a subscription to a DVD rental service such as Netflix or Blockbuster Video, you will never be at a loss for good programming on your treasured old sets. With DVD, TV runs on a new schedule--yours. No more being at the mercy of the networks. This is an idea whose time has come, maybe 20 or more years too late, but you know the old saying--better late than never.

Last night I watched Hellraisers on INHD2. It's a B+ horror, gore movie from the late 80's that I hadn't seen. Not bad. It didn't exhibit any of the sometime distracting crappy artifacts of digital cable. They are an annoyance sometimes (on all channels, not just HD). I don't know if you get problems like this in broadcast - I haven't tried an antenna yet (I will eventually, that's why I got the Sony, it does it all).

I suppose there is room for the vintage collector out there - but you will need to make signal some other way, not off the air from commercial broiadcasters. There will always be old VCRs and old DVD players for you to use. I collect radios (and I use them), but the old TV bug hasn't hit me. I prefer to use the ones that sound good (like a nice FM with an electrostatic tweeter) or function well (like a nice shortwave).

Keep in mind that the difference between regular TV and HDTV isn't even like the difference between AM and FM, it's more like the difference between AM and SACD.

Maybe I'm a pioneer and/or a pollyanna but I have found enough quality (and certainly quantity) of entertainment on cable TV since 1976 to be paying for it almost continuously since then. In Athens, Ohio in the 70's it was the only way to get more than one college station. Then when I lived a good 60 miles from Cleveland's transmitters it was a natural choice, especially with the then fledgling premium channels - HBO and Showtime. We used to get some Canadian on cable (which you could barely get off the air) and sometime Browns home games, even when they stunk and couldn't fill the stadium (just like today except somehow they fill the place!). Today I have no issue with paying over $100/month for TV and Internet. I'd pay that if my income were half what it is, and I'm as big a cheepskate as any of you!

I remember living in Athens Ohio when I went to school there in the 90's. If you were using rabbit ears on the TV you could barely just get one channel (WOUB Public television). Could not afford to get cable then. A lot of residents had huge antenna towers to pull in stations from W.Va. or Columbus.

Saw some digital sets on display at a TV store and I wasn't impressed with the over-the-air digital picture enough to make me want to spend thousands for one. Had some artifacts to it, like you could see the picture was made out of blocks, especially when things were moving.

Requiring a convertor box for digital to analog is not the same thing as requiring everyone to subscribe to pay TV services. It is a one time charge to buy the unit...and surely their prices will drop if there is no analog TV and more people need to buy one.

Hi Jeff,
I'm not sure why it is so bad either. Most UHF stations do not seem to come in all that well, and since all digital stations are in this range, it may explain it. This may be due to the power of these UHF channels. I tried an antenna mounted amp, but it made little difference. I had considered if the box might be defective, but when it does lock on a signal, it performs as expected, and it tunes the analog signals fine, although with varying amounts of snow. I have not been able to try a different brand of tuner, but would like to. Overall I'm pretty disappointed with ATSC and it's all or nothing behavior :(

I know of several people in the area that have Comcast digital HD, and for the most part it works adequately, but they are plauged with regular breakup's of the image/sound, or lockups of the box. I just find it hard to pay $60/month for this level of service. When my friends have called for support, the tech's that have come out basically say that's as good as it get's, so get used to it!

No thanks!

<rant on>

It seems that the PC market has set the bar for all consumer electronics these days. (and by that I mean set the bar so low) It locks up constantly, doesn't quite do what they say it does, and everybody just keeps forking over money for the next update that will be the "fix". I doubt anyone accepted this from electronics 50 years ago, and we shouldn't now. How many times would a consumer be willing to "reboot" his car before demanding they fix it correctly?

<rant off> :-)

It seems that conventional broadcast has been slowly losing support anyhow. My old 1989 Zenith tuner works a WHOLE LOT better than my 2004 TOTL Panasonic large screen (also a conventional CRT, standard def set), and the new one has PIP, component video and all the bells and whistles. I just don't think that TV manufacturers want to invest in decent reception anymore, since the vast majority have moved on to cable and satellite decades ago. And I live near a major metropolitan area. I'll try Rat Shack's most powerful booster antennae, and if that doesn't cut it, I'm going to join the masses and get a dish. (Comcast sucks here, last I heard. Too many drop-outs.) So one way or another, broadcast's days are numbered anyhow.

Ah, the end of free TV wafting through the airwaves. It was a fine erra, while it lasted. I'll just have a beer in its honor, remember it fondly and move on. Just like a few old relationships.

I don't know what I'll do if I ever get my hands on a cool vintage TV. Probably get the converter with extra long interconnects and try to hide the box somewhere. But definitely under protest! Vintage television is not something I'm looking for specifically right now, but sometimes these kinds of things just find me.

Hi Jeff,
I'm not sure why it is so bad either. Most UHF stations do not seem to come in all that well, and since all digital stations are in this range, it may explain it. This may be due to the power of these UHF channels. I tried an antenna mounted amp, but it made little difference. I had considered if the box might be defective, but when it does lock on a signal, it performs as expected, and it tunes the analog signals fine, although with varying amounts of snow. I have not been able to try a different brand of tuner, but would like to. Overall I'm pretty disappointed with ATSC and it's all or nothing behavior :(

I know of several people in the area that have Comcast digital HD, and for the most part it works adequately, but they are plauged with regular breakup's of the image/sound, or lockups of the box. I just find it hard to pay $60/month for this level of service. When my friends have called for support, the tech's that have come out basically say that's as good as it get's, so get used to it!

No thanks!


High definition digital television is still a very new technology which obviously has bugs to be worked out. By the time the FCC ends analog TV in some four years, the HDTV system will probably work much better, with better pictures, better sound (many ATSC tuners already have home-theater sound outputs with 5.1-channel Dolby decoders, etc.)--and the ATSC tuners themselves will be much better as well, with the lockup problems, etc. having been worked out (we hope, anyway) by then. :yes:

Any new technology has bugs in the beginning. For example, when color TV was first introduced in the '50s, the sets were terribly expensive and there were few color programs to watch, even from the networks. The color receivers of the '50s were not that good (by today's standards) either, :no: but again, they were the best there was at the time. Today's NTSC color TV system is much better and has far fewer bugs than it was and had fifty-odd years ago; the sets are easily affordable (especially now, with stores trying to sell off their inventory of analog CRT sets, even 27" and 32" models, ASAP) and are much more reliable, not to mention almost fully automatic (set the color controls once on most modern CRT sets and forget them--they did away with manual vertical/horizontal hold controls some years ago as well); HDTV will follow the same route. Ten years after HDTV takes hold in this country, the reception (and the technology itself, of course) will be better than it is now; ten years after that, still better; and so on--at least that's what everyone hopes :yes: for anything new like this. It will just take time, that's all. It is not realistic to expect such a new technology to be letter-perfect at this early stage of its development. :no:

I find it interesting to look at consumer HDTV- to me it looks very weak. My edit studio monitor is a 19" NTSC Broadcast Monitor- 980 lines of resolution. It is simply the best looking picture I have ever seen, EXCEPT for the Broadcast HD Monitors- of course they are about 18K each. But what the consumer HD stuff looks like is barely better than my mid 90's RCA TV- certainly not worth the difference in price. I can't even get interested in the LCD sets- they just aren't very sharp compared to a good tube.

Good thing I only make television- I don't actually watch the stuff!

I hope digital TV does in fact lead to better quality. TV stations have a way of doing everything possible to screw up the picture and sound.

I remember seeing a HD channel in Pittsburgh that was just using their NTSC feed and cutting off a little at the top and bottom of the picture so it would fill more of the 16x9 screen. In that case, the HDTV feed was actually LOWER resolution than the NTSC feed. Needless to say, it looked horrible.

I got a new (Jan 2004) CBS analog station here on channel 67 and it's not even in stereo. The transmitter keeps popping and sputtering, and transmitting a good picture only every so often. Vast majority of time it's snowy, and I'm only 8 miles from the transmitter. I can see the antenna from my roof, so the antenna has a clear line of sight. When broadcasters do things like this, we're supposed to embrace digital TV? They still can't get analog right! :(

I know CC and BB don't exactly have great setup policies, but every time I look at the pictures on the HD sets, I am consistently disappointed, and I always ask what the big deal is supposed to be. If their sets ARE set up properly, then I suppose the days of TV of any sort in my house are numbered.

Tom

Hate to repeat myself, but as I stated some time ago:

"...my complaint is not about picture quality, but rather this new 16:9 aspect ratio. Except for some sporting events, and epic films like Ben Hur, is 16:9 really the best way to frame a shot? Most TV shots are of a single person speaking, fairly close. Yet by the time you get back far enough to frame the complete head/bust in the shot, you've included a bunch of unnessecary junk (like the fence in the head shot of yours truly). Even inanimate objects like cars, houses, etc. are usually closer to square than "super wide", so you must include a bunch of extra stuff (such as the the SUV turning left in the first shot of the Rolls Royce). You end up with a smaller shot of the subject, no matter what. Perhaps not a problem on a 50" screen, but what about portable/table sets of the future?"

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=27636

I've seen HDTV, and I'm just not blown away by it. I don't spend hours watching tropical fish swim, nor any of the other subjects typically used to show-off HDTV. This may be a gradual improvement, but it isn't the enormous difference from B&W to color that people try to compare it to. Yet for the sake of a few people who are really "into" watching TV, the masses must upgrade their hardware.

An atomic-powered Karagucchi XF-3500 FM tuner might be the best way to enjoy FM stereo radio, but what about the guy who just wants something cheap to listen to in the garage? Or more to the point, why must I give up my 1975 19" Chromacolor II garage TV that I mostly listen to, while working on my similarly outdated cars? Can you imagine being forbidden to drive on public highways because your car doesn't have airbags? Just like HDTV, the airbag (i.e. picture quality) is for YOUR benefit, but the gov. is going to force it on you?

And here we have the most fundemental problem; since when has it been the government's job to promote entertainment technology? This hasn't anything to do with safety, health, financial well-being, or general welfare. What's really happening is, this HDTV thing hasn't caught with the public and the FCC (motivated by the sale of broadcast frequencies) has abused its power by setting an artificial deadline, rather than allowing the market to work as it has in the cases of all kinds of computer and video formats.

:boink:

I think a lot of the quality issue is similar to the audiophile "Law of Diminishing Returns." Though I wouldn't judge any of the current technological capabilities by broadcast sources. I don't think it's so much a matter of fine-tuning a new technology. We've been doing digital microwave communications broadcasting since at least the early 80's - the basic technology is really not new. If broadcast is consistantly that bad, then I suspect that somebody, either the broadcasters or the HD tuner/TV manufacturers - is doing things on the cheap. How much of the problem is the transmission, and how much is the tuner - especially the gain stage? If we don't know, who do we blame? I would tend to blame the tuner based on my new Panasonic experience mentioned above. But I think that some posters here are probably correct at placing blame with broadcasters for not doing as much as they can, because the government is forcing them into it. And I would especially ignore any broadcast reception I see at CC, BB, Sears, Costco, etc., etc...

The only non-broadcast, new video tech. that I've seen is ED format, and although it seems that some of you disagree, I think it looks great on both plasmas and LCDs. It's enough to make me lust after it, but not enough to make me bite on my budget just yet. I'm really curious to see what results the new HD disks will bring.

Regarding the old aspect ratio discussion: Yes, I remember that thread...I've been looking at the sides of the screen more during movies every once in a while, and you're absolutely right Carmine: Not much of anything happens there!! Jeez, you'd think directors would place things there every once in a while just for the fun of it. People would finally catch it on their 3rd or 4th viewing, and you get that "Hey - I never saw that before!!" kind of effect. But no, they're pretty much just focussed on whatever brings the big box office opening draw.

Along with the problems in weak signal areas digital signals have problems with multi-path distortion, what we call ghosts on analog TV. I've been using Directv satellite since Feb '95 and am usually pleased with the picture, my one complaint is with the stations that use a lot of compression, anything moving fast appears jerky.

Television is a medium, it is neither rare or well done.......Fred Allen