#16
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I am curious how the "fringe area" reception will actually play out. My mother lives in a rural area around 70 miles from the nearest main network and PBS transmtters. Analog TV has worked well in this area (with an external antenna) for the 50+ years that I have been alive. There may have been snow at some times, but the channels were always watchable. I am not at this point sure that HTDV will work as well. Time will tell. If it does not, there will be a lot of complaints and there are a fair number of people in this situation.
My mother cannot use her digital cell phone at home as she is to far from the tower. When she had the older 3 watt output(seperate antenna and handset) analog cell phone, she had no problems. So much for digital in that area. |
#17
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Well I don’t have a closed mind at all. But I do feel over the air FREE TV is dieing and this will kill it. People say that close to 80 % now pay for their TV service either from satellite or cable. The networks are turning into program suppliers not broadcasters.
When the public has to mess with digital they are just going to be confused big time. While the picture is great if the broadcasters start adding more channels their bandwidth for HDTV shrinks so don’t count on have great pictures if they add more channels. And as for local channels they will never fly because the only reason they are on cable is because they have to be carried. There is very little viewer ship and this is after most of them being on for over 20 years. It is all about content and the local public access stations will never have content the public will watch. Just won’t happen. And I do agree how many times do we need to see “Law and Order”. Try and watch a movie on commercial stations with the spot load running at 15 min per hour most people can’t stand it. Really has helped the DVR market. Just my rant from a person in the bizz. |
#18
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Once the transition to digital takes place there will be no "over the air and free". That will eventually go away it will be over the air and pay tv. That was the real push from broadcasters since it allowed local stations to compete with the cable station revenue streem. Charge advertisers to advertise, and then charge viewers to watch.
What good is all the eye popping high quality picture with such low quality programing? Besides we already had high definition tv. You can buy analog monitors now with over 800 lines of resolution, and the analog broadcast signal has always been viewed at a lower resolution. A properly set up professional monitor has just as good a picture (in many cases better since there are no digital artifacts) as most HDTV I have seen. 16:9 is fine if I have room for a 20 foot screen to watch it on. On a 50 inch it is a waste. Bill R |
#19
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Last edited by andy; 12-07-2021 at 02:10 PM. |
#20
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No outhouse, and i have an electric pump for my water, but i do ride my horses, it's far safer and relaxing than driving a car in traffic
Let me say that i know what HDTV looks like, and i think i can live without the ability to see a billion of details on a 50" screen... 625 line PAL looks really good on my vintage 26" Philips CRT... The EU and the Italian government had to retain the 4:3 625 line PAL standard to ensure compatibility with older CRT sets, which still account for about 80% of Italy's TVsets and are being replaced really slowly, it's not uncommon to see 20-30 yrs old sets and even some tube B/Ws in regular use here, especially in poor rural areas, they just get repaired and patched up over and over, That's also why many DVB-T set top boxes sold here are fitted with an analog RF output, that's needed to feed the converted analog PAL signal in the antenna input of older sets without AV inputs. Don't forget that many people cannot afford to buy a "new & exciting" HDTV set just because it's cool... they just need something to watch the news or a soccer match into... Francesco Quote:
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Audiokarma |
#21
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I LOVE my color roundies and it gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling watching stuff on them and all that, but sorry, the picture quality, sharpness, lack of any noise and great detail of my OTA hdtv makes anything on my roundies look fuzzy and downright painful to look at in comparison. If I had to watch something in HD and then immediately switch to a roundie, I'd need some aspirin cuz it would give me a pounding headache.
Even when I'm watching something 4:3 on it that isn't HD it blows away my old color sets. Maybe it's cauze I'm using a late-model CRT projection set and not one of the inferior LCD sets, and have great reception where I am, and don't have cable or dish with their compression artifacts, but that's still where I fall on this subject. I love both technologies, roundies for the nostalgia and HD for the modern advantages. As far as lack of decent programming, that has always been the case, and maybe even worse back then. Only 7 or 8 channels, and the vast majority of shows were junk or filler material just like now. Less commercials then yes. But 50 years of history gives one the luxury to start imagining that every show back then was the Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, etc etc., but it wasn't. |
#22
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Well, 60s roundies have a coarse phosphor dot pitch and relatively simple tube circuits... my 1976 Philips K11 daily watcher instead has a tank-like solid state chassis with about 50 transistors and 20 ICs, an electronic tuner and an inline CRT with a really fine phosphor stripe pitch and produces a bright, crisp, wonderful, absolutely noise free picture just like a brand new PAL set... i can't really ask for more...
I'd like to see the picture quality of a 31 yrs old plasma... but there will probably be no surviving plasma sets 31 years from now, especially in working conditions... while my then 60 yrs old Philips will probably keep kickin'ass with its original capacitors Francesco |
#23
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===I'd like to see the picture quality of a 31 yrs old plasma===
Might have a sliiiiiiiight burn in problem... : ) |
#24
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Quote:
Other than the clearity of HD, the old crt does a pretty good good of color accuracy. I've seen several of the flat screen technology that has reds that seem to wash out and flesh tones sometimes appear to have a silvery tone to them.
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#25
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But Frenchy, the whole point of this thread is that back in the fifties, such things as detail and definition were'nt considered quite as important, but to add color back then, just to see shows in color was enough amazement for me, I wasn't fixated on DC restoration, detailing and so on.
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#26
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I'm with ya, man. I come from the "Bert Lantz" school (he was Secretary of State under President Carter) of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think instead of forcing NTSC to go dark, there should have been a compromise where part of the UHF spectrum would be HDTV, we could go back up to channel 83, the old AMPS cellphone standard will be phased out this year. The other part of the UHF spectrum and the VHF spectrum would remain NTSC. My 1982 Zenith can whoop some HDTV's in picture quality or at least give them a good run.
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Mom (1938 - 2013) - RIP, I miss you Spunky, (1999 - 2016) - RIP, pretty girl! Rascal, (2007 - 2021) RIP, miss you very much |
#27
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I watched Archie Bunker al ot and there is one time I have to agree with Meathead, his son-in-law, where he read on a box where it said, "new and improved," he said "what were we using before, old and lousy?" I know someone else said this but I'll second it and say that I apologize on behalf of most Americans about that snide comment, there are times that we can be too arrogant for our own good. Myself, I can't afford a lot of cool and new stuff,I struggle from time to time economically. Many say, "just buy a new TV," well there are times money is tight that it would take an Act of God to do that. Heck, I've been watching the same set for almost 25 years, a 1982 Zenith System III, I was a 16 year old sophomore in high school when we bought it new and now I'll be 41 next month.
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Mom (1938 - 2013) - RIP, I miss you Spunky, (1999 - 2016) - RIP, pretty girl! Rascal, (2007 - 2021) RIP, miss you very much |
#28
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By the way,
The shutdown last year of two out of three national AM public radio broadcasts has created a serious nationwide protest... they probably thought that no one was still listening to AM radio... they were wrong... I can only imagine the reaction to the shutdown of analog TV broadcasts in 2012... millions of low income people and retirees which are struggling to pay the bills and make it to the next month will be forced to go out and spill 100 bucks for ABSOLUTELY no perceived benefit... or either stop watching TV... And, by the way, our DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial) set top boxes all have smart card slots and a couple of channels are already requiring payment, so we're probably going to lose free TV someday... Francesco |
#29
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Personally I do think HDTV usually looks a lot better than NTSC...however the difference does not mean enough to me to make me want to spend the dough for the new set! I do think my old sets do fine for me.
Every year though, the price of the HDTV sets goes down and there is more HDTV programming available. I really don't see what any to-do is about this when conversion units for digital to analog will be available with US government funding for those who cannot afford them plus all new TV receiveing devices including TV sets, VCRs, digital recorders etc. must have digital capability. Also I know several people who, even though they have cable, have hooked up their antenna again so they can get over the air digital HDTV broadcasts. I don't see how digital will decrease over the air viewing. Last edited by Chad Hauris; 06-21-2007 at 08:16 PM. |
#30
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boy i can here the hackers now having fun with those cards that some stations are going to require you to pay a fee on to watch local tv. ha, ha, ha. i hope they get just what directv got in the beginning. and i made a lot off of directv not on fixing the cards mind you just selling the cards. i made thousands and not just a few thousand. that was the good old days wish i hadnt spent it all. steve
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