Radio discussion on NTSC shutdown & HDTVs
 

I’m sure most of you already know about the 2009 NTSC shutdown from posts that other people have left.

On Tuesday I was listening to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" on the radio and they were talking about the switch to digital TV. Most of what they said was pretty interesting, so I recorded it so you guys can hear it…:D

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/2/.../Kojo_HDTV.mp3 56k Friendly
Hope you like it..

Frankly I was a little surprised after I listened to the show.
What do you think?

Very interesting broadcast.

We have had the so-called converter boxes since the introduction of digital TV in Australia in 2001.

I have 3 converter boxes for my existing TV's & a digital tuner card in my PC.

I really enjoyed that radio broadcast. Thanks for sharing it with us. Aren't MP3 files great? On Ebay right now there are ATSC set top boxes for sale for $150 that modulate the output signal to channel 3 or 4 just like a VCR. This is the first such box I've seen that has a modulated RF output. The price is a bit steep but it is just what I'm going to be looking for in 2009 for my vintage TVs. The boxes are made by Michley and the model line is called Tivax.

I hope by then digital improves. Most nights the digital stations have very inconsistent reception. I find the pixelation and freezes more annoying thatn the snow and ghosts of analog. At least I could watch through that. I often have to switch to the analog station to get through a one hour program. When that option is no longer available, I guess I'm going to have to install an outside aerial.

You and I are two of the 70 million who watch over-the-air TV and have that problem. Wait till the rest have to switch to digital. How many of them will encounter the same LOS with its frozen pictures and bleeped-out audio. Sounds to me like a potential disaster.

When the question was raised during the program, the ota guy glossed over the problem by acknowledging it but offering no alternative solution to our switching to analog.

I noticed too that the reception problem was swept aside during the radio discussion. Right now I can still switch to analog when I need to to watch Lost, Ugly Betty, House, etc. but If digital does not improve before analog switch off, I might have to get all my TV content on DVD. If that's the case, I'll just watch 1960s and 70s shows on my Zenith roundie and live in the past forever.:yes:

I’m glad you guys enjoyed the recording. It’s hard to get a MP3 to sound good at 32kbit/s compression.

I’m one of those 70 million people who watch over-the-air TV too, the way I see it; it’s just a way to force people to buy HD TVs. First they’re going to sell the NTSC bandwidth to “advance wireless services”. So they’re more concerned about making money off of the television bandwidth. And second, a $40 coupon for a $150 converter box is a rip-off.

I don’t think I’m going to get the converter box, not until they go down between $20 to $50. Until then, I’m just going to watch TV off the Internet. I all ready have my 1994 Zenith plugged into my computer for that reason…

He also missed the point on the VCR issue. It will be impossible to use a VCR for timer recording because there will be no way for the VCR to select the correct channel to record. You'll be limited to recording the channel the box is set to. People who what to do time shifting will have to buy a DVD recorder, or PVR with a built in digital tuner.

This is leading up to a bigger motive. Take a look at this:

Under the proposed legislation, all CRTs in the state of California would have to be turned in to the state government for recycling by the end of 2008. This would include television sets, computer monitors, arcade machines, and all-in-one computers such as the early Macs and the G3 iMacs.

To compensate citizens for their loss, the state will issue $25 gift cards to Best Buy for every CRT turned in to the state.

The future could be even more chilling for Californians, though. As if losing incandescent light bulbs and CRT displays won't be bad enough, Levine's next energy saving mandate will require that Californians abandon their cars for destinations less than five miles away, although there will be an exception in case of emergencies.

by Anne Onymus

Full article
http://lowendmac.com/rumormill/07/0201.html

Here's Levines Site, if you can find proof of this I'd like to see it. http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a40/

Take away a Californians car!? That would be a sure fire ticket to being voted out of office.

I've been watching OTA local digital channels the last 4 years living outside of Dallas and don't have any of the problems you guys have. Maybe some transmission is better than others but I have no complaints. I'd rather watch HD programs via antenna than I would the compressed HD signal thru Satellite or Cable. Plus, OTA is free. I have Satellite btw...but I quite subscribing to the HD channels. It wasn't that important.

$50 isn't a bad deal to watch OTA converted signals. Hell, we get screwed much more than that by the government. Who do you think has been paying for a lot of these tower upgrades, research, etc for HDTV stuff? WE have. I just wish they'd flip the switch and call it done. Then we can move on to something else for everyone to cry about. lol

They are really talking about those rules in California? I'll keep that state on my short list that I'd NEVER move to! lol

Last week the local paper ran an editorial on NTSC OTA shutdown. It said essentially that the government shouldn't give out the converter box coupons as it would just be welfare for manufacturers. As for OTA only viewers, it essentially said "Tough bananas"...

Anne Onymus columns on Low End Mac are satirical articles. They're meant to be funny, although I can't say I found this particular one very amusing.

David

Just stumbled across this photo...
 

I'm quoting compucat and myself here to intro another example of digital TV at its worst. (It's not always just pixilization). I grabbed my cell to record this 'split screen' of Heidi the weather girl who in the studio was standing on the left.

I've had that happen too with the split screen or the video freezes and the sound keeps going. Also poor reception causes the sound and video to get out of sync, much like those old chinese kung fu movies.

The ones I like with poor digital reception are when a little of the newer scene mixes with the last scene, and you have things like a wall with a "ghost" of a person changing the shape of the wall surface. Really weird.

Maybe we should start capturing all these flaky reception problems and start complaining to the FCC now. Tell them to leave things alone and forget ablut digital. I would be really upset if this kind of reception was a common thing.

Bill R

Anne Onymus is an idiot (and maybe on drugs), I tried to ask her some questions, but she just drove me in circles. So there is no proof Eric H (I checked). The only thing true about the article was the part on the light bulbs. The rest of the article was just lies.

:dunno:

I hope and pray that this is a joke. It's gotta be a joke, right?! If not, they can have my '82 Zenith and others when they can pry them from my cold, dead hands. Lock and load.

This crap makes the old USSR look like a free and open society in comparison.

It's got to be a joke, right?! I hope so.

Yeah, she got me on that one, I've been "punk'd." Still, it is sad that we live in a world to where we think that something like this would be true.

Good ideas. Plus I think it would be a good idea to give Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton a jingle and tell them how it would affect the poor. In that case, I think we could get some more traction. :D

Thanks, Site123a, for the mp3. I listened to about half of it, and had to stop because my blood was boiling. The only good thing I heard was a badly-needed repeating of the fact that "HDTV" reception can be had using an antenna.

What we really have here is multinational fascism. A self-anointed industry group, the ATSC, has decided we no longer can function as sentient beings, let alone a society, without abandoning our NTSC-standard TV's. The U.S. government, always willing to bow to powerful foreign industry, with $$$ in all the right pockets, has given them the ability dig deep into our wallets and wreak economic havoc on our citizenry WITHOUT A VOTE.

But wait, you say, won't Uncle Sam mail you the coupons to get a converter? Sure he will, but not before he has handed foreigners millions of our (borrowed from other foreigners) Federal budget dollars to build them elsewhere, like most of the TV industry shamefully does. A wonderful opportunity for American ingenuity and entrepreneurship never offered nor desired by those in the Star Chamber.

Also, no mention anywhere of open-source code being made available for decoding the algorithms nor schematics or parts for constructing the hardware from scratch at home, and if you manage to, some flag-waving lackey having your home raided (remember the persecution of cable-box experimenters in the 80's)?

So, next time you rub elbows with the wretched masses on the lower rungs of society, ask them if they are ready to buy an HD-ready TV, so the tomatoes on the Whopper can glisten in glorious HD detail. God save us all.

I just read about an interesting loophole in the digital tuner rule. Apparently, it only applies to things designed to receive over the air TV, not to things designed for cable. That means that all the manufacturer has to do is change the firmware to remove the over the air tuning mode and they can still set the same analog only products. This explains why the new Tivo box can only be used with cable TV and not broadcast TV. They can also remove the tuner entirely if they want.

The FCC does not care about us (unless you run an illegal transmitter). This is all about money making for special interests like telecom companies. They could take a dozen UHF channels to give to first responders and leave the rest alone. Maybe a few TV stations would have to move down the dial - no big deal. This forced digital switchover is not necessary. Analog NTSC is good enough, especially with satellite or cable. The government is trying to justify this electronic eminent domain spectrum grab by saying we'll get better TV. I have yet to see any real benefit.

You can have our guns and our gold Mr. president but you're not getting my round tube color TV.

Yet another law takes effect today, March 1, 2007
 

A new television set bought starting today (now including small sets) must include the ability to receive an ota Digital-TV signal along with the Analog.

Other reports indicate that politicians are beginning to sweat their jobs if February 17, 2009 comes along and millions get pissed in a rocky transition... with talk of even giving converters to needy people, er, voters.

I just did a little looking on some manufacturer's web sites. Sony doesn't even make a TV under 27" any more and no VCRs. Panasonic's only CRT TV is a 20" DVD combo. Toshiba (Orion) does actually offer a 14" TV/DVD combo with ATSC tuner. It will be interesting to see what happens with portable TVs. This will probably be the end of B/W TVs.

Its bad that Sony stopped making TVs under 27", there the only brand around that still makes a TV thats made to last. See “Frontline: Is Wal-Mart Good for America” if you don't believe me.

The end of portable tv?
 

I went to Circuit City's web site and they only offer three portable TVs: a 5" black and white, a Casio handheld and a Curtis 7" flat LCD set. None were listed as having ATSC tuners in them.

When are the ATSC portables coming out?

Well the FCC doesn't care about us, but I would bet the politicians would. Well they would if there were enough of us to offset the money. It would be intersting to see what would happen if this was made into a big election issue.

Bill R.

There's also Samsung.

Well, for what it's worth, I will add my two cents.

I have one of those Samsung HDTV DLP projection sets. Yes, I know, DLP stinks, the set has other issues as well. It likes to shut off right after turning it on. Sometimes takes 5 minutes of on-off-on-off-on-off to get the thing to stay on. However, I have never been more disappointed with a tv in my life. The picture, in my opinion, is lousy. Sure, if you are on an HD channel, it looks nice but for everything else, it stinks.

I hooked up my LD player, yes I connected the Svideo cable, which has produced remarkable high quality images on my JVC 36" CRT set and my jaw hit the floor. :jawdrop: The picture reminded me of a 3rd generation 80's VHS copy. Very disgusting. The DVD isn't a whole bunch better. I put on Harry Potter, Goblet of Fire last night and the whole pixelized, digitized look just hacked me off.

The whole HD thing is a joke. I have HD Cable and the regular programming, non HD that is, whether it is on an HD channel or not looks downright crummy. I have a 27" LCD unit at my office that does the same thing.

I find myself longing to watch my old 50's BW Zenith or an RCA CTC-16. The picture was far superior to the pixlized mess we get today.

You would think, in this day of "high technology," the picture, no matter HD or SD, would be darn near perfect.

Yes, I am irked. :rant:

I was going to say this in the first post. In the radio show, they never mentioned buying a HD CRT as an option... Anyone noticed?

This seems to be a common problem. I've seen quite a few HD sets that look good when being fed a HD signal (barring reception problems), but feed them an SD analog signal (VHS, Laserdisc, game system) and they look awful. I've yet to see one that scale SD up to HD (which has to be done on any display device with a fixed resolution such as plasma, LCD or DLP) without introducing distortion and artifacts. Dot crawl seems to be much worse on the LCD sets that I have seen than on any CRT set.

I've yet to see a HD CRT set, but I doubt they would have the same problems as they could display the SD sources as is without scaling them up to HD.

RCAchild: Have you tried hooking the composite output from your LD player to your DLP set instead of the S-video? It may be better. LD video is recorded in composite on the disc. The S-video output on the player is provided by a comb filter built into the player. If the comb filter in the Samsung is better than the comb filter in the LD player (or at least better matched to it's scaler) it may be better.

By dr.ido: "Have you tried hooking the composite output from your LD player to your DLP set instead of the S-video? It may be better. LD video is recorded in composite on the disc. The S-video output on the player is provided by a comb filter built into the player. If the comb filter in the Samsung is better than the comb filter in the LD player (or at least better matched to it's scaler) it may be better."

I did try the composite connections thinking that same thing. It was marginally better but not by much. I just decided to put the LD player back on the 36" JVC CRT set in my bedroom.

Oh how I wish the CRT's weren't going away. For me, that is one tube that out performs virtually anything else. At least from what we have been shown thus far anyway.

If I had to get a HD TV it would have to be a Sony KD-34XBR970. This TV can out perform any plasma or LCD set on the market.

Damn I want it so badly, if only I can afford it.:worried:

Unfortunately sets like that Sony seem to be completely unheard of here in Australia. Sony Australia only offer the Bravia series LCD sets.

I'm not in any hurry to get into HD though, so maybe I'll just wait until I can find a nice pro monitor cheap. Something like a Sony BVMD32E1WU would do. It might take a while for what is currently a $34000 monitor to drop into my price range though...

Will the converter box be able to display a full picture? I notice that most of the newer shows I watch are being displayed in HD (black bars on the top & bottom of the screen). Will this be more of a problem with a digital tuner, or will the box allow me to overscan the picture?

I don't know about the coming cheap receivers, but every HDTV receiver I've used lets you select how you want the picture to look. You can normally choose letter box, stretched, or cut the sides off. I prefer letterbox because I like to see the entire picture.

Actually, about 5 or 6 years ago I had a similar problem with timer recording. Then my VCR setup was an old JVC VHS VCR with a VHF only tuner and a Sanyo Beta VCR with (manual) VHF and UHF tuners. As long as I had the beta on and tuned to the channel I wanted to records off of, I could set the timer on the VHS and it would work fine. Recording multiple programs off multiple channels did present a problem though.

I'm using large VGA CRT computer monitors as HD displays. But I don't think anyone makes them anymore.