Quote:
|
Originally Posted by 3Guncolor
In fact I'm willing to bet when the date comes around the date gets pushed back again. Just watch what happens when when people get their TV cut off.
I can see stations turning off their digital too some day all they really will need is to be on the cable/satelite systems it will get to the point when they don't care if they are really on the air so why spend the $ on it. The key is viewers not how they receive the signal. With DVR's, VOD, DVD's 100's of channels they are in big trouble with only getting $'s by running advertising.
|
What a mess! Who would have thought in a million years that digital/HD television would generate so much controversy as it has? The whole thing started in 2005 or so, when the FCC announced it would end analog TV transmissions in favor of digital. Then the news media promptly went off the deep end, telling people that they would absolutely have to get new flat-panel TVs if they were to continue watching television, as their analog sets would go dark and would not work any longer after the stations all went digital. I have to admit to being taken in by this nightmare scenario myself, as I got digital cable shortly after the first announcements that analog television would be shut down by 2006. Well, here it is almost 2007 and the analog channels are still on the air, but not for much longer. Now the FCC says they will go off the air completely by 2009. I'll be ready for that when it happens, even if I still have at least one of my two analog TVs, as I fully expect I will, when everything goes 100-percent digital in just over two years. I already have an ATSC digital cable box from the cable company in my area (Time Warner) and the digital service itself, so I'm not one bit concerned about the day the analog stations are shut down for good.
The statement "....everyone's TV (will be) getting cut off...." once the analog stations go off the air isn't really true. As long as there are analog televisions in use in this country (there are millions of such sets in use even as I write this), there will be a market for ATSC over-the-air tuners, outdoor TV antennas, and the cable companies' ATSC digital cable boxes, so today's existing analog sets will be usable for years (albeit showing the HD stations' pictures in letterbox format rather than in HD) after the cutoff date, whenever that may be.
As to the statement that most people don't know or care much about HDTV itself or what the difference really is between today's NTSC and ATSC: Try to tell many or even most people about any of the technical stuff behind digital and/or HD television and they will either say "Well, whatever" or else they will ignore you completely and promptly change the subject. Most people don't know and don't care how NTSC television works. It is not realistic to expect that many or most folks outside the television industry will know or care anything about ATSC television either. Most people don't even know that today's color TV standard is NTSC or that the aspect ratio is 4:3, let alone how a TV set works. Most folks outside the TV industry are bamboozled as anything by HD digital TV, which is understandable; again, if they don't understand, know or care how their current NTSC set works (and they have gotten along for years not knowing that), why should they know
anything about HD, digital, ATSC or anything else having to do with today's television standards? Most folks are content just to sit down in front of their TVs, turn the sets on, find the channel they want to watch, and enjoy the show; when the program ends, they turn off the set and do something else. The workings of standard NTSC television are (and have been for well over 50 years) black magic to most people who do not understand how
radio is supposed to work; digital ATSC TV will be the same, just as many people today don't know anything much about their cars except where the gas goes. If the truth be told, they don't need to know anything about what goes on under the hood--that's what mechanics (or whatever they are called these days) are paid to know. We live in a world where the technology that operates our automobiles, entertainment devices, home appliances, etc. is so complicated that only technicians really understand any of it, and these people earn very good livings because they do understand high tech better than most of us.