Digital TV by 2009?

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

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.