Commemorating the death of analog TV

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Even with a cable STB (set-top box) lacking RF output, I'm sure there is still a way to connect such to a standard NTSC television without having to use a modulator. If you have a VCR, connect the STB's video output to the VCR's video input, connect the audio out from the box to the VCR's audio input, set the VCR for line input, and your box should work just fine. (No one much uses VCRs these days; it is illegal and/or impossible, no thanks to Macrovision copy-guard schemes, to tape digital channels in their native formats, so most VCRs will be obsolete next year anyway unless they are used to view existing VHS tapes and/or to record digital channels in NTSC analog format.) Most recent-vintage VCRs have at least one set of external audio/video inputs, with some units having two, one of which is often on the front panel.

Unless there is some difference in circuitry between RF modulators used with high-definition video systems and those designed for use with standard 525-line NTSC analog televisions, VCRs, etc., I do not think it should matter (IMHO) whether the output signal from the STB sent to an RF modulator is 720/1080 digital (ATSC) or 525-line NTSC analog. I'd think the modulator wouldn't care (figuratively speaking) what type of signal it was converting, as long as it is video and audio; it will be downconverted to VHF channel 3 or 4, regardless.

That's what I do for the 1982 Zenith, II hook it up to the line inputs to the VCR and off I go. It's there in case if we lose cable or something, at least myself and Mom have an easy way to go to OTA TV in a snap. I know I sometimes tape "The Fugitive" off of RTN if I'm not around to watch it, it works fine with the VCR.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I would hope so. But it felt a bit like Microsoft tactics; they still allow you to have Windows XP, but you better not ask them for any help. It probably will be the same with the NTSC-outputting boxes... You can keep them, but if they crap out, you'll have to repair them yourself. And I can hear the laughter in advance if anyone asks for the schematic for the box

Charles

Yeah, it's getting that way. Heck, I'm the neighborhood "geek squad" when it comes to computers and XP and even police scanners. One lady here with XP got somebody in India when she had problems, she gave up and called me to fix it and I did. I think those converter boxes will last a long time like anything else if you take care of them although like anything else, you can get one that's a lemon. This box I'm using now, a Pentium II, 400 MHz is running XP Pro right now but if it goes, I'm back to Windows 98 I think 98 Second Edition was fine although they could stop at XP and I'd be happy with that too.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966

This box I'm using now, a Pentium II, 400 MHz is running XP Pro right now but if it goes, I'm back to Windows 98 I think 98 Second Edition was fine although they could stop at XP and I'd be happy with that too.

I have an IBM Aptiva 595 (600 MHz processor, 128mb RAM), bought new eight years ago, running Windows 98SE; it works extremely well for what I need it to do (word processing, Internet, email, music [Winamp 5.3] and video), so I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. I have a program that skins the Windows taskbar, etc. so it looks like Windows XP, but only I know that the machine is running 98SE--anyone else who looks at my desktop would swear I was running XP.

The only problem I'm having with this computer at the moment is it is so darn slow it is incredible--sometimes. The computer takes perhaps three minutes to boot from a cold start. I think I may know why this is happening; I have only a 20GB hard drive and many programs on it, some of which run at system start. I will not disable some of these programs (such as my firewall, antivirus, Invisible! [a program that removes the solid color box behind the captions on Windows icons on the desktop], and of course the yellow speaker icon that tells me my system's sound card is operating normally and allows me to adjust sound volume), but I have gotten busy and uninstalled a lot of programs from my system that I no longer use. That helps somewhat, but I downloaded a rather large video file last night that takes up all but 3.5 or so GB of what was free space on my hard drive.

I intend to use my computer quite a bit to watch online video; in fact, I do that a lot now, from sites such as www.hulu.com (classic TV shows from the '50s through the '70s and even some from the eighties), ABCNEWS.com for news, and even several online radio services such as Pandora Radio (www.pandora.com), AOL Radio through my Winamp player, and so forth. I've ripped many of my CDs onto my system's hard drive as well, and am adding more all the time. I have about 50 CDs in my collection to date, so it will take a while to rip them all into the system; but again, I am in no rush to complete the project.

I have digital cable (Time-Warner), but it does not yet carry RTN (the RetroTV cable network) in my area. I wish it did, as that network seems to have all my favorite shows from the '70s including the crime drama Quincy, starring Jack Klugman, and others. Oh well. That's why I have a subscription to Netflix and a DVD player; I can get the entire Quincy series, all eight seasons, from them three disks at a time (I've already seen the first two seasons on two disks and will be waiting for the next ones, but it will be good to have these episodes on my own disks when I get the ones I ordered from Amazon.com, as I mention below).

I've also ordered the entire 1st and second seasons of Quincy on DVD from Amazon.com; these should arrive in my mail next week some time. Over time, I hope to have all eight seasons of the program on DVD (I may order a season a month from Amazon.com), but I am in no hurry.

The so-called "death" of analog television doesn't bother me in the least. I was reading somewhere (may have been a post in this forum) that the "death" of analog is very greatly exaggerated, not unlike the panic that was started eight years ago over Y2K. As it happened, however, little actually went wrong when the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999; a few computers crashed and/or malfunctioned, but for the most part the world survived--there was no interruption of electric power, gas, water, etc. which may well have happened if the computers controlling these utilities had gone haywire as a result of Y2K, otherwise known as the "millennium bug."

As far as the transition from analog to digital TV is concerned, however, I honestly do not think any of us have a darn thing to worry about. As long as our televisions are connected to cable or satellite, we won't lose our favorite shows or channels; Time Warner has assured its subscribers that this will be the case, as I think most other cable operators have as well. They cannot afford not to, as people will not stand for their cable television service being compromised or limited; after all, a large percentage of U.S. households have cable or satellite service and have done away with their over-the-air antennas, but not their old reliable analog TVs (there are still millions of the latter in use and nowhere near ready for the dump). Those people who still get their TV over an antenna will still be able to use the latter after the transition, if they put a digital-to-analog converter box on their TV sets between the antenna and the antenna terminals or coax connector on the back of the set, so no one should be without TV after February 17, 2009.

Digital TV is not the end of television; it is, rather, the end of one era (analog NTSC TV broadcasting) and the beginning of a fresh, new, exciting digital era. DTV will allow TV stations to carry more programming on one channel (a process known as multicasting) than is possible under the NTSC analog system with its 6-MHz wide channels. Who knows, maybe DTV and multicasting will eventually mean RTN, and other networks not yet carried here, will be added to Time-Warner's northeastern Ohio cable systems. I will be waiting.

[tubesrule]

RTN is carried by OTA digital stations in many areas. It has been on ABC sub-channel 2 in Detroit for several months. You can check out their website for a list of who's carrying them.
Their up-time has been less than stellar so far, as it seems like a pretty small operation.

Darryl

[andy]

...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by tubesrule

RTN is carried by OTA digital stations in many areas. It has been on ABC sub-channel 2 in Detroit for several months. You can check out their website for a list of who's carrying them.


Darryl

The nearest RTN affiliate to here (northeastern Ohio) is in Toledo, Ohio; this is the only RTN affiliate in the entire state (Ohio is a large enough and densely populated enough state that it [IMO] should have RTN on at least one digital TV station in every one of its major cities, including Cleveland). My only hope of getting RTN on Time-Warner cable here is if one of the Cleveland stations eventually decides to carry it on a subchannel of one of their digital channels. This might and probably will happen eventually, but when that "eventually" will be is anyone's guess at this moment. I have no doubt that RTN will be on our cable systems here someday as Time-Warner's digital cable service has over 200 channels, some of which are either unused or are in use by little-watched stations or networks.

ABC channel 2 in Detroit? I thought ABC was on channel seven there. Why would ABC be on a subchannel of Detroit's channel 2? I know at least two of the stations in the city have been switched around (channel 2 used to be CBS, now Fox; CBS went from channel 2 to channel 62), but I wasn't aware of any ABC channel 2 station there unless channel 2 again flipped from Fox to ABC. This is unlikely because ABC channel 7 in Detroit is in fact operated by the ABC television network and has been for decades; unless that station was recently sold, I don't see why or how it would switch networks--after all, as long as ABC owns the station, it is bound to stay with that network.

I live in northeastern Ohio, 35 miles east of Cleveland, but I know about the Detroit stations because I used to see them on TV here in the summer, when the TV bands opened up, before I got cable. Now living within a mile of the southern shore of Lake Erie, I can hear many Detroit and Windsor, Canada stations here on FM as well; CIDR-FM (formerly CKLW-FM) 93.9 in Windsor, CKSY-FM in Chatham, Ontario, CFHK-FM "Fresh 103.1" in London, Ontario, et al. I found 103.1 yesterday afternoon, while tuning around the FM dial on my Zenith MJ1035 FM stereo radio. The station had a very strong stereo signal in this area, as do most Detroit/southwestern Ontario stations when the band is open.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

The best thing you can do is add more RAM. That PC probably uses PC-100 which you should be able to pick up for next to nothing on ebay, or used somewhere else. Most PCs of that age will take 256MB DIMMs, so that should give you 512, or 768 MB. Reinstalling Windows would also probably help a lot, but I know how much of a pin it is. Certainly disable everything in startup that you don't need except your firewall and anit-virus.

Thanks for the advice, Andy. After I read your post, I went to the "system configuration" utility in my system (type "msconfig" in the "run" dialog box and press "enter on your keyboard to access it) and disabled at least three programs which were set to start with Windows, leaving only my anti-virus and firewall to start when Windows does. That speeded up my system considerably, so that it now starts within about a minute or so after powering on. Web pages seem to load more quickly now as well.

My computer is upgradable as far as RAM memory goes, but the limit is 384 mb. This system was new eight years ago and wasn't cheap (not by a long shot), so I am surprised it won't take more RAM than that; I'm sure if I could go as high as 512 or even 768(!) mb it would improve the performance many times over, but IBM obviously did not have very large amounts of memory in mind when this system was was on the drawing board. The other drawback is the processor (CPU), which in my system runs at 600 MHz; today's Windows Vista systems run at clock speeds well over one GHz (! ! !) and have 60+ GB of RAM, which means they can run rings around my computer any day in the year. I'm sure no big business organization would stand for a computer with as little memory and as slow as mine (by today's standards).

I've reinstalled Windows several times on this computer; you are correct--it is a big job. It takes me, on average, two or three days to reinstall all the applications I had on the machine before I started (I generally don't do it all at once), although it only takes perhaps a half hour to reinstall the OS (operating system) itself, counting the time it takes to reformat the hard disk and for the program itself to install. I had no idea how many lines of code there are in Windows 98/98SE until I saw them scroll down the screen the first time I reinstalled it. I hate to think how long it takes to install XP or Vista on a new system.

Again, thanks much for the tips on disabling unused programs (I also uninstalled a lot of stuff I haven't used in months or years and cleaned up the hard drive and the registry, which helped a lot as well) and the advice on upgrading the RAM. As I said, I can't add much more RAM to this system, but some day I'll upgrade this clunker to its limit and see what happens. I've also considered some day getting an external USB hard drive; most of these are huge, with capacities in the hundreds of gigabytes, so if I get one I may not run out of storage space for programs, music, video, word-processing documents, you name it, for quite a while. These external drives are cheap enough (as in low enough in price, not quality--I'm sure these drives are built very solidly and to last) that I could probably order one tomorrow; well, maybe not quite tomorrow, but in the near future, anyway. I live on a fixed income and cannot afford to replace this computer any time soon, so I intend to run it "until the wheels fall off" as the expression goes. This system is slow, has limited RAM, and goodness knows it is out of date several times over, but it still does everything I want and need it to do, so I'm not complaining.

[roundscreen]

[QUOTE=Jeffhs;1983012]I have an IBM Aptiva 595 (600 MHz processor, 128mb RAM), bought new eight years ago, running Windows 98SE; it works extremely well for what I need it to do (word processing, Internet, email, music [Winamp 5.3] and video), so I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. I have a program that skins the Windows taskbar, etc. so it looks like Windows XP, but only I know that the machine is running 98SE--anyone else who looks at my desktop would swear I was running XP.

The only problem I'm having with this computer at the moment is it is so darn slow it is incredible--sometimes. The computer takes perhaps three minutes to boot from a cold start. I think I may know why this is happening; I have only a 20GB hard drive and many programs on it, {quote}

I miss 98SE but xp is a good operating system. You should be able to install a 40 gig hard drive And the 98SE should see the extra room in the drive.
Install the operating system and the must have programs on the new drive and just use the old one as a slave. You can clean out the old drive and just use that to store video, music etc. Your system will run much faster that way.
Ed

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

.

Digital TV is not the end of television; it is, rather, the end of one era (analog NTSC TV broadcasting) and the beginning of a fresh, new, exciting digital era. DTV will allow TV stations to carry more programming on one channel (a process known as multicasting) than is possible under the NTSC analog system with its 6-MHz wide channels. Who knows, maybe DTV and multicasting will eventually mean RTN, and other networks not yet carried here, will be added to Time-Warner's northeastern Ohio cable systems. I will be waiting.

Yeah, maybe DTV will revive OTA TV a bit, at least if you live in a good area, you might have more choices like RTN and an HDTV PBS channel and a DTV standard def one for other programming. I don't care if I ever get a set that would display HDTV or not all the way, I'm happy with what I have as long as I can continue to watch my programs using a converter box or cable. NTSC picture is fine with me, to me it is the contend of the programming and if I enjoy it or not. It's like my grade school buddy, he didn't need a new TV but bought an RCA projection HDTV for $750 last year but can't enjoy high def because you have to special order it from Comcast plus he doesn't have an external antenna hooked up. I feel in that case, you're wasting money but I digress. Still, I learned to embrace the future in this case of HDTV, in some ways, we are back to where we were in the late 1940's and early 1950's with the experimentation involved such as making our own antennas and the like and to see what we can get over the air. I know we have bugs for people in the outlaying areas so perhaps we will see translator stations and the like. One other station that has been known to piggyback is ION, I'd like to see one here in Pittsburgh, they have some good shows.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

My computer is upgradable as far as RAM memory goes, but the limit is 384 mb. This system was new eight years ago and wasn't cheap (not by a long shot), so I am surprised it won't take more RAM than that; I'm sure if I could go as high as 512 or even 768(!) mb it would improve the performance many times over, but IBM obviously did not have very large amounts of memory in mind when this system was was on the drawing board. The other drawback is the processor (CPU), which in my system runs at 600 MHz; today's Windows Vista systems run at clock speeds well over one GHz (! ! !) and have 60+ GB of RAM, which means they can run rings around my computer any day in the year. I'm sure no big business organization would stand for a computer with as little memory and as slow as mine (by today's standards).

I've reinstalled Windows several times on this computer; you are correct--it is a big job. It takes me, on average, two or three days to reinstall all the applications I had on the machine before I started (I generally don't do it all at once), although it only takes perhaps a half hour to reinstall the OS (operating system) itself, counting the time it takes to reformat the hard disk and for the program itself to install. I had no idea how many lines of code there are in Windows 98/98SE until I saw them scroll down the screen the first time I reinstalled it. I hate to think how long it takes to install XP or Vista on a new system.

Again, thanks much for the tips on disabling unused programs (I also uninstalled a lot of stuff I haven't used in months or years and cleaned up the hard drive and the registry, which helped a lot as well) and the advice on upgrading the RAM. As I said, I can't add much more RAM to this system, but some day I'll upgrade this clunker to its limit and see what happens. I've also considered some day getting an external USB hard drive; most of these are huge, with capacities in the hundreds of gigabytes, so if I get one I may not run out of storage space for programs, music, video, word-processing documents, you name it, for quite a while. These external drives are cheap enough (as in low enough in price, not quality--I'm sure these drives are built very solidly and to last) that I could probably order one tomorrow; well, maybe not quite tomorrow, but in the near future, anyway. I live on a fixed income and cannot afford to replace this computer any time soon, so I intend to run it "until the wheels fall off" as the expression goes. This system is slow, has limited RAM, and goodness knows it is out of date several times over, but it still does everything I want and need it to do, so I'm not complaining.

I have two main systems here, the PII, 400 MHz system, I have 448 megs of RAM in it and a 500 gig HD with a 6 gig boot drive. The downside is that the bootdrive runs out of space so I have to tend to that. If I had my own copy of XP, I'd reinstall everything on the 500 gig. I got this box off my cousin, no matter if it is 1968 or 2008, I always got his old stuff.

My other box is a Windows 98SE machine, PII, 266 MHz, 192 megs of RAM, 200 gig HD.

My income is a bit limited too, I'm looking for work, laid off of my old job although I do side work doing websites as well, both my systems are set up for that. I also have an old laptop and a third system, PII, 350 MHz with 98SE and a NTSC TV card in it. If I use that, I could put the DTT-900 box into that and watch TV on the PC. So I tend to run things on a shoestring and tend to use older equipment, such as my PC's made in 1998/1999, a 1982 Zenith, a 1964 Sony B&W set, a 1984 Commodore 1702 monitor (using a DTT-900 for ATSC to feed it) and even a 1938 refrigerator although we have a 1995 Whirlpool as the main one. Still as long as my computers can do what I want as well as run a few online games I'm in like Diablo I and Diablo II and Continuum, I'm happy.

[andy]

...

[tubesrule]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

ABC channel 2 in Detroit? I thought ABC was on channel seven there. Why would ABC be on a subchannel of Detroit's channel 2?

Jeff,
ABC is on channel 7 in Detroit. I didn't mean to imply RTN was on channel 2, just subchannel 2 of ABC, or 7.2.
To bad it isn't carried by more station, but you never know. maybe people can petition a local station to start carrying it on a sub-channel.

Darryl

[robert1]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I have an IBM Aptiva 595 (600 MHz processor, 128mb RAM), bought new eight years ago, running Windows 98SE; it works extremely well for what I need it to do (word processing, Internet, email, music [Winamp 5.3] and video), so I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. I have a program that skins the Windows taskbar, etc. so it looks like Windows XP, but only I know that the machine is running 98SE--anyone else who looks at my desktop would swear I was running XP.
The only problem I'm having with this computer at the moment is it is so darn slow it is incredible--sometimes. The computer takes perhaps three minutes to boot from a cold start. I think I may know why this is happening; I have only a 20GB hard drive and many programs on it, some of which run at system start. I will not disable some of these programs (such as my firewall, antivirus, Invisible! [a program that removes the solid color box behind the captions on Windows icons on the desktop], and of course the yellow speaker icon that tells me my system's sound card is operating normally and allows me to adjust sound volume), but I have gotten busy and uninstalled a lot of programs from my system that I no longer use. That helps somewhat, but I downloaded a rather large video file last night that takes up all but 3.5 or so GB of what was free space on my hard drive.

that is the problem with all versions of Microsoft Windows. poor memory management, lack of stability, so many security holes, it's like swiss cheese, userspace & kernel are at the same level. Active-X (what made viruses & trojans possible), Spyware. this is why i do not use any Microsoft products or OS's on any of my computers & haven't since 2000. i run linux. i don't have to worry about spyware, trojens, or having to run Antivirus. i never have problems with crashes taking the whole system down or the dreaded "blue screen of death". those do not happen in linux.
the Windows version that you are currently using does not have any support & has been EOL'd by Microsoft many years ago. running that antiquated, unsupported version with it connected to the internet is asking for trouble. your Windows PC has probably allready been rooted with a trojan, or is part of a botnet.

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I intend to use my computer quite a bit to watch online video; in fact, I do that a lot now, from sites such as www.hulu.com (classic TV shows from the '50s through the '70s and even some from the eighties), ABCNEWS.com for news, and even several online radio services such as Pandora Radio (www.pandora.com), AOL Radio through my Winamp player, and so forth. I've ripped many of my CDs onto my system's hard drive as well, and am adding more all the time. I have about 50 CDs in my collection to date, so it will take a while to rip them all into the system; but again, I am in no rush to complete the project.

i do the same thing, i have a music library with 500 MP3's & 1500 Ogg-Vorbis Files (which are far superier to MP3's) sitting on a 80 Gig secondary hard drive formatted with the EXT-3 filesystem. in other words, no corrupted media files ever.
btw, thanx for the Hulu.com link, it even had the show "Burn Notice", COOL. it worked fine in Mozilla Firefox on Linux.

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I have digital cable (Time-Warner), but it does not yet carry RTN (the RetroTV cable network) in my area. I wish it did, as that network seems to have all my favorite shows from the '70s including the crime drama Quincy, starring Jack Klugman, and others. Oh well. That's why I have a subscription to Netflix and a DVD player; I can get the entire Quincy series, all eight seasons, from them three disks at a time (I've already seen the first two seasons on two disks and will be waiting for the next ones, but it will be good to have these episodes on my own disks when I get the ones I ordered from Amazon.com, as I mention below).
I've also ordered the entire 1st and second seasons of Quincy on DVD from Amazon.com; these should arrive in my mail next week some time. Over time, I hope to have all eight seasons of the program on DVD (I may order a season a month from Amazon.com), but I am in no hurry.

that is what i most likely will be having to do once the changeover occurs, even though suddenlink said that there would be no change for suddenlink customers, i am afraid that most of the programming would have that damn "letterbox" aspect ratio & i don't like that at all. our main set that we watch is a 1975 Zenith Chromacolor Ⅱ

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

As far as the transition from analog to digital TV is concerned, however, I honestly do not think any of us have a darn thing to worry about. As long as our televisions are connected to cable or satellite, we won't lose our favorite shows or channels; Time Warner has assured its subscribers that this will be the case, as I think most other cable operators have as well. They cannot afford not to, as people will not stand for their cable television service being compromised or limited; after all, a large percentage of U.S. households have cable or satellite service and have done away with their over-the-air antennas, but not their old reliable analog TVs (there are still millions of the latter in use and nowhere near ready for the dump). Those people who still get their TV over an antenna will still be able to use the latter after the transition, if they put a digital-to-analog converter box on their TV sets between the antenna and the antenna terminals or coax connector on the back of the set, so no one should be without TV after February 17, 2009.

very true, however, the networks that make up the cable channel lineup will change their programming to the HDTV format (some networks are already doing that) & changing the aspect ratio. unless the cable companies can figure out a way to convert all of that programming to the aspect ratio used on all analog TV's, there are not going to be very many people happy with all of the programming in letterbox. i won't.

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Digital TV is not the end of television; it is, rather, the end of one era (analog NTSC TV broadcasting) and the beginning of a fresh, new, exciting digital era. DTV will allow TV stations to carry more programming on one channel (a process known as multicasting) than is possible under the NTSC analog system with its 6-MHz wide channels. Who knows, maybe DTV and multicasting will eventually mean RTN, and other networks not yet carried here, will be added to Time-Warner's northeastern Ohio cable systems. I will be waiting.

i seriously doubt that it will be "exciting"

[M3-SRT8]

Well, back to the origional subject at hand. I have, no small thanks to my good friend Dick Slade & to Phil Nelson, a beautifully restored RCA Victor 630TS, hooked up to a digital cable box, and a DVD Player/RF Demodulator. It's nice to know it will work well into the 21st Century (and beyond?) with current digital cable. I, for one, do not lament the demise of analog over the air broadcast, with it's shortcomings.

But, it would be cool to see that F104 Starfighter do a barrel roll to the National Anthem, one last time...

LJB

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by M3-SRT8

Well, back to the origional subject at hand. I have, no small thanks to my good friend Dick Slade & to Phil Nelson, a beautifully restored RCA Victor 630TS, hooked up to a digital cable box, and a DVD Player/RF Demodulator. It's nice to know it will work well into the 21st Century (and beyond?) with current digital cable. I, for one, do not lament the demise of analog over the air broadcast, with it's shortcomings.

But, it would be cool to see that F104 Starfighter do a barrel roll to the National Anthem, one last time...

LJB

But you have cable, earlier posting from another Marylander noted that the digital box got him darn few stations off the air. This will be the case with hundreds of thousands of households who currently rely on OTA reception. Face it, digital TV does not transmit as far as analog and when these people suddenly find themselves without TV there will be a lynch mob outside the FCC building.

Yesterday I tried one of the new DTV boxes in my basement shop using a pair of rabbit ears. I got all the local analog stations, some better than others, but watchable. I hooked up the DTV box and put it in search mode - five minutes later - NO SIGNAL. There is the difference in transmission distances, no a single digital station came through.