Digital TV by 2009?

[Sandy G]

I still think HDTV is kinda an answer to a question nobody asked. Do we REALLY wanna see how many shaving nicks John Madden has today ? It would be kewl, I guess, to see if Janet Jackson really has a girlie moustache when she has her next "Wardrobe Malfunction". And another thing-there ain't gonna be much to watch on HDTV for several years until Hollywood & the networks get a library built up. OK, NTSC does have it's limitations-but I think it's pretty darn good & throwing the baby out w/the bathwater is a crummy idea. -Sandy G.

[andy]

Actually, HDTV content isn't a problem. The majority of TV shows made in the last few decades were filmed on 35mm film (the same stuff hollywood uses). The resolution is there, it's just a matter of converting the original film to HD video. This is something the TV studios are already doing in order to preserve it. Some stuff like the Cosby show was video taped, but things like Star Trek, The Brady Bunch and ER are on film. In many cases, the editing was done on tape and will have to be redone, but it will be done. Pretty much all recent prime time TV shows are already in HD. I'm looking forward to seeing just how crappy the set and props on the original Startrek are!

I agree that NTSC can look fantastic. I'm using an old Sony computer video projector for TV. A good DVD palyed in progressive scan looks excellent. It's hard to tell the difference between true HD and a good DVD.

[Richard D]

The idea of telling TV stations when they must stop analog broadcasting is just a bad, very bad idea. When color came around in 1955 and has served us well for fifty years one of the rules was that existing black & white TVs must accept and show the picture and sound without set top boxes. The system had to be backward compatible. I firmly believe that any new digital HDTV system should follow the same rules. That way the millions of battery portable sets and all the TVs in the home execpt maybe one in the family room will not become scrap.
Sincerely,
Richard Dalkranian.

[john_w]

OvenMaster: I knew ATV existed in some form, but I assumed they would be forced to go HD as well (and therefore, the vast majority of them would just be forced to shut down due to the cost).

Or is this not the case? Are they still going to be allowed on those cable frequencies? And for people with REALLY old TVs, I suppose they'd still be SOL without a converter.

[andy]

I think digital TV might just kill broadcast TV in the US. If you have to have a box, it might as well be a satellite box, or cable box. I think a lot of people would rather get a free cable, or satellite box and free installation of the dish than have to buy a digital TV box for ever TV and install an antenna on the roof. I'm sure the networks will stay around on cable, satellite and the internet, but how few people need to be using their broadcast signals before they decide to turn it off?

First off, I was amazed how you guys sounded like a bunch of Luddites! You are supposed to be INTO technology, so embrace it. Open your eyes and look at this incredible stuff. Once you see it, you can't go back to crappy 1940's technology.

I understand there are collectors out there. An interesting obsession. You can't hold back the main stream, though. You may need to make RF out of an old VCR or DVD player.

Really guys, you owe it to yourself to check out what video looks like on a good set. 1920x1080. That's a lot of pixels. I bought a Sony super fine dot pitch 36" TUBE (I like tubes) set. Those little pixels are hugging each other very nicely. Find one of these and look at it (make sure it says "super fine dot pitch").

The content is there too. The bigger movie channels, INHD 1 and 2, Discovery, the major networks. The cable box is OK. You can even rip this stuff to your PC with the right setup, and play it back through a DVI or HDMI cable. HD-DVD formats are forthcoming in the next year.

There is a good chance analog broadcast will die when it was supposed to in May 2006 because congress wants to sell off the bandwidth. The cable world will hardly notice.

[OvenMaster]

Schoolboy, I love new tech when it's true progress. This is just change for change's sake, in order to accomodate government demand for spectrum space. Change does not automatically equal progress.

I've read books on how HDTV was conceived. The ONLY reason we're getting it is because broadcasters did not want their precious spectrum auctioned off; they're very possessive. They've had this license to print money since 1946. Then Uncle Sam comes along and says they want it. The NAB meetings came up with HDTV solely to hoard their spectrum, to placate the government. The subsequent hardware and software development was like a Keystone Kops film, riddled with bungles and compromises and mistakes.

Yeah, the programming is out there... if you like lame "comedies", sports, copy-protected movies, and news broadcasts where you can see the newscaster's nose hairs and cardboard sets. The programming is there, yes... LOUSY programming! As David Letterman once said, "Most TV is trash. But that's a good thing. If TV were actually good, we'd waste even more time watching it!"

John, I have read nothing about ATV going hi-def. I should do more research on this. But don't get me started on the future of amateur radio... if there is indeed a future for rich, retired guys yakking about their rigs and antennas.

Tom

We go from 153,600 pixels technology from the 1940's to either 921,600 or 1,036,800 depending on the HD format. How is that not progress? Are we supposed to keep the old format forever?

The content is not bad (granted, some is horrible). As paying customers we really don't care about copy protection, do we. We are not thieves, and we can't just make up our own terms for the use of someone elses' intellectual property.

Seek out one of these super fine DP sets and look at it. They aren't really very expensive and you can chuck that old low resolution set.

[john_w]

schoolboy: Vintage electronics is indeed an odd hobby as far as attempting to categorize it. It is nearly an oxymoron. (Yes, in some cases, it is an "obsession" as you called it. But not all of us are that extreme. Well...OK, maybe the vast majority!) In some ways, it is more closely linked with the antique world than it is with technology, and certainly has nothing to do with "progress", except that many of us question whether any has been truly made in these areas.

Having said that, I have to say that I like the move to HD, regardless of how it went down. I just want to make room for both, so those cool old 1950's sets can still function, as well as the cool new plasmas and LCDs, even though they're expensive and they degrade faster. (You can have those rear projection things though. Horrible off-axis viewing and the lighting is uneven if you have to get close.) Yes, I guess that problem is solved with a converter box. But who wants to either shell out the extra $ or accept government money just to do something as sick and wrong as placing a 21st century BPB device on a 1957 television? Talk about a clashing view!

[OvenMaster]

I goofed. I said this:

Originally Posted by OvenMaster

This is just change for change's sake, in order to accomodate government demand for spectrum space.

What I should have said was:

Originally Posted by OvenMaster

This is just change for change's sake, in order to accomodate government demand for spectrum space in order to sell if off for revenue.

Sorry for the confusion.

Also:

Originally Posted by schoolboy

As paying customers we really don't care about copy protection, do we.

The day I am forced to pay to watch television is the day I yank the antenna wires out, pull the plug from the wall, and toss the set on the trash heap.

Tom

[markthefixer]

"
The day I am forced to pay to watch television is the day I yank the antenna wires out, pull the plug from the wall, and toss the set on the trash heap.

Tom"


DITTO.

[tubesrule]

This thread has been good reading on all sides. As someone coming at it from both the hobbyist point of view (from 20's mechanical sets to 60's solid state sets), and as someone who works in the industry (design of video editing hardware), I can safely say I am in no hurry for this change.
Since I am on the side that believes 99% of television programming is crap, I use VCR's and DVD's to watch my old sets. If the need arises after the switch over, we can always run our old sets off an ATSC tuner.

Surprisingly what I haven't seen discussed here is the difficulty in receiving ATSC signals. I live near Detroit, about 10-15 miles from all the main towers. There are 7 main US stations and 1 Canadian station locally. I have a roof antenna on a two story house in a flat area. I purchased a Hitachi ATSC tuner just to play with. It has been an abysmal failure. On average, I can get 3 of the stations most of the time, 2 others about 50% of the time, and the rest rarely or never. At the same time I can get a watchable picture on their analog equivalents through the same box. I watched the recent FCC hearings about the change over, and this fact never seems to get mentioned. For me, ATSC is useless, and I'm in a prime area! I do believe this is being driven to a great extent in an effort to end broadcast television.

Just a couple of other comments:
While most "filmed" television shows from years past were done in 35mm, most episodic television today is done in Super16 due to cost. While this format is adequate, one only needs to look at a true HD feed compared to a telecined Super16 HD feed to see a dramatic difference. While I would also love to see classic television shows telecined from the original 35mm negatives, I am not optimistic on how much this will actually be done.

Also, while 1080i HD has a theoretical maximum resolution of 2,073,600 pixels (not 1,036,800 as previously stated), this is not the actual resolution beyond an uncompressed editing suite. HDV is becoming the main acquisition format, and the first thing it does is cut the horizontal resolution from 1920 to 1440. Next it compresses it fairly heavily. After editing, it is then severely compressed for transport. The resulting effective resolution is about 3 times what good NTSC is. (NTSC is 349,920 pixels as defined in IBU601, not 153,600 as previously stated)

All this means that cost, not quality dictates HD's performance.

While cable or satellite fed HD images can look very good (on stationary images anyway :-( ATSC will be the end of broadcast television, and I for one will not be paying the broadcasters to watch commercials that the sponsors have also paid for. Collecting it from both ends is the epitome of greed!

Darryl

[vintagecollect]

Don't be critical since you don't appreciate vintage formats. Most of us are techies at heart who enjoy new and old. Majority of us expressing unfair on consumers --as forcing us to buy new TV receivers/equipment if Digital TV isn't backward compatible to NTSC. And, YES we would like to use are old TVs without special boxes--the way they were designed to. How would audiphiles feel if new digital format for music made all your current stereo equipment obsolete??? It seems like industry just switches formats to make us purchase more equipment.

[vintagecollect]

Digital may well get slow start as did NTSC color TV in 50's do to TV receiver costs/swithover costs for networks. 350 K resoultion for 50 year old format is still marvel of technology. How many people are willing to pay just to watch TV????

[Jeffhs]

I'm not concerned, worried or anything else about this analog to digital changeover anymore, as if worrying about it will change anything. (It doesn't and will not, of course). I called my cable provider (Comcast) the other day and asked how they would handle the analog-to-digital switch when it supposedly arrives in 2009. The representative I spoke with told me it is far too early to tell what will happen. If and when, I will get a notice in my mail about how the situation will be resolved at their end (and what it will mean for subscribers). As I understand it, the cable company will provide converters for people such as myself who still have analog TVs as part of the cable service itself, as they do now, so there is no question or doubt as to whether subscribers will have the required equipment; there will be the usual rental fee, of course. Using a cable box with my TV doesn't bother me one bit. I have Comcast digital cable and use a converter ahead of my five-year-old RCA analog TV; the picture on all stations is great. As one other poster to this thread pointed out for his analog set with a box, my own TV has not been off channel 4 for at least a year. I will probably get a new flat-panel HDTV, however, once the price of 20" or larger sets becomes reasonable (to me, that means well under $1,000) or when my analog set goes West, whichever comes first.

One other thing about digital (LCD and plasma) TV vs. CRT analog: At this point, CRT sets, especially the larger screen sizes, still deliver picture quality far superior to even the best LCD/plasma panels. The flat-panel widescreens are simply too new yet; the technology is still evolving. I'm sure in 10-20 years the flat-panel sets will be as sharp, bright and clear as any good CRT analog set is today, but the technology of FP (flat-panel) hasn't reached that point just yet. This is another reason I intend to hang on to my analog CRT RCA set as long as it works. As I said earlier, my set delivers an excellent picture when fed from the cable system here; as far as I am concerned, that's all that matters to me.

Being able to tape shows from TV is becoming less and less important to me as the quality of network TV continues to worsen--there is, IMO, simply very little worth taping and saving anymore. I still have a VHS VCR and a rack full of previously-recorded tapes (shows and old movies I taped from off-air and cable TV 20 years ago) plus a DVD player. I subscribe to Netflix, so if I want to see any particular old show or movie, all I need do is request it on their website (www.netflix.com). I can see a day coming when I won't even bother to replace the VCR when it goes (except perhaps to get a combo DVD/VCR deck), preferring instead to watch my favorites on DVD. I was in a discount store the other day and saw new Emerson VCRs going for $23.88, and combo decks by the same maker for well under $100. At these prices, it hardly pays to have the old VCR repaired when it eventually bites the dust, so when my Panasonic VCR finally dies, I think my choice is clear (unless, of course, other manufacturers' combo DVD/VCR decks are this dirt-cheap by then, as they may well be as DVD becomes more and more widespread and popular). I have even toyed with the idea of dropping my digital cable, going back to basic, and watching movies on my DVD player. (Comcast, and probably many other cable providers with digital, can downconvert local TV channels at the head end without the use of a converter ahead of the subscriber's TV, even HD channels, to channels analog sets can receive.) Heck, even if the record function of my present VCR eventually quits (but the unit still plays back OK), I'll probably keep it just to watch my old favorite VHS tapes. With this combination (VHS and DVD, plus the RCA CRT set as a monitor), I wouldn't need cable anymore, except for local channels. The only real reasons I am holding on to digital at this point are the digital music channels, the National Geographic Channel on channel 109, and NBC Weather Plus on channel 208. If not for these services, I'd downgrade my cable service to basic in a New York minute.