Almost a year since analog TV died

[jr_tech]

"there will only be converter boxes on the most watched sets - My Mother's TV (new flatscreen) and my 19" Zenith CCII"

Won't that new flatscreen receive the non premium digital channels without a cable company box? The manual on my Sony HDTV says that it will receive digital cable ch 1-135 (QAM). Perhaps a card is installed in the TV for premium channels? I don't have cable, so I can't test how well this works.

jr

[radiotvnut]

Once the new TV was programmed, it receives the same channels as the analog sets. Someone I know recently bought a LCD flatscreen TV and the cable company told him that he'd need a digital cable box to receive the digital cable channels, regardless of how new his TV was.

[andy]

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[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Whirled One

There are supposed to be 5 or so low-power analog stations within pretty close distance, but I can only pick up one of them at my house, and it's fairly weak. I've found it to be a good "fringe-reception" test for TVs though.

One thing-- it's a "home shopping channel"-type station. Seems like half the time I tune it in, they're selling a TV of some sort. While it's obviously coincidental, it's almost as if they're saying, "Hey! You there! You with the rabbit ears on your old analog TV! Don't you think it's about time you bought a new digital TV, for crying out loud?"

By the way, I was at a hamfest a few weeks ago, and happened to get in a brief conversation with someone who turned out to be an enginneer one of the local regular TV stations. I don't recall how the topic came up, but I asked if anyone still actually calls the station to complain about not being able to pick up their station on their analog sets. He replied that the station actually *does* still get calls like that from time to time! Apparently, even after a year, there are still people out there who are confused by or uninformed about the changeover...

I know, I'm the butt of jokes for time to time, our main TV is a 1982 Zenith System 3 since we bought it new and I hooked a Blu-Ray player to it. I didn't plan on it, my buddy got it for me for Christmas. I look at it this way, you use things and when they break, if you can repair them, fine but if not, then you buy new. I've known scarcity, been raised by a single mom plus I don't make a lot of money but lucky enough to have a job so I have to make every dollar count. Most people just buy new all the time and even toss out good working things, to me that is wrong.

I have four converter boxes, my aunt gave me her two when she got a couple of ATSC TV's.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Three questions, Doug. Can you get WLFM using a standard NTSC analog TV on channel 6 without an ATSC->NTSC converter box (i. e. with an antenna connected directly to the set), and is the audio signal receivable on standard FM sets? I would think it would be, since all FM radios can tune slightly above and below the FM band. Third, how much closer are you to the city's TV transmitters now than you were when you were in Batavia? Is your new location within a few miles of downtown, and how good is your DTV reception? Just curious.

BTW, I went the other way (from a strong-signal area to a much weaker television reception area) 10.5 years ago when I moved from an eastern Cleveland suburb to my present location. My apartment is located in a village which is some 35 miles northeast of Cleveland and about ten miles further southwest, give or take, of the city's television transmitters, which are located in the southwestern Cleveland suburb of Parma, Ohio. My OTA TV reception here in analog was very poor on most VHF stations (one, the NBC affiliate on channel 3, didn't get here at all on an antenna) and all but one UHF station, that station being the CBS affiliate on channel 19. I have had cable since I've been here for that reason, as does almost everyone else in the village; those who do not have cable have either Dish Network or DirecTV satellite service. The few outdoor TV antennas remaining on rooftops of homes here are, for the most part, falling apart, having been replaced by cable; those that are still standing and in good shape have very likely been abandoned in favor of cable or satellite since the DTV transition.

The one place in the village that still uses an outdoor antenna for TV, as far as I know at this time, is the local bowling alley, just down the street from my apartment. They have a rather large, high-power fringe-area TV antenna on a rotor, mounted on a short mast (I don't know how short) on one of the building's chimneys. I've never been inside the building, so I don't know if they still have an analog TV or if they upgraded to HDTV. I'm almost sure the reason their TV antenna is so large and on a rotor is so that they can receive sports events from out of town; my area is not far from Erie and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Youngstown and Toledo, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, so with a high-power antenna in the clear on a rotor it is indeed possible to get locally blacked-out sports from other markets. I regularly receive FM stations from those cities in the spring through early fall every year using just the internal antennas on all my radios, including my vintage sets.

I know when Mom and I are stomping around the Erie, PA area, we get the oldies station on 740 out of Toronto in the clear, Mom likes that station. I once talked across Lake Erie and 20 or 30 miles inland into Ontario by using my 2 meter HT on one-watt and a rubber duckie antenna.

[Jeffhs]

I had expanded basic cable service for years from Time Warner, but when it went up to $55.67 a month a while back, I had my service downgraded to broadcast channels only (which costs me on the order of $13.56 or so monthly at this time) and have had such ever since. That's all I need, actually, as I can get other programming (namely, my old favorite shows from the '70s) on DVD and VHS; I have several old 1970s TV series (Mannix, Kojak, Quincy, et al.) on DVD that I purchased from Amazon.com a couple of years ago (to say nothing of a subscription to Netflix since 2005, when I got my first DVD player, and my large collection of '60s-through-'80s TV series and movies I taped on VHS), so when I want to watch these classic shows I can -- any time, without paying through the nose for expanded cable. I do not use or need a cable box for basic (what I call "bare bones basic" cable), as my cable connects more or less directly to my TV. I say "more or less" because the cable from the wall hooks up to the RF modulator for the DVD, with a jumper to the VCR, which then connects to the antenna port on the TV. A Rube Goldberg setup, I know, but it works.

I do not care that I don't get the digital channels, as long as I have my DVD and VCR. The programming on the broadcast networks doesn't appeal to me much these days, except for Law and Order on NBC, which is also on in reruns on the local MyTV affiliate and also on WGN America, and the occasional nature shows on PBS. Aside from the NBC nightly news at 6:30 Eastern time, that is all the network TV I normally watch these days.

I know scarcity all too well myself. My mother died in 1966, so my dad raised me from the time I was ten years old; we didn't have much money, so we were watching black-and-white TV for years. Moreover, I live on a fixed income today (disability), so don't have much money left after my bills are paid at the end of the month. My first color TV set (that I could call my own) was a 1964 metal-cabinet VHF-only Sears-Silvertone roundie I got in 1970 from a man who lived one street over from us in my old neighborhood; the set had been reposing in the man's garage for several years after it quit (or so he thought). A new circuit breaker was all it took to get the set working again. However, three years after I got it, the video-output tube socket broke out of a circuit board, so the TV was replaced by a 1961 VHF-only Philco "Briefcase 19" VHF-only 19" portable. I didn't get my first brand-new color TV until 1979, six years later. That set was replaced three years later by a Zenith 13" color portable with electronic varactor tuning. That set was replaced by my current TV, an RCA CTC185 XL-100 19-incher, in late 1999; the latter is the set I use today, on cable but without a cable box.

I don't yet have a Blu-ray player, for two reasons: one, I can't afford one, and two, all my DVDs (including the ones I rent from Netflix) were recorded under the original DVD standard. These discs will not play in a Blu-ray player (or maybe it is the other way around), so even if I could afford the latter it would do me no good, rendering all my current DVDs useless.

I read in the paper and saw on WGN America (on the latter's rebroadcast of "WGN Midday News" at one p.m. ET) the other day that the FCC has given the motion-picture industry the authority to block the signal outputs of digital cable boxes (and presumably DVRs), to thwart illegal copying of movies shown on premium cable channels. This measure is meant to stop people from copying very new movies shown on cable to DVD. I can see the worth of such a system; it will (supposedly) prevent the major studios (MGM, Universal, et al.) from losing money, but there will always be people trying to circumvent the blocking schemes, much as some people have successfully gotten around having to pay for premium movie channels (or used to, until the cable companies went high-tech and locked down the movie channels with passcodes and who knows what else), so this may be a never-ending battle against piracy.

[electroking]

Originally Posted by amptramp

We have analog TV. We have analog FM. It's good to be Canadian!

Until August 31, 2011, that is!

By the way, everyone in North America (except maybe in deep rural areas)
still has analog FM!

[andy]

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[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

You have that backwards. Blu-Ray players will play all your existing DVDs, and CDs just like a DVD player can. You just can't play Blu-Ray discs in a DVD player (any more than you can play a DVD in a CD player).

Thanks for the correction, Andy -- I thought I had it backwards myself (didn't realize it until I had posted my reply), but wasn't sure, which is why I said in my post "or perhaps it is the other way around". It's good to know, however, that Blu-ray disc players will play existing standard DVDs. Now all I have to do is wait for Blu-ray players to drop below $100 as have ordinary DVD players, and for my present Memorex DVD player to go bad. I won't replace a perfectly good DVD player unless it is absolutely necessary.

I'm wondering, though. Why won't Blu-ray discs play properly (or at all) in a standard DVD player--is the Blu-ray standard that much different from the one used for ordinary DVDs? I'm thinking there is the same difference between Blu-ray and standard DVDs as there is between analog and digital television; that is, as unmodified analog TVs will not display digital signals, standard DVD players will not play Blu-ray discs. What would happen if one tried to play a Blu-ray disc on a standard DVD player? I'm thinking the system would show an error message on the TV screen such as "Invalid disc", "Invalid standard" or the like, with the player promptly ejecting the disc; of course, the Blu-ray disc will not play.

[andy]

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[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

What would happen if one tried to play a Blu-ray disc on a standard DVD player? I'm thinking the system would show an error message on the TV screen such as "Invalid disc", "Invalid standard" or the like, with the player promptly ejecting the disc; of course, the Blu-ray disc will not play.

My Panasonic DMR-EZ47V, which is a combo VHS/DVD recorder simply states "cannot read. Please check disk".

jr

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I'm wondering, though. Why won't Blu-ray discs play properly (or at all) in a standard DVD player--is the Blu-ray standard that much different from the one used for ordinary DVDs?

It's quite similar to why DVD's won't play in an old CD player. Different wavelengths of laser light, different size pits, different encoding of the bits and what the bits mean.