That's another analog/digital issue for cable -- there are still a lot
of analog channels on cable, even many old TVs can "tune" those channels
in, but to get the digital you need a box, and many people don't want
the box, and the digital "premium" channels are scrambled or compressed
to keep from bootlegging it. New TVs can tune in the digital and HD
broadcasts that are sent in the clear on cable (e.g., your local
broadcast channels), but for some reason not many (if any) TVs have the
ability to accept tuner cards (cable companies resistance). And no
computer tuners with cable cards....
The cable companies would like to go all digital to use that analog
spectrum too, but that is a whole nuther bag of worms.
Satellite all needs a box to decode their digital scrambled transmissions.
--R
tyler wrote:
It's funny for them to go to all this trouble to switch to digital
when broadcast and cable TV have been outdated by compressed video via
the internet for ~5 years. I still like broadcast radio for it's
retrogrouch appeal, but digital broadcasts lack that entirely. I
suppose broadcast is still free, while the internet often costs money.
Tyler
ernest breakfield wrote:
short story; digital broadcasting allows more broadcasts in the same
range of spectrum.
who benefits? the broadcasters (who have more space to broadcast
and therefor more opportunities to sell commercial time) and the FCC
(by having the opportunity to take in more in licensing fees from the
additional broadcasts).
is the result to the consumer better? as with almost all things,
yes and no.
as noted, if you're in a marginal/fringe coverage area, since
digital reception is almost exclusively all-or-nothing, you may no
longer have coverage at all. however, many folks in high-coverage
areas (which accounts for most of the population) actually gained
channels and service, and in many cases the picture is clearer even
using the conversion box.
one of my pet peeve downsides relates to the nature of digital
coverage; if a signal isn't near-perfect, the dropout causes bits of
picture and audio to simply be skipped. this can be really annoying
if you're trying to follow something, and the only way we've found to
be able to keep up on the detail in these cases is to have the
Captioning on so we can quickly read what we didn't hear. (this seems
to happen often on only one channel in my area, however it naturally
happens to be the channel that carries one of the Wifelets fav shows...)
one thing the conversion has done for me is give me more channels
with which to prove my hypothesis that there isn't much on TV worth
watching anyway, and it's certainly still not worth paying for! ;-)
cheers!
e
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