Alkaline Earth | Metaphor on wheels?

Via momma k (in a reforwarded email with 2 pages of .sigs and 2 lines of payload, natch):
http://tinyurl.com/SeniorDTV

I never heard a reasonable justification for this. What is the point with screwing around with the people who are still getting their TV over the airwaves? It can't possibly be bandwidth (the most commonly cited reason that I've heard), considering the number of empty UHF and VHF channels that there are almost everywhere.

Of course, I bet the point is to eventually get it so that you can lock them out of their TV service, because the media companies hate it when anyone gets anything for fee.

Also, I don't know if the people behind this regulation have ever gotten a signal over an antenna, but it often, almost as a rule, comes out *gasp* distorted. Do they know what happens when there is a slight distortion in a digital signal?

And that link was pretty spectacular.

Yes, but the empty UHF and VHF signals are not the same nationally so it makes it impossible to re-license distinct frequency bands for next-gen cellular, mobile/fixed broadband, etc.

Nothing happens when there is a slight distortion on the digital signal. That's kind of the point. It takes a much larger distortion to flip the one to a zero or vice-versa than it does to create a noticeable artifact on an analog signal and then there have to be enough of these bit errors to not be overcome by the forward error-correcting codes built into the signal.

This still smells like one of the worst rent-seeking boondoggles of our time.

From my experience with my parents' DTV, it doesn't take a hell of a lot to go from perfectly clear signal to complete interruption. Obviously, there is a huge difference between a satellite signal and an antenna signal, but half of the VHF stations I get on my TV have mild to somewhat extreme distortion. Maybe I'm underestimating the signal distortion, but I'd imagine that half of the channels I currently get will be unwatchable next year.

Also, how hard would it be just to make all of the VHF stations number themselves less than 10 or 15, and all of the UHF stations number themselves between 30 and 45? Or something like that, to escape the standardization problem. it seems less extreme than requiring all of the people who have invested the least in TV to get new TVs, while freeing up the rest of the radio frequencies for everyone else.

OMG!1 I just bought the Apex DT502 converter box for my gf's TV. She is using rabbit ears, and could only get two stations with crappy crappy pictures via analog. Gov't P-card + $17 out-of-pocket = Lulz.

The Change to Digital Broadcast has been a Religious Experience. She can now receive at least 50 stations, all with excellent picture quality. Sometimes a "borderline" station will blink out, but a quick tweak of the rabbit ears fixes it. If not, just move to one of the other awesome channels. OMG!1 four PBS stations from LA, four PBS stations from the OC, all the major, all the spin-offs from the majors (NBC Weather?), five "public access" (Armenian-American TV!). I spent three hours totally spaced out watching Hong Kong Kung Fu serial dubbed into Vietnamese. Ronal Bear X 10!!111010100010110011100011010001101001

If I were to complain about something, it would be that the sound quality did not make a quantum leap forward. Oh well.

OMG Valatan. Get the gov't money card, and buy a converter box. It is so worth it.

Okay, well, the digital box is in fact worth it because it turned my reception from "2 good channels, 2 ghosty channels, 2 channels you have to get up to fiddle with the antennae" to "6 good channels". However, since we (in Austin) don't live in a dystopian metroplex just yet you will only get 3 new channels and will likely only care about 1 (PBS2 aka CreateTV) or 2 (CBS2 aka RetroTV which shows Knight Rider and Kojak reruns from the 80's) of them.

That´s Dystopian Suburboplex to you, knave. There is no ¨metro¨ in Los Angeles.

;)

I had the same experience as natedogg with my DTV converter. Even with one of those big outdoor/attic antennas mounted in the attic, we still had 2-3 fuzzy stations. With the converter they are all completely clear. The CreateTV is nice sometimes as it has lots of cooking shows and occasionally runs old 80s episodes of the Joy of Painting.

OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!11111 The rabbit ears on the gf's tv weren't really cutting it, so I just purchased a new antenna: the Winegard SS-3000. I'm using it now from my house. Fifty bones. Please allow me to describe how totally fucking rad this is.

The total channel count is now up to 60. It's awesome. 10 different PBS stations: LA, OC, Riverside. I can watch House on FOX. I can watch four (4) different stations in Vietnamese. Effing Kung-Fu on three channels! And, this is the best part of all, KJLA late-at-night shows the "Poorman's Bikini Beach" show, hosted by one Jim Trenton. OMG total soft-core porn on over-the-air TV. Way better than Red Shoe Diaries. From this show, I learned about Erotic LA, a porn convention. Also, I learned the phone numbers for some medical marijuana providers. All over-the-air!!! lulz 25-8, yo.

Somewhat related: You can see Red Shoe Diaries on hulu. Also a few new weird things like direct-from-Japan game shows such as Gaki (turn on those captions!).

Is this delay of the DTV transition really going to help anyone? This has been in the works for years now with ad campaigns out the wazoo. There will be craziness no matter when the transition occurs. Why not just stick with the originally set date?

Aw, man, I was hoping they wouldn't do this. If you haven't heard by now you aren't going to hear by June. Just pull the band-aid off already.

DTV transition delay shot down in the House. The opposition was led by Joe Barton from TX who apparently invoked bin Laden in his arguments. Has someone come up with a name for the variation on Godwin's Law for bin Laden yet?

Dammit! Again with the delay BS?

And that happened.

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October 21, 2008