HDTV US switchover coming soon

Warped

Warped

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This coming Friday, the 12th of June, the US will be entering an age of digital brilliance which has been long overdue. I was just wondering, how many people haven't switched over yet in the US here and if your in another country if you have and how was the experience?? Did the gov't help you out which in turn came straight out of another program you had to help pay for? Also for everyone in the world...how many TVs in your house are HD ready and how many aren't??

Lets see, 4 TVs in our house are HD ready, one is not. My little TV in my PC room right next to me now is not HD. In the US here, we were supposed to switch over in February and now its this June. Also here is a little brief history on the early days of HD:

The term high definition once described a series of television systems originating from the late 1930s, however, these systems were only "high definition" when compared to earlier systems that were based on mechanical systems with as few as 30 lines of resolution.

The British high definition TV service started trials in August 1936 and a regular service in November 1936 using both the Baird 240 line and Marconi-EMI 405 line systems. The Baird system was discontinued in February 1937. In 1938 France followed with their own 441 line system, which was also used by a number of other countries. The US NTSC system joined in 1939. In 1949 France introduced an even higher resolution standard at 819 lines, a system that would be high definition even by today's standards, but it was monochrome only. All of these systems used interlacing and a 4:3 aspect ratio except the 240 line system which was progressive (actually described at the time by the technically correct term of 'sequential') and the 405 line system which started as 5:4 and later changed to 4:3. The 405 line system adopted the (at that time) revolutionary idea of interlaced scanning to overcome the flicker problem of the 240 line with its 25 Hz frame rate. The 240 line system could have doubled its frame rate but this would have meant that the transmitted signal would had doubled in bandwidth, an unacceptable option.

Color broadcasts started at similar "high" resolutions, first with the US's NTSC color system in 1953, which was compatible with the earlier B&W systems and therefore had the same 525 lines of resolution. European standards did not follow until the 1960s, when the PAL and SECAM colour systems were added to the monochrome 625 line broadcasts.

Since the formal adoption of Digital Video Broadcasting's (DVB) widescreen HDTV transmission modes in the early 2000s the 525-line NTSC (and PAL-M) systems as well as the European 625-line PAL and SECAM systems are now regarded as "standard definition" television systems. In Australia, the 625-line digital progressive system (with 576 active lines) is officially recognized as high definition.[1]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television

hdtv.jpg

Dodge this!
 
I've got one HDTV in the living room and a regular TV in the bedroom.
Not that a big of a deal really.
 
Digital =/= HDTV.

I'm pretty sure it's just a switch to digital. Right? I'm no expert at this stuff so that equation above may be wrong, but on all the commercials and ads and shit I saw it never mentioned HD once. Just shit about your antenna not working anymore.
 
It's just digital. The only people effected are the people still using an antenna...which is basically no one. Has nothing to do with HD TV. Although it would be nice if everything started being broadcast in HD.
 
lol pure HD broadcasting would be sweeeeeeet. But yeah, its just a switch to digital transmission. This is because of 9/11 and hurricane katrina when the govt ran into communications trouble because they couldnt broadcast on enough signals or something, so all analog channels are being reserved by the government for emergency use.

Also, the Matrix in HD sucks. The special effects did not age well at all, and being in HD only makes the flaws more obvious.

EDIT: Also also, Yahoo Answers had someone ask the question "Why are we switching to digital broadcasting?" and the 'best answer' was:

The official explanation is that digital uses smaller air-waves and will open more "space" for needed air-wave space for future computer needs. But..and this is no lie..as soon as I heard this, I also told my husband that the government has something planned that is not being honestly shared with us. I would suggest that we all clean up our computer files and be careful what we post on our own personal air-waves because I am sure there is a way to tap into our homes once this digital moves in. Come on, people! We were not asked what we thought about this. We were given no explanation and we did not ask! This sure is a more full proof way to spy than phone tapping. You all watch! In time, there are going to be law suits and a huge cry from the public when we finally find out the truth!
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yeah i meant Digital switch, my bad. also did you known HD signals travel far less than the old analog signal?? before you could get signals like 150 miles away, now its like 30 or something like that
 
Warped said:
yeah i meant Digital switch, my bad. also did you known HD signals bla bla bla...
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Uh, I still dont think you understand the difference between digital, and high definition.
 
Hey, same day as my birthday.

Too bad I don't have cable.
 
Krynn72 said:
lol pure HD broadcasting would be sweeeeeeet. But yeah, its just a switch to digital transmission. This is because of 9/11 and hurricane katrina when the govt ran into communications trouble because they couldnt broadcast on enough signals or something, so all analog channels are being reserved by the government for emergency use.

Also, the Matrix in HD sucks. The special effects did not age well at all, and being in HD only makes the flaws more obvious.

EDIT: Also also, Yahoo Answers had someone ask the question "Why are we switching to digital broadcasting?" and the 'best answer' was:
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You mean to say that the switch to digital wasn't because the government was selling analog frequencies to wireless broadband companies like Google and Verizon as part of a mandate to oust dial-up and promote cheaper access to broadband? This would be so that major software companies could begin developing a new age of cloud computing and operating systems that support it.

Cloud computing is still far ahead of it's time on the current internets infrastructure as long as dial-up is around, as narrowband speeds do not support this form of computing. I heard talk that Microsoft (and Google) has plans to develop an OS in the future where home users must subscribe to a server to even have local OS access on their PCs and I thought the sellout of a wide range of analog frequencies was only the first step.

Maybe I thought wrong then.
 
Saturos said:
The whole time I thought the switch to digital was because the government was selling analog frequencies to wireless broadband companies like Google and Verizon as part of a mandate to oust dial-up and promote cheaper access to broadband so major software companies could begin developing a new age of cloud computing and operating systems that support it.

(cloud computing is still far ahead of it's time on the current internets infrastructure.)
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Ive heard that too. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons for the switch, and i really doubt the govt needs all of the frequencies for emergency channels.
 
Krynn72 said:
Say goodbye to what little tv you have then.
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That's why I'm glad I have the internets.

And video games.

Oh well, I don't normally have that much time to watch TV anyways; but it will be nice to see things digital when I do get the time to watch a little Discovery Channel here and there.
 
gFrohman said:
That's why I'm glad I have the internets.

And video games.

Oh well, I don't normally have that much time to watch TV anyways.
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The device needed to convert analog to digital is nothing more than a very basic modem for your TV.
a.k.a "de-modulator" converts analog to digital signals.

It's not like the technology is new or anything. It's just a band-aid to fill the void so your average technophobe grandpa can still use his rabbit-ears. (and yet another way to make money in the process)

Nevertheless, I don't watch much TV either tbh, so I don't really care. I'd rather have cheaper broadband if that truly was the whole goal for the mandate in the first place.
 
Oh, I know. I'm not worried about the switch at all. I've been prepared for awhile, despite my lack of cable TV. I just don't care enough about TV to pay for cable.

I guess my old-school 1985 TV that I've kept collecting dust with(which still has the bunny-ear antennae & the VHF & UHF dials) will really be old now.
 
*sighs nostalgically*
Sometimes, when adjusting the antenna, you actually transbecame the antenna if you stood there touching it while someone watched a 'must see' news/sports/movie-segment. -Thus sugar-filled rewards were dispensed. Now another tool of socialogical family-bonding will vanish forever.
 
Good thing any TV I've had for the last 4 years I couldn't even get regular channels. I'm safe!
 
Krynn72 said:
Uh, I still dont think you understand the difference between digital, and high definition.
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HD isnt a signal(not saying your wrong krynn), HD is just a higher resolution picture. a digital signal(which we are talking about) sends more data over the airwaves then an analog signal, thus making the signal weaker. ive heard that the signal for digital will be stronger when analog goes away though. with digital you wont have that snow interferance on your tv and you will always have a clear picture with minor glitches like sattilites have when there is a storm.
 
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