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I had been having a discussion about HDTV with Javalon, and I tried to PM, but it was too long.
SIGH.
I want to know what everyone's feelings about HDTV are. Is it too expensive? Do you care? Are you aware of the deadlines for conversion and how it may affect your viewing and purchasing, regardless of readiness to make such purchases? Do you feel that the government should force us to buy something that we don't want?
Javalon (who I respect, BTW. This is not a flame), believes that HDTV will be great and everyone will waat it. But he is a movie aficianado. As your average TV viewer, I see no purpose to HDTV outside of movies (the aspect ratio will be the same as widescreen) and sports. Since that makes up very little of my overall yearly TV time, I see no reason to convert. Everyone chime in.
My thoughts that were originally in a PM:
Hi-def might have a little more interest now, but how many times have they moved back the drop dead date for all TV station to be simulcasting in HD? When I graduated from college in 1997, they said total conversion time was 10 years, tops. Congress passed a law mandating all television stations broadcast a digital signal by the year 2002, with 2006 being the dark date for analog. Hasn't happened yet, especially in medium and small markets. However, Congress later added the requirement that 85% of a station's viewers must have access to the digital signal (own a digital set or a digital tuner) before stations are to turn off their analog transmitters.
The problem is that most stations that operate as NTSC channels 2-6 may face a staggering cost in trying to replicate their service when assigned a UHF-HDTV channel in accordance with planning factors as described in the FCC’s 6th NPRM1 .
Without a revision of the planning factors, the authorized Average Effective Radiated Power (AERP) for these UHF-HDTV stations would reach 5,000 KW. For 5000 KW AERP, a transmitter’s peak power for omnidirectional service will be around 1 MW, almost four times that of the largest NTSC transmitter in the US! Whether it is possible to build a practical transmission plant that can safely and economically accommodate even half that AERP is an open question.
Almost 90% of this extreme power will be used to provide HDTV service to a very small portion of the population in the outlying areas whose present reception of over-the-air NTSC service is correspondingly poor. In fact, merely one-tenth of this extreme power, 500 KW, will provide reliable HDTV service in all cases at least to the Effective Radio Horizon 2. By replacing the receive antenna in the planning factors with a "smart antenna," service equivalent to 5000 KW AERP can be attained given a practical and economic transmission facility. What’s more, a "smart antenna" will permit connection of multiple receivers without loss of coverage contour -- a feature not possible given the planning factors in the FCC’s 6th NPRM.
Replicating NTSC service with HDTV is a laudable goal but for most stations it will be proven impractical for the following reasons:
1) HDTV service to receivers with indoor antennas will be far more restricted than NTSC service is.
2) The FCC/MSTV suggested service area replication assumes one receiver. At the fringe contour, loading a second receiver on the same downlead cable will typically reduce coverage by about 3 miles.
3) Viewers will react more negatively to completely losing picture and sound a certain percentage of time than they do to similarly frequent fading effects in NTSC.
4) For many VHF-NTSC stations moving to UHF-HDTV the implementation of replication will prove impractical and costly.
Another problem faced with HDTV is exactly the same problem faced with color TV in 1954. There are approximately 600 million television sets in the world and approximately 70% of them are color TVs. An important and critical consideration is whether the new HDTV standard should be compatible with the existing color TV standards, supplant the existing standards, or be simultaneously broadcast with the existing standards (with the understanding that the existing standards would be faded out over time). Because the 15 percent of viewers who don't have HDTV in any area are going to be screwed if it's just gone. And then they will have to spend money that they may not want to spend, or even have, to get a new TV and/or antenna.
And this doesn't even begin to mention the cable customers.
I think the FCC is ramming something down our throats, and as an FCC license holder, who studied TV and radio, I think that they are stupid for doing it and have an unrealistic expectation of how this will work.
I live in TV market number 2, and at best guess, the local chapter of the National Association of Broadcasters (whose newsletter I get) says that L.A and surrounding areas won't reach the 85% threshold until 2020, at current rates of growth. That's almost 25 years after I first heard of this absurd legislation.
And that's in one of the most affluent TV viewer markets in the country.
SIGH.
I want to know what everyone's feelings about HDTV are. Is it too expensive? Do you care? Are you aware of the deadlines for conversion and how it may affect your viewing and purchasing, regardless of readiness to make such purchases? Do you feel that the government should force us to buy something that we don't want?
Javalon (who I respect, BTW. This is not a flame), believes that HDTV will be great and everyone will waat it. But he is a movie aficianado. As your average TV viewer, I see no purpose to HDTV outside of movies (the aspect ratio will be the same as widescreen) and sports. Since that makes up very little of my overall yearly TV time, I see no reason to convert. Everyone chime in.
My thoughts that were originally in a PM:
Hi-def might have a little more interest now, but how many times have they moved back the drop dead date for all TV station to be simulcasting in HD? When I graduated from college in 1997, they said total conversion time was 10 years, tops. Congress passed a law mandating all television stations broadcast a digital signal by the year 2002, with 2006 being the dark date for analog. Hasn't happened yet, especially in medium and small markets. However, Congress later added the requirement that 85% of a station's viewers must have access to the digital signal (own a digital set or a digital tuner) before stations are to turn off their analog transmitters.
The problem is that most stations that operate as NTSC channels 2-6 may face a staggering cost in trying to replicate their service when assigned a UHF-HDTV channel in accordance with planning factors as described in the FCC’s 6th NPRM1 .
Without a revision of the planning factors, the authorized Average Effective Radiated Power (AERP) for these UHF-HDTV stations would reach 5,000 KW. For 5000 KW AERP, a transmitter’s peak power for omnidirectional service will be around 1 MW, almost four times that of the largest NTSC transmitter in the US! Whether it is possible to build a practical transmission plant that can safely and economically accommodate even half that AERP is an open question.
Almost 90% of this extreme power will be used to provide HDTV service to a very small portion of the population in the outlying areas whose present reception of over-the-air NTSC service is correspondingly poor. In fact, merely one-tenth of this extreme power, 500 KW, will provide reliable HDTV service in all cases at least to the Effective Radio Horizon 2. By replacing the receive antenna in the planning factors with a "smart antenna," service equivalent to 5000 KW AERP can be attained given a practical and economic transmission facility. What’s more, a "smart antenna" will permit connection of multiple receivers without loss of coverage contour -- a feature not possible given the planning factors in the FCC’s 6th NPRM.
Replicating NTSC service with HDTV is a laudable goal but for most stations it will be proven impractical for the following reasons:
1) HDTV service to receivers with indoor antennas will be far more restricted than NTSC service is.
2) The FCC/MSTV suggested service area replication assumes one receiver. At the fringe contour, loading a second receiver on the same downlead cable will typically reduce coverage by about 3 miles.
3) Viewers will react more negatively to completely losing picture and sound a certain percentage of time than they do to similarly frequent fading effects in NTSC.
4) For many VHF-NTSC stations moving to UHF-HDTV the implementation of replication will prove impractical and costly.
Another problem faced with HDTV is exactly the same problem faced with color TV in 1954. There are approximately 600 million television sets in the world and approximately 70% of them are color TVs. An important and critical consideration is whether the new HDTV standard should be compatible with the existing color TV standards, supplant the existing standards, or be simultaneously broadcast with the existing standards (with the understanding that the existing standards would be faded out over time). Because the 15 percent of viewers who don't have HDTV in any area are going to be screwed if it's just gone. And then they will have to spend money that they may not want to spend, or even have, to get a new TV and/or antenna.
And this doesn't even begin to mention the cable customers.
I think the FCC is ramming something down our throats, and as an FCC license holder, who studied TV and radio, I think that they are stupid for doing it and have an unrealistic expectation of how this will work.
I live in TV market number 2, and at best guess, the local chapter of the National Association of Broadcasters (whose newsletter I get) says that L.A and surrounding areas won't reach the 85% threshold until 2020, at current rates of growth. That's almost 25 years after I first heard of this absurd legislation.
And that's in one of the most affluent TV viewer markets in the country.
. Well the size of the program is obviously bigger, but the quality of the program is not very much better. Except if it is Sports.
and have more detail. 
But howcome it changes when sports come on?
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