America to go digital April 7, 2009 (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/po...21digital.html
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/21/tech...gital_tv.reut/

Today, the Senate Commerce Committee voted 19 to three to approve legislation to enforce a complete conversion to digital television by April 7, 2009. Though the date is later than previous measures on the subject, it is a firm date; previous measures required a certain percentage of the households who watched TV over-the-air to be digital ready before the they would take effect. The current legislation has no such qualification. If the bill is approved by the Senate Budget Committee, it will move to the floor. Parallel legislation is expected to be considered in the House of Representatives soon.

 

[Paul McElligott]

I wonder what will happen when the industry fails to meet this deadline, too.

 

[Malcolm R]

Sure it is.

 

[TravisR]

I hate to sound pessimistic but I believe it on April 7, 2009.

 

[Jordan_E]

My birthday! So, I'll wake up on that day, turn on my HDTV, and viola, all those crappy SD channels will be gone?! Yeah, right... Well, it will still be my birthday anyway.

 

[MickeS]

Why not? Sweden just did it, although it is a rolling shutdown of analog broadcasts there, taking about 2 years to complete.

If the feds don't set a date, nothing will happen. Good for them that they did. The industry will do it, and cheap D to A converters will be sold to those who still have older TV's. No big deal.

 

[TravisR]

They've already had multiple dates for when this is really going to happen. It kinda makes it hard to believe another one.

 

[MickeS]

But those dates have also included the provision that a certain percentage of digital receivers must be in place. Since that is eliminated now, I would think this has a much better chance of actually happening.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Suuuuuure. I think that it's easy to say that with the date four years away, but any Congressman who doesn't vote to extend the deadline come Summer 2008 will find himself out of a job in November. The American people are not going to appreciate being told they have to buy some new box just to watch TV on the SD set they bought just a couple years earlier.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

But you forget that there's other issues at play here. There's a lot of muttering that the FEMA efforts were hampered by not having the frequencies they needed to communicate. Emergency relief efforts are now being impaired. There's also a huge lobbying effort by the telecommunications industry to make this happen, since they want to buy up the frequencies that aren't reserved by the emergency services.
That said, you'll notice the April 7th deadline is the day AFTER the NCAA championships will finish.

 

[McPaul]

I like HDTV as much as anyone else of course (I'm on this forum)...

but why does something as comparatively trivial as television need the attention of such a high office of government?

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

As Adam pointed out, it's the frequencies which makes it a high office government issue. Plus it isn't HDTV they are forcing, it is digital.

 

[MikeyWeitz]

Same reason they feel the need to waste everyone's time investigating baseball players for steroids.

Does that really need the attention of Congress?

 

[Jason Seaver]

Still... You tell the country as a whole that they're going to have to buy a new piece of equipment to continue to use the television that they already have, and most aren't going to like it; it's a disruption to their everyday lives. Make an issue of it in an election year like 2008, and the House will be falling all over themselves to push the deadline off.

 

[MickeS]

I don't think people put the issue of having to buy a set-top box ahead of traditional election-time issues such as education, national security, health care and so on.

Which is why I believe the congressmen who want to not only be elected, but also actually work and have meaningful relations with the voters and the lobbyists in congress, meaning most of them, will not make an issue out of it, since they know they will have to vote for it, and it' won't really help them win any elections. It'll be a lose-lose situation for them to bring it up. They will probably hope that it just gets buried in the general election-noise.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Yeah, right..., 2009 by then HD-DVD and Blueray will become one format and make it convenient for all customers. I'll believe it when I see it.:rolleyes

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I think that if you're on CATV you won't need to get a box, so for most of us we'll never have any idea - or care.

Sure, some of us are using rabbit ears, and some of us are already on OTA digital - so that won't make any difference either. I think there will be very few, if any, complaints about this, and I have a feeling that some network stations are going to announce a cut-off date for their analog transmissions, so it won't be much of a surprise.

Glenn

 

[Henry Gale]

I remember when there was a schedule of when we were going metric.

 

[Steve Berger]

The potential problem with CATV is their slow but ongoing conversion of analog frequencies to digital channels (higher compression allows more channels and the addition of HD feeds). This will either require a new digital box or a cablecard tuner. DRM won't allow the TV manufacturers to just create a new "cable-ready" tuner (but digital) this time around and so far the cablecard tuners have been restricted to TV's and cable's own proprietary devices. Analog cable could be cut back to the original channels (2-13).

 

[Paul McElligott]

Missed that one by a country kilometer, didn't we...