Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how the simplest things can confuse us. We've had radio for almost a century and TV for more than half a century, but for most of us it's still magic. This is a good thing. The spectrum will be more efficiently used. The taxpayers will come out ahead.
Broadcasters will drag their feet, in hopes of hogging more total bandwidth when it's all said and done. They have a lot of clout and it remains to be seen whether the government has the nerve to stand up to them.
Broadcasters are not dragging their heels anymore. Right now, broadcasters are forced to pay for power for two transmitters - one analog and one digital. Twice as much power as they were used to paying for before. From that perspective, the sooner this is all over, the better.
Another issue is that broadcasters are currently sending their digital signals on an alternate channel number, and using PSIP to 'remap' their digital channel to their analog counterpart for display purposes. In 2009 when all the analog transmitters are gone, all of the broadcasters are going to reshuffle their transmitter frequencies one more time so as to wind up on their permanent channel number. The low VHF channels are too noisy for 8VSB, so 2-6 will have to move up to a channel above 7. Channels 60 and up are going to be removed to be sold. Most of the rest of the existing broadcasters are likely to move their digital transmitter to their analog channel, while the 2-6 and 60+ channels will just go find a space somewhere else.
The other good news about digital broadcasting is that the rules about adjacent channel allocation are more permissive, because digital reception is typically an all-or-nothing affair (it either comes in perfectly, or not at all. The margin between those two states is fairly narrow).
As others have pointed out, replacing the analog RF and demodulation stages in a receiver with an 8VSB receiver and MPEG2 decoder should not have a significant impact on small or battery operated devices. They do make USB bus-powered 8VSB/QAM receivers that are the size of a bic lighter, though to be fair those typically don't have the MPEG2 decoder in them, which a TV would obviously need.
I think the largest impact the shutdown is going to have is going to be on embedded television devices. Folks who got a TV built-in to the back seat of their Escalades are going to be rather pissed when they stop working.
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Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how the simplest things can confuse us. We've had radio for almost a century and TV for more than half a century, but for most of us it's still magic. This is a good thing. The spectrum will be more efficiently used. The taxpayers will come out ahead.
Broadcasters will drag their feet, in hopes of hogging more total bandwidth when it's all said and done. They have a lot of clout and it remains to be seen whether the government has the nerve to stand up to them.
Broadcasters are not dragging their heels anymore. Right now, broadcasters are forced to pay for power for two transmitters - one analog and one digital. Twice as much power as they were used to paying for before. From that perspective, the sooner this is all over, the better.
Another issue is that broadcasters are currently sending their digital signals on an alternate channel number, and using PSIP to 'remap' their digital channel to their analog counterpart for display purposes. In 2009 when all the analog transmitters are gone, all of the broadcasters are going to reshuffle their transmitter frequencies one more time so as to wind up on their permanent channel number. The low VHF channels are too noisy for 8VSB, so 2-6 will have to move up to a channel above 7. Channels 60 and up are going to be removed to be sold. Most of the rest of the existing broadcasters are likely to move their digital transmitter to their analog channel, while the 2-6 and 60+ channels will just go find a space somewhere else.
The other good news about digital broadcasting is that the rules about adjacent channel allocation are more permissive, because digital reception is typically an all-or-nothing affair (it either comes in perfectly, or not at all. The margin between those two states is fairly narrow).
As others have pointed out, replacing the analog RF and demodulation stages in a receiver with an 8VSB receiver and MPEG2 decoder should not have a significant impact on small or battery operated devices. They do make USB bus-powered 8VSB/QAM receivers that are the size of a bic lighter, though to be fair those typically don't have the MPEG2 decoder in them, which a TV would obviously need.
I think the largest impact the shutdown is going to have is going to be on embedded television devices. Folks who got a TV built-in to the back seat of their Escalades are going to be rather pissed when they stop working.