No free t.v.?

[peterh]

Hi: When the "Government" our representatives... want to change the regulations who are We the "PEOPLE" to say anything!!! If you wish to talk to someone with a little authority "I have as little as any one p.s. There's no free lunch either
Alf S. North shore of Lake Erie

This is actually, I think, one time when the government has acted very responsibly. The move to digital, HDTV, and high-def has been under way for a little over ten years now. There have been dozens (or, more probably hundreds) of hearings and at least one deferral of the date when the switch-over from analog to digital will occur. Rules requiring that broadcast TV stations, which were being given access to more of the new digital spectrum than was technically required to send an HDTV picture, actually transmit in HD rather than (as some broadcasters were planning) using their additional HD bandwidth for new paid programming and other commercial purposes while broadcasting in low-def TV so they could free up as much of the digital signal as they could for these other commercial purposes. Other laws require retailers to inform consumers when the merchandise on the shelves is already becoming functionally obsolete and allocate money to help analog-tv-owners purchase a digital-to-analog converter box. If anything I think it is the broadcasters, electronics manufacturers and retailers that have not played well with others by either obscuring or mis-informing the public about the coming changes or trying to take advantage of this change in broadcasting standards in ways that hurt the public at large.

And what do we get out of all this? For one, we get higher quality TV images and sound, but we also get digital signals that use a smaller broadcast spectra yet can be broadcast over greater distances without loss of image or sound quality, freeing up a whole bunch of analog TV frequencies that can be allocated to new digital carrier frequencies for civil government, emergency services, military use, cell phone carriers, and other purposes.

This is a refreshing change in a country that used to be an electronic communications pioneer but has, year by year, fallen behind other countries as they have deployed and re-deployed cutting-edge digital communications tools that are unheard of in the USA. Our communications infrastructure here is, by-and-large, still based on the capabilities and limitations of the telephone, TV, and radio equipment of the 1950s while the nations we compete with in the global marketplace are reaping the advantages of computer age tools invented in the United States.

Next up in the US is digital radio and, I hope, a wide range of digital communications tools that will make our lives easier and safer, things like regional wireless services that provide local road condition information to GPS systems, tools that allow health-care providers to monitor the vitals of patients outside of the hospital, and provide law enforcement to monitor the movements of an individual with a law-enforcement anklet without restricting them to a single location. All of these things require bandwidth that's currently unavailable because our older analog TV and radio services are hogging the airwaves.

--Peter

[Brian B-P]

Not necessarily. In Tucson we current have 14 over the air digital signals, and as far as I know, those will of course continue after their analog equivilents "do" go away (and good riddance!).

What I meant was only that the analog signals from the U.S. will "go away", leaving the analog-only user with no source of those stations.

[Brian B-P]

It just seems that there is always someone scr..messing things up just as soon as we get settled.

The analog TV system was - in its fundamental characteristics - "settled" in the 1950's. I think it's time for a change, for the reasons which Donna and Peter mentioned.