[IP] Hypocrisy in Analog TV Cutoff Debate
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Douglas J. De Clue" <ddeclue@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 16, 2005 2:34:05 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: FW: [bushlied] [IP] Hypocrisy in Analog TV Cutoff Debate
Reply-To: ddeclue@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas J. De Clue [mailto:ddeclue@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sun, October 16, 2005 2:18 PM
To: 'bushlied@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; 'dallasdemocrats@xxxxxxxxxxx';
'USDemocrat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; 'TheFalloutShelter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
'DiehardDems@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; 'AB_Progressives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
'Do_Something_America@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
'HomeOfTheBrave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; 'lauren@xxxxxxxx';
'lauren@xxxxxxxxxx'; 'lauren@xxxxxxxx'; 'floridaforkerry@xxxxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: [bushlied] [IP] Hypocrisy in Analog TV Cutoff Debate
Dave, Lauren, et.al:
I received this message via one of several liberal yahoogroups I
belong to regarding the planned conversion of television broadcasts
in the United States from the NTSC analog broadcast (525 lines/60Hz
interlace analog) that has been in effect since approximately the end
of World War II until the present day to the new digital High
Definition TV (HDTV) standard.
I have a different view of this issue than you on this issue and want
to express my opinion to you and your audience.
First let me tell you that I am not some corporate hack working for
HDTV.
I am an active Democrat who worked many many hours and donated
substantially to both the John Kerry campaign and my local Democratic
Party here in Orlando Florida and who has given to a variety of
Democratic and liberal causes. I have also worked on a program here
in Orlando to try to bring Air America Radio to the vast conservative
wasteland that is Orlando talk radio as well.
Secondly let me tell that I am an engineer who has worked extensively
in RF systems, particularly in the CATV (cable television) and
cellular phone industry for companies like Scientific Atlanta and
Motorola. I do not currently work in either CATV or cellular
telephones so I don't really have an axe to grind other than to bring
my technical expertise to this discussion.
Let me begin by saying that the original FCC target for complete
conversion to HDTV in the United States was originally going to be
this year, 2005. This has been pushed out nearly 5 years to allow
the consumers and the broadcasters time to catch up.
I am sure that most consumers are aware at least of the existence of
HDTV if they have ever been into a BestBuy or Circuit City in their
lives. Most network programs display the HDTV logo these days as
well so HDTV is not the total mystery to the public that you claim.
Not as many people are aware that their old fashioned NTSC TV's are
going to be obsolete in 2009 but I don't think that this is as
unknown as you think. In any event, I'm sure in the next year or
two, the major retailers will make sure that the public is highly
aware of that fact as a way of selling new TV sets to the consumer.
In my opinion, the biggest issue for liberals (actually for everyone)
should not be the changeover itself but rather the proper disposal
and recycling of all of this obsolete analog equipment as much of it
contains hazardous materials (particularly heavy metals) that need to
be carefully disposed of or recycled rather than simply just dumping
them in the local general purpose land fills to pollute local
watersheds.
As the owner of 5 old NTSC analog TV sets (and one new HDTV tuner and
an HDTV projector), I understand some of the sentiment behind your
letter that HDTV will make existing television sets, VCR's and other
equipment obsolete and will require the consumer to make a new
investment in equipment - but then - change is hardly a new thing
where high technology is concerned:
AM radios gave way to FM, tubes gave way to transistors and then
integrated circuits and now FM is starting to be replaced by digital
radio such as XM and Sirius radio.
Black and white TV's gave way to color TV's and now HDTV's.
Phonographs, eight tracks and reel to reel systems have been replaced
by cassette and then CD in the 80's and now SACD in the 21st century.
VHS has been replaced by DVD and soon DVD will be replaced by "blue
ray" DVD's.
Low volume citywide radiotelephone systems were replaced analog cell
phones that have then been replaced by better and better digital cell
phones.
The personal computer industry has gone from the stone age with Apple
II's and TRS-80's through a whole series of x86 processor machines
through Pentiums and is now starting to move beyond even the
Pentium. Computer power has grown from 1 MHz 8 bit machines in the
early 80's to the present day 2.4+ GHz 64 bit machines with nearly
20,000 times as much power as those early machines. And still they
continue to evolve and improve.
And yet - there is no great outcry about these changes because each
new generation offers improved technical performance over the last
generation.
The cost of replacing this obsolete equipment might at first glance
seem large but the cost of going to digital TV is not nearly what it
once was.
Last year I purchased a combination satellite/terrestrial receiver
made by Hughes with top of the line features including the ability to
control my existing VCR that was capable of receiving DirecTV digital
satellite broadcasts in both NTSC and HDTV formats, as well as
receiving terrestrial and cable TV signals in both NTSC and HDTV
formats for $299.00.
It should be possible by the time the changeover is complete for the
average TV viewer to purchase an HDTV converter unit to view the HDTV
programs on their existing NTSC sets for well under $100.00. It is
doubtful that many persons will purchase such converters however
given that the price of HDTVs also continues to fall and the average
viewer ought to be able to purchase a decent HDTV set for less than
$200.00 by 2009/2010.
Personally, I watch HDTV from my Hughes tuner on an $800, 7 pound
Epson computer projector that I project on my living room wall to
about 120" diagonal image. Last year that projector cost me $1000.
By 2009, it may well be down to $200 for a similar or better device.
I should add that this Hughes/Epson combination generates no x-rays
(radiation), uses much less electricity, and has a much better
picture than my old 31" 200 lb NTSC RCA glass tube TV that I bought
back in 1995.
I feel that it should be pointed out that we have already gone
through this exact same situation with the cell phone industry.
The original cell phones were also analog devices, known as AMPS
phones. They were big, bulky and high powered affairs with big
batteries. I had one of these phones in the mid 90's that weighed
about 5 lbs and put out 1.2 to 3.0 Watts of power compared with my
current CDMA digital phone that weighs only a few ounces and puts out
1/4th to 1/10th the power of my old phone.
The cell phone industry saw early the advantages of digital
modulation and compression and moved quickly to digital systems such
as TDMA, CDMA, and GSM which used less bandwidth, increased the total
number of connections possible, and improved the quality through
spread spectrum CDMA (in CDMA systems) and through digital error
correction schemes such as FEC (forward error correction).
To my knowledge there was no great outcry about the changeover in the
cellular industry and I am puzzled as to why there should be one
regarding HDTV now. In fact the cellular spectrum auction under the
Clinton administration was one of Clinton's better acts as President
in terms of being fiscally responsible and making corporations pay
their fair share of taxes.
HDTV offers a number of benefits to society beyond the obvious
improvement in image resolution and signal quality it provides.
For one thing, it does offer the government a substantial new source
of revenue through a spectrum auction such as was previously
conducted for the cell phone industry in the late 90's. The
broadcasting industry has made huge fortunes off of the implicit
corporate subsidy at taxpayer expense provided by their free use of
the "We the People's" airwaves for the last 50+ years in the case of
television and for the last 80+ years in the case of radio.
For another, it offers the opportunity for increased competition to
cable and satellite systems.
Digital off the air broadcasting means that local stations can offer
multiple programs in digital format where they were only able to
offer one program before. In my area that means that some of the
channels offer news, weather forecasts and radar. Public
broadcasting has been a leader in the digital switchover and offers
much more variety than they used to do in the analog days and in
particular offers much more governmental affairs programming allowing
the voter at least the opportunity to know more about what is going
on in state government.
With digital quality on off the air (terrestrial) broadcasting being
every bit as good as it is from satellite and cable systems (which
could never truly be said for over the air analog broadcasting with
it's ghosting, and other interference isues) and with digital
multicasting meaning that a wider variety of programming is possible,
this makes it harder for cable and satellite operators to convince
persons to buy their services and thus acts to keep prices down on
CATV and satellite systems.
A wider variety of off the air programming being available means that
it is possible for a wider diversity of opinions to be heard as
well. This serves the public interest and blunts the efforts of the
Rupert Murdochs and Time Warners of the world to try to control
public opinion by controlling the media.
The use of digital modulation also means that it will be possible for
the FCC to grant more local licenses in any particular area because
of the reduced issues with what is called ACI or "adjacent channel
interference". i.e. it will be easier to put more stations in the
same area that are next to each other in frequency than it is today
with analog broadcasting. It will also be easier because digital
compression means you can fit more channels into the same bandwidth
than you could with an old fashioned uncompressed analog system, much
as happened with the cellular industry switch to digital allowing
increased calling capacities.
Again with more channels and local licenses this means a decrease of
the concentration of media in the hands of a few corporate moguls and
an increase in the power of regular people to express themselves via
television.
What is happening with HDTV will also ultimately happen to radio as
well. XM and Sirius satellite radio are the vanguards of digital
radio today much as DirecTV and Dish Network were to digital
television in the mid to late 90's. Ultimately our existing AM and
FM radio stations will also convert over to digital formats allowing
us many more channels and much greater access to our media. It may
even be that WiFi (802.11.x) internet access may become common place
across the country with little routers on every lamp post in America
so that we can both stream Air America Radio off the internet in our
cars even as we are driving through the "red states" and talk via
VOIP thereby offering new competition to today's cell phone systems.
Ultimately digital will help take radio and TV out of the hands of
the Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs and Bill O'Reillys of the world
and offer a much more balanced and more diverse radio and TV world.
Democratically Yours,
Douglas J. De Clue
Orlando, FL
-----Original Message-----
From: bushlied@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bushlied@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of gep2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sun, October 16, 2005 1:12 AM
To: dallasdemocrats@xxxxxxxxxxx; USDemocrat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
TheFalloutShelter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; DiehardDems@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
AB_Progressives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
Do_Something_America@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; HomeOfTheBrave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
bushlied@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bushlied] [IP] Hypocrisy in Analog TV Cutoff Debate
Of course, this UNDERSTATES the problem.
It's not just television sets that will become obsolete.
It's also (for example) VCRs, DVD recorders, and any other device
which might
try to select (analog) channels, and particularly when unattended.
Anyone who
ever records an analog TV signal to tape or disc will be impacted by
this, since
even if they could previously program their VCR or DVD recorder to
select the
appropriate channels at the right time, that programmable recording
almost
certainly will not work to select the channel(s) as required using
the set-top
adapter box. :-((
<---- Begin Forwarded Message ---->
From: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [IP] Hypocrisy in Analog TV Cutoff Debate
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 17:38:39 -0400
To: Ip Ip <ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Begin forwarded message:
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 15, 2005 5:30:36 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: lauren@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Hypocrisy in Analog TV Cutoff Debate
Dave,
As noted in:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/
AR2005101401960.html
Congress is moving toward demanding a late 2008, early 2009 cutoff
to conventional off-air analog television broadcasting. Without
getting into all of the arguments again here that we've discussed
previously, it's amusing to note the newly opportunistic hypocrisy
in some of the arguments for the cutoff.
In particular, we're now seeing the recent hurricanes being used as
an excuse, to "free up spectrum already set aside to improve police,
firefighter and other emergency communications." But we know what's
really going on. Most of the spectrum to be pulled from analog TV
has nothing whatever to do with public safety, and everything to do
with auctioning off the spectrum to private companies for many
billions of dollars. Those billions have been written into the
budget for years, and Congress is desperate to get that "IOU" off of
the books.
It's true that only a relatively small percentage of U.S. television
viewers still depend on off-air broadcasting for all of their TV
viewing. But in terms of absolute numbers it's still lots of
people. And that doesn't even take into account all of the
secondary TVs that many people have in their homes that often
depend on off-air signals, even if a fancier primary set is hooked
to cable or satellite.
I assert that only a tiny percentage of U.S. viewers have any concept
that the federal government is getting ready to obsolete all of those
otherwise working televisions. People continue to buy all manner
of analog TVs every day, totally oblivious to this issue.
I also find it remarkable that -- given the press of other budget
priorities like war, hurricane relief, etc. -- that Congress is
seriously considering actually subsidizing the cost of converter
boxes as well, when most people already have televisions that would
continue to work just fine if this forced transition weren't
being rammed down their throats.
If Congress hadn't counted on the spectrum sale money before it
actually existed, we wouldn't have this mess. As usual, it's
ordinary consumers who end up getting the shaft.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@xxxxxxxx or lauren@xxxxxxxxxx or lauren@xxxxxxxx
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, EEPI
- Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com
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