Toadfish Monastery

On The Beach => Electronics and TechnoLust => Topic started by: Sibling DavidH on February 01, 2011, 02:01:18 PM

Title: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 01, 2011, 02:01:18 PM
We have just said goodbye to analogue television.  It's being phased out here in favour of digital and for a couple of years we've been replacing our old CRT tellies with nice slim LCD sets with digital built in.  Happily I've got the sets for the lounge, breakfast room and kitchen from the same maker, so the decoding delay is the same on each and I can carry on piping quality sound round on the Hi-Fi without a delay of two seconds or more between the two formats.  It's more expensive to buy new tellies rather than adding digital decoder boxes which you can get for under £20, but far neater.

In our area the analogue system will finally be switched off some time in April, but we've decided to finally go over now.  It's sad.  TV began here with a BBC channel before the war.  I remember the old 405-line system, positive modulation making the picture even spottier than need be, given the 50-mile distance from the transmitter.  The BBC went out on 50 MHz, so we had H-shaped aerials 10 feet high.  Then came the ITV (independent) on 200 MHz so we had two channels, even if the rooftop did look like a modern art display.  Gradually we got more and more hours broadcast per day.  Then in the 60s we got a third channel - BBC2 - on the 4-800 Mhz band which meant three aerials on the pole.  Finally, BBC1 and ITV also went over to the new band and the massive aerials could go.  In the end we got 5 channels on that system.

This was on PAL: 625-line, negative modulation, FM sound and bags of bandwidth for Teletext signals and colour, which we got in the late 60s.  It has stayed the same system until now, and was supposed to be standardised across Europe, though in  practice it wasn't quite.  The French had to be different and came out with SECAM (Suprème Effort Contre Les Américains).  Also the Germans had a different separation between sound and vision, so with a German TV you could have one or the other but not both.

Now we get dozens of channels on the Freeview service, few of which we ever watch.  We are not interested in Freesat or the paid services, so all we end up with is the same number of TV sets as before, though prettier, and the extra channels which we'll watch once or twice a week. The government has grabbed a bit of bandwidth to sell off, and the Pacific rim countries have sold us squillions of new tellies.  I'm really sad the old familiar system has gone, but that's because I'm a grumpy old git!
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Swatopluk on February 01, 2011, 02:14:02 PM
Since I can do without TV (we don't have a set), that's not the problem. But the end of analogue radio will be. The only radio we have that I know is digitally capable is not actually new and the standard has, as I read a few days ago in the papers, changed since then. So it would mean to replace all hardware.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 01, 2011, 02:40:13 PM
Yes, that's coming here too in 2015, if we can't fight it off.  In the UK, the digital signal is actually inferior to the VHF FM analogue, because the idiots chose too low a bit-rate1.  The whole thing will be a total pain in the bum, the government will get a tiddly bit of the 100MHz band to sell off and again other countries' industries will cash in.  And we'll have no accurate radio pips to set our watches by.

This one really does have no advantages at all and many drawbacks.  What about all the car radios?  What about my newish high-quality FM tuner-Amp?   :fit:

1 Yes, Germany changed system to a better codec whereas we've stuck with ours.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Aggie on February 01, 2011, 03:34:42 PM
Digital radio? ???

I haven't heard of it here.  I wonder if it's due to the distances involved in broadcasting? 
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on February 01, 2011, 04:33:53 PM
I knew about the local NPR station but it turns out there is quite a bit of stations already in the air in the area. My car radio isn't capable for that though...
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Aggie on February 01, 2011, 05:03:35 PM
There's cable radio that might be digital here (thru the TV coax), but as a broadcast I haven't heard of it.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on February 01, 2011, 06:14:39 PM
Apparently they shot down the attempt to implement it in June last year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_using_DAB/DMB#Canada
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Aggie on February 01, 2011, 06:42:35 PM
Well, there you go. 

Canadians are notoriously slow adopters of new technology; we tend to see little point in replacing consumer goods if the old equipment still works.  It's changing a bit over the last decade or so, but considering radio is primarily consumed behind the wheel, stubbornly AM-only over the majority of the geographical area (if not by population*) and there are plenty of 20-to-30 year-old cars on the road, I'm not surprised that digital radio had a tough go.

*I may be biased because I'm in the West, with lower population density, but I expect small-town/northern Ontario and Quebec likewise have a dearth of radio. Many places I work have no radio coverage whatsoever.


Quote
About four-fifths of Canada's population lives within 150 kilometres (93 mi) of the United States border.[170] A similar proportion live in urban areas concentrated in the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor (notably the Greater Golden Horseshoe, including Toronto and area, Montreal, and Ottawa), the BC Lower Mainland (consisting of the region surrounding Vancouver), and the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor in Alberta.

If I'm correct in thinking that DAB has a smaller coverage area per transmitter, it'd be foolish to use it outside of urban areas in Canada.  Out in the countryside, channel density is not a factor and coverage distance is king (and it's inevitably country music, btw). 

TV is less of an issue, because many rural TV viewers have switched over to satellite, I think.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 01, 2011, 08:14:55 PM
Quote from: AggieCanadians are notoriously slow adopters of new technology; we tend to see little point in replacing consumer goods if the old equipment still works.

I wish it were the same here, but there are too many opportunities to make money.  With the TV it makes sense, with analogue channels being 8MHz wide and real demand for new stations.  But the radio?   :soapbox:
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Griffin NoName on February 01, 2011, 09:24:30 PM
They don''t switch off analogue in London until 2012, we are the last to go I think. I have one digitial TV and one analogue TV with a digi box. I don't watch analogue at all any more.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Opsa on February 03, 2011, 10:35:37 PM
Analogue TV is gone here in the United States. A lot of people I know just used the switch-over as a decision not to have TV at all any more.

I would miss my car radio, though, if they made it obsolete.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 04, 2011, 09:00:56 AM
Quote from: GriffinI don't watch analogue at all any more.
We won't, now that we've finally got the three downstairs TVs with the sound all in sync.

Quote from: OpsaA lot of people I know just used the switch-over as a decision not to have TV at all any more.
Here in the UK that's legally possible, but the few people I know who have no TV get pestered repeatedly by the BBC to pay their license.  They seemingly won't accept that you don't have a set, and never let go.  It sometimes amounts more or less to harassment.  If you turn on a TV you must have a BBC licence, even if you never watch the BBC.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Swatopluk on February 04, 2011, 09:21:16 AM
The German GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale = fee collection central) is worse. It's not just 'more or less' harassment. The only thing missing are armed thugs (the ones they use seem not to be packing (yet)). But now they have achieved what looks like final victory. It will be a fee per household soon that does not differentiate between different kind of media. That after they failed to have each and every PC declared a TV (even if it included no soundcard etc.).
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 04, 2011, 09:27:12 AM
The license people occasionally used to raid the halls of residence at #2 daughter's medical school.  Students would rush round alerting the others and everyone would be hiding their TVs.  My daughter had an early b/w laptop with a TV card and they never even glanced at it.  This was 1996-7, when such things were rare.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Aggie on February 04, 2011, 04:25:21 PM
???

Very strange, from a North-of-American perspective. Do you need to take a test to get a TV licence? 
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on February 04, 2011, 04:47:42 PM
Frankly I don't get the point of TV licenses, why not just add it as part of the general taxes fee? If the idea is that everybody will end up paying it why not cut the expenses of finder "cheaters" and just charge everybody a flat rate? That's where IMHO the idea of "fairness" goes beyond logic.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 04, 2011, 05:29:11 PM
Quote from: Aggie on February 04, 2011, 04:25:21 PM
???

Very strange, from a North-of-American perspective. Do you need to take a test to get a TV licence? 

Just a way of charging.  It began with radio licences, back when few people had a set and only users had to pay the BBC, which was the only station.  Then came TV licences, now radio licences have gone, but it's been politically impossible to change it - the idea is to keep the BBC independent of the government.  You have to pay the BBC if you have a set, whatever you watch, but not if you haven't.  IF you can make the beggars believe you.

I have to say the BBC is more or less free of Government interference and I wouldn't like to see it funded from taxes.  (It's monstrously left-biased, but that's not the same thing.)  But why not advertising, like all the other channels?
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Aggie on February 04, 2011, 05:41:40 PM
That was my first reaction too, Zono - why not fund it out of the public coffers, like the CBC?  I suspect it has to do with the history of the Beeb, and the fine Vogon bureaucratic traditions of the British Empire.

Oops, have cross-posted with David...

The CBC stands apart from the government as an arm's length crown corporation, but gets about 2/3 of it's revenue from government funding (they do advertise, on television but not the radio):

QuoteAlthough the CBC has a similar remit to that of the BBC, and therefore has a unique national responsibility to advance Canadian culture without commercial objects, the CBC's budget is a fraction the size of the BBC's budget. The BBC received about £3.1 billion in licence fees during 2007/8 compared to the $946 million the CBC received from the public purse and which was split between French language and English language services.

The CBC tends to be a little left-biased in today's political climate (i.e. they are solidly centrist, but don't shy away from criticizing corporations and highlighting environmental topics, which makes them positively pinko by American standards ;)), but they reliably savage the two three major political parties equally, with special focus on whoever is in power (neglected the BQ there, regionally dominant but never in the running for leadership nationally).  There's little evidence to my eye of being a mouthpiece for the leadership, and I find them to be a good model of a balanced and informative media outlet, IMHO.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling DavidH on February 04, 2011, 05:56:50 PM
I saw a review of the autobiography of Peter Sissons, a long-time BBC news anchorman.  Sissons apparently rants about the BBC's lefty bias:

QuoteAt the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.  By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on ­running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told 'it's all in there'.

He's not the only person to think that.  Some programmes, notably the prestigious Today, are so biased against the Tories and interview so unfairly that I know many Tories who believe the Tory leadership should forbid MPs to appear on them.  I think so, too.

Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Griffin NoName on February 04, 2011, 07:31:15 PM
I'm happy with the BBC and the licence fee and no adverts. Hardly watch the other channels as so much rubbish.
Title: Re: Bye bye, old-style TV.
Post by: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on February 04, 2011, 07:49:28 PM
Quote from: Sibling DavidH on February 04, 2011, 05:29:11 PM
But why not advertising, like all the other channels?
At the beginning I thought the same about NPR but that is what makes it independent, when your livelihood depends on advertising you would never dare saying bad thing about the advertisers.

Left of Right bias is fine if the difference isn't that big, from here Tories and Labor aren't really that far apart. OTOH here in the States the distance between the so called 'left' and the [far] right is significant.