In case you missed it.

[cactuswatcher]

A bill has just passed the US House of Representatives, which will require TV stations to broadcast in digital only beginning in February 2009. Which means that if you have an old style TV it will not receive anything over the air after that date. Congress is planning on offering vouchers to help purchase converters to keep our old sets running. But apparently the converters won't be free.

I have no idea where this is going to leave Canadians.

Comments

nothing new, really

[anomster.livejournal.com]

This was originally going to happen at the end of next year, but it was dependent on at least 85 percent of US households' having at least 1 TV that could receive digital signals. Well, it's not gonna happen by then, so this bill was actually to extend the deadline.

In fact, the US is behind several other countries in the digital switch. 2 cities in Germany have already stopped having analog broadcasts, & the rest of the country will by 2010, the same year as France. Japan's supposed to do the same by 2011 & the UK by the end of 2012.

This info is from an article in Oct. 2005's IEEE Spectrum (http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct05/1911). (I know about it because I do proofreading for them.) A lot of the rest of what's in it is basically covered in OnM's post above, but anyone interested in more detail can check out the article. You may want to go to the end to see who they predict will be the winners & losers from the switch. They say less-well-off consumers will be losers in the short term but consumers in general will be winners in the end.

Of course, a lot of more-well-off consumers already have digital sets. Personally, I figure by 2009 those TVs will be available used. I'm gonna keep an eye out for that market!

Oh, & I searched the Spectrum article for "Canada"...it's not mentioned.

Re: nothing new, really

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Actually I believe the original 2007 deadline was for all stations to start broadcasting in digital, where as this deadline is supposed to end broadcasting in analog. Many stations are currently doing both. Since you've read the article, is the start deadline being pushed back by this, also?

Re: nothing new, really

[anomster.livejournal.com]

It doesn't say. The FCC lent "a second channel in the existing broadcast bands," to be used for digital broadcasting, to every TV broadcaster in the late '90s. Certain "taboo" frequency bands (diff't. ones in diff't. areas) are kept clear to prevent interference btwn. analog channels. But digital channels don't cause as much interference, so they were assigned as these 2nd channels in btwn. the analog ones.

The article is very specific about the end of 2006 being the original deadline for the end of analog broadcasting, not the requirement for all stations to start digital broadcasting: "At the time of the bandwidth loan, Congress set year-end 2006 as the date when analog service would officially cease and the extra channels would be 'returned.' " There may not have been a legal requirement to broadcast digitally, but broadcasters may well have considered it too advantageous to pass up & not needed any legal push to do so.

There's more detail in the article (http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct05/1911), a little more than halfway down the 1st page, starting w/"In the late 1990s."