"SFTV_troy" wrote in message
oups.com...
Yes true. By the way, DX isn't dead. It moved to the internet, where
you can hear stations as far away as London, Russia, Australia, et
cetera. I hear more distant stations now than I ever did as a
teenager.


some larger (orphaning millions of listeners that don't live inside city
grade contours of broadcast stations, and lose their ability to receive
stations
that they were previously easily able to receive)

The analog FM is still there. So too are the websites, so rural
listeners can stream them off the internet. Heck, I listen to
stations in my hometown, and I'm currently 1000 miles away, just via
streaming.

Streaming is not DX. Also, where do you think these rural listeners are
going to get broadband internet access that would allow them to listen to
these streams? Ain't gonna happen, because nobody is supplying broadband
outside of cities. (hint: satellite internet doesn't handle streaming audio
for beans, since the backhaul is still via telephone modem, and the lag
doesn't allow for enough FEC... )

to larger still (the obsoleting of
literally hundred of millions (possibly even billions) of
currently useful devices (analog TV's (especially portables),
analog radios, turntables, cassette decks, ad inf.).


Yes. Just like when we abandoned horse-drawn carriages, steam
engines, and riverboats. It's called progress... moving from old
technologies to new technologies. Movign from slow or inefficient
technologies to faster, economical technologies.

BTW analog TVs are not dead. I've got a digital tuner attached to
mine, which means the set will die a natural death of old age. It's
not been wasted.



Those things were not abandoned wholesale or all at once. They were phased
out by attrition, nobody forced anyone to buy a horseless carriage. Plus,
there are still working steamboats and horse drawn carriages in use today.

Try connecting one of those set-top boxes to your portable TV at the beach,
or out camping.. I am not happy (nor is anyone else in the situation) with
having a relatively expensive pocket portable TV obsoleted and useless.

And has anyone considered the long term
ecological repercussions of having to dispose
of all these millions of now useless devices?

Trivial compared to the amount of trash generated from food
packaging. By volume I'd estimate a thrown-away VCR or Cassette
player is less than 1% the volume generated by food boxes, plastic
wrap, and containers.



Digital radio is an answer to a problem that doesn't exist,
and is/will create(ing) more problems than it solves.

Actually there is a problem. Young adults and teens are demanding
more variety, and analog radio doesn't have room to grow to meet that
demand (no room to add stations).


Most young people I know don't listen to radio at all. It's not in their
line of thinking. They listen to their mp3 players when they listen at all.
They couldn't care less about radio, and adding more stations won't change
that. Besides, have you checked out what kids listen to now? Almost 100%
rap/hiphop/urban. They don't want choice... they want conformity (as youth
always have.. not with the adult world, but among their peers).