The feds are going to provide ATSC to NTSC converters free (cough
cough) of cost to the poor.

Cable and dish are a big part of the market. It isn't clear to me if
the feds are going to mandate that HD be delivered over those services.
Even if they feds do mandate HD to subscribers, there is cash flow to
recover the cost of new set top boxes.

My preference would have been for a new broadcast band for terrestrial
digital audio services, rather than a retrofit that causes interference
to conventional users. I don't get too bent out of shape over FM IBOC,
since the capture ratio of the analog receiver will give the fringe
listener a fighting chance at decent reception. However, AM BCB is
another story. You can't reject the IBOC hash in AM.

clifto wrote:
wrote:
The trouble is that there are (probably) a half-billion analog
receivers in the USA alone capable of receiving analog AM / FM, and
these can't be abandoned overnight.

Funny, there are more television sets than people in the USA, yet they are
being abandoned virtually overnight. Or at least the chuckleheads in the
FCC think so. The cable and dish providers, and the public, know better.

--
If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.

wrote in message
oups.com...
The feds are going to provide ATSC to NTSC converters free (cough
cough) of cost to the poor.

Cable and dish are a big part of the market. It isn't clear to me if
the feds are going to mandate that HD be delivered over those services.
Even if they feds do mandate HD to subscribers, there is cash flow to
recover the cost of new set top boxes.

The feds are not even mandating HD on OTA stations. As far as I can see,
most programming on DTV stations is in low res format (720i?) And I'm not
impressed in the least, analog looks much better (we're stuck with digital
satellite feed for our US/English content, and it looks like total garbage).

I think 720p is a minimum and it's 4x the resolution of NTSC. Going
from 720p to 1080i isn't that much of a difference, though you notice
the difference in a side by side comparison.

Brenda Ann wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
The feds are going to provide ATSC to NTSC converters free (cough
cough) of cost to the poor.

Cable and dish are a big part of the market. It isn't clear to me if
the feds are going to mandate that HD be delivered over those services.
Even if they feds do mandate HD to subscribers, there is cash flow to
recover the cost of new set top boxes.

The feds are not even mandating HD on OTA stations. As far as I can see,
most programming on DTV stations is in low res format (720i?) And I'm not
impressed in the least, analog looks much better (we're stuck with digital
satellite feed for our US/English content, and it looks like total garbage).

wrote in message
oups.com...
I think 720p is a minimum and it's 4x the resolution of NTSC. Going
from 720p to 1080i isn't that much of a difference, though you notice
the difference in a side by side comparison.

May be 4x the resolution of a VHS VCR (but not even quite that, at SP speed
most get 270 lines), but not quite twice what regular broadcast NTSC
resolution is. And NTSC STILL looks better because there's no artifacting
in it, and no pixelization. Our satellite feed is so bad you can see
artifacts in it every time there is a rapid pan or sweep, and when you have
color gradients, you can see large amounts of pixelization in the
transitions. I'll keep my analog, thanks, even if that means never watching
OTA TV again.

In article ,
"Brenda Ann" wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
I think 720p is a minimum and it's 4x the resolution of NTSC. Going
from 720p to 1080i isn't that much of a difference, though you
notice the difference in a side by side comparison.

May be 4x the resolution of a VHS VCR (but not even quite that, at SP
speed most get 270 lines), but not quite twice what regular broadcast
NTSC resolution is. And NTSC STILL looks better because there's no
artifacting in it, and no pixelization. Our satellite feed is so bad
you can see artifacts in it every time there is a rapid pan or sweep,
and when you have color gradients, you can see large amounts of
pixelization in the transitions. I'll keep my analog, thanks, even if
that means never watching OTA TV again.

I think it is interesting that you bring up a similar point about
digital video that I have been expousing about radio digital audio.

It's all about trying to cram a digital signal bandwidth and digitized
signal resolution in an analog spectrum space. This not unlike trying to
put a square peg in a round hole. You can do it but the results are not
pretty.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California