WTFs up with digital TV?

There have beenadds running about how it has been mandated by the feds that ALL TV must be in digital by '09. Seems nuts to me that not only do are they getting into things that are absolutely not the business of the gov but they are doing so in a way that can only really serve foriegn intrests paid for by us. TVs are not made here in the US and I doubt the converter boxes are either so basicly they pass a law to force broadcasters to stop broadcasting signals that most TVs can accept to make it so people have to buy new imported sets or converter boxes if they want to still have TVs.taser1

What am I missing here? Is there some reason Im not seing other than politicians getting their pockets lined to sell laws to foriegn manufactorers?

 

The biggest reason they are going there is that digital is easier to control. Nobody could operate an out-law station, like Freedom TV, on cable. COntrol the mind mush and restrict the ability to tell the truth. Simple and logical from the slave-master's point of view.

 

food for (the) thought (police),
Turn the "1984" paranoia up to eleven and Tinfoil fedora wearers want to know what data is going back down the cable ?(to the "net works" ?)during the handshake( log on).Even the addition of a Microphone? Digital audio going back? It is the perfect opportunity and environment...
Haven't heard anything; but in an era when your cars' air bag controller module collects and holds ("x number of ") seconds" of information prior to the activation. You gotta wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes...
It is surreal that would be the reason, but technically it is feasible;and now politically feasible; But I'd have to say, just because its do-able doesn't mean its actually happening. Just another angle to consider...
...

 

Hate to dissapoint but the primary reason for going digital is capacity. I'll use cell phone as an example since I have figures for that. Analog cell phone you can have one conversation for one frequency at one time. They tried to get over that problem (before digital) by limiting the range of a tower. Using that you can have multiple people on the same frequency in a given county. We called each limited tower area a "cell". But the general capacity is still the same 1 frequency = 1 conversation at one time. Going digital on 1 frequency you can have 2500 simultanious conversations. So now you can have 2500 conversations per frequency multiplied by the number of cells in a county.

A massive increase in capacity is likely the main driving force for digital TV as it is with digital phone service.

 

It also frees up the current bandwidth being used for TV for something else (what I have no clue)

 

as I hate to be the one to shoot a hole in your bubble but that is a just a good excuse, as it was with cell phones, to enable gps tracking and listening in to your conversations. It just wasn't that easy with analog phones, in-spite of band-width. How does the inability to receive an air broad-cast from a RF station in analogue have anything to do with band-width? Its a great excuse to enact the tools that WILL be abused.

 

It is much easier to listen in on an analog signal than a digital signal. Much cheaper equiptment too. GPS has nothing to do with with the tower. The gps chip is on the phone itself. Does not matter if the phone is analog or digital gps is not even on the same frequency.

Eh ? what do you mean an inability to receive an air broadcast ? All RF signals are broadcast analog or digital. All cell phones receive signals from a RF station.

A phone's ability to receive analog does not change. A phone either has that capability or not. What does change is the towers will no longer broadcast an analog signal. Bandwidth has nothing to do with being able to receive it or not. Dual phones (can use analog or digital) will keep working, just in digital 100% of the time. Analog only phones will have nothing to receive since the towers will not be sending analog signals.

I've been listening in on analog cell conversations on my cheapie radio shack scanner since the early 90's. Digital if anything makes it harder to snoop not easier.

 

Uh...believe this thread was about the digital t.v. switchover mandated by the FCC, but ya'll can argue all you want as long as you have filed for the proper permits ( permit to "dissent on a general non governmental issue"( U.S. govt form" B.S-EZ")


Capacity makes sense. Think of all the new value added features they can sell you in your cable package, Of course there is the inherent capability to abuse the information(and communications technologies).Your personal movie library stored online etc.

 

The social security number will never be used as a form of identification; think of it as sort of like a bank account number.
They could not activate my analogue cell phone and listen into my conversations at the dinner table.
Analogue phones would not and could not transmit gps data that can be monitored if your phone is on or not.
If you don't see the potential for abuse here with the increased digital package sold as for a the good for all, then clearly you are one of the few people that are actually safer thanks to TSA and there is no point in arguing with you.

 

Uh dude...sure you don't want to rephrase that?...( I'm sure you didn't mean that: that's a federal crime)...scanners are blocked from those frequencies by law.(Though easily and commonly hacked back into full service).

 

They are now, it did not used to be that way. Older scanners are not blocked on cell frequencies untill the law mandating that passed. My scanner is from the early 90's and quite before the cell block laws.

Besides, most cell use now are digital so my old scanner is useless for that.

 

I do see the potential for abuse, but you are talking about different un-related things.

Gps abuse has nothing to do with digital or analog. Just as gps in your car has nothing to do with gasoline or diesel. It is weather or not a gps chip is located in your phone (or car) not it's mode of communication. A gps equiped analog phone can be used just as well as a gps equiped digital phone.

By the way your cell phone is already digital from the very beginning. (microprocessor based) Digital or analog between tower and phone is just the method of transmission. Even analog phones when turned on has two way communication between it and it's local tower. How do you think your phone knows if it has service or not ? What your talking about is if there is a "backdoor" in the phone to listen in unknowingly. That is done at the firmware level of your phone and has nothing to do with digital or analog transmission.

Let me clarify my statement. Spying on a cell phone has nothing to do with digital or analog transmission. It can be done with either if that capability exists in the specific phone. Going from analog to digital is just going from a two lane road to a thousands of lanes freeway. It does not make active or passive signal interception any easier. It does however make it more expensive to do equiptment wise.

 

I see and understand the point you are trying to get across however along with the "thousand lane freeway can and do ( (O.k. "could" come control signals: like "turn speaker phone mic on"). Technically it was possible with analog, but its caveman easy for more sophisticated data to pass. Cells already talk back and forth to the tower to handle a "hand off"from one cell to the next. One of those"thousand lanes"could easily be going to a data "splitter" and packaged off to "saint elsewhere."...

 

Again the original post was a question about switching from analog TV signal to digital signal and why http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html#faq2

Why are we switching to DTV? An important benefit of the switch to all-digital broadcasting is that it will free up parts of the valuable broadcast spectrum for public safety communications (such as police, fire departments, and rescue squads). Also, some of the spectrum will be auctioned to companies that will be able to provide consumers with more advanced wireless services (such as wireless broadband).
Consumers also benefit because digital broadcasting allows stations to offer improved picture and sound quality, and digital is much more efficient than analog. For example, rather than being limited to providing one analog program, a broadcaster is able to offer a super sharp “high definition” (HD) digital program or multiple “standard definition” (SD) digital programs simultaneously through a process called “multicasting.” Multicasting allows broadcast stations to offer several channels of digital programming at the same time, using the same amount of spectrum required for one analog program. So, for example, while a station broadcasting in analog on channel 7 is only able to offer viewers one program, a station broadcasting in digital on channel 7 can offer viewers one digital program on channel 7-1, a second digital program on channel 7-2, a third digital program on channel 7-3, and so on. This means more programming choices for viewers. Further, DTV can provide interactive video and data services that are not possible with analog technology.

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Do you have to get new equipment? Yes/No, if you have a dish (directtv or Dish Network) then you don;t have to do anything as you already receive a digital signal, if you get your TV from local stations, not on dish then you will have to get a converter box to receive that signal, no different than putting a box like a DVD or VCR into your current system, that is if you don't want to buy a TV with a digital receiver. As far as having to buy something made oversea's, you don't have to if you can find a U.S. maker of digital converter boxes, good luck with that search.

 

Thanks that's a pretty convincing explanation. Where were you two days ago????

 

That was all I was trying to say. Yes there are bad sides to having more bandwidth. But that in and of itself is NOT "opening the floodgates" the gates were already open. If anything opened the floodgates to abuse it would be the E911 federal requirement to now have gps in every cell phone. If a phone is not E911 compatible it cannot be added to the network.


The whole bruhaha about spying as now possible because of a switch to digital tv (or digital cell) is just overblown.

 

I do that at work too, when there is a flame war of emails going on I wait until they are just about over and send a message to stir it up again, now I'm in a holding pattern