Kill Your Television
Did you know that your TV is about to become obsolete? That nice piece of solid state analog sub-carrierwave decoding device we call the color television will be obsolete on February 17th, 2009. One of the longest living common usage standards ever, RS-170a, or the NTSC standard, was an expansion of the 1941 NTSC standard (for black and white television) is being pitched out the window. The FCC even has a countdown timer on their truly horrific website. The interesting thing is that most people (more than half in the US) have cable anyway, so this won’t really effect them. This is only for broadcast TV. I don’t actually watch TV so it doesn’t really matter personally to me, but I find it a really intriguing cultural phenomenon. And my TV will no longer be able to pick up television signals. It is DVDs only for me moving forward. It is interesting also because so much money is at stake. The TV manufacturers stand to gain, the FCC has already gained (selling off freed up spectrum to the tune of billions), and companies that help people set up their new (more complicated) tvs stand to gain.
Apparently the GAO is kind of horked off at the FCC though. I guess they don’t think the FCC did a good job pulling this off. I do sort of wonder how many old people with old TVs are going to turn them on in February in 2009 and wonder why they aren’t getting any signal. Sure you can get you converter box coupon for $40, but I really have to wonder how many of the affected people are going to know about that beforehand.
The ATSC replacement is interesting, but I really have to wonder how long lived a spec that enforces a specific compression encoding scheme is (and the older MPEG-2 at that! Europe is generally using MPEG-4), given how fast the technology world changes. And of course, even if the digital aspect of it is all fine, there is still the issue of DRM on HD and blue ray DVDs. Although it looks like HDMI is winning out there, so that might be hashed out in time for the new TVs to come with the appropriate connectors.
For the record, the last time I bought a TV was 1994. And it was used.
Update: A good non-technical history of the TV through the digital and high def age. Though his timeline for the DTV transition is out of date, they pushed it back two years because of lack of uptake. (They technically need to have 85% digital TV household penetration before analog goes dark.)