Comment It's not all bad... (Score 0) 511
...but mostly it is.
We've been living with digital TV for 7 years in the UK and the cost of set-top boxes has fallen through the floor. Less than 20 quid will get you a brand new STB from High Street retailers, no hidden charges or subsidies, no subscription required. This gets us 20 or so mainstream channels and another dozen or so shopping channels of one stripe or another. It also gets us a couple of dozen digital radio stations.
Without this $3B hand out I would've been surprised if the cost of an STB in the states would've topped out over $20 or so. What are they gonna do now ? Give them away ?
I don't know what the capabilities of digital transmissions will be like in the states but in the UK it's been a mixed bag. Picture quality *is* sharper, true, but any kind of motion or dark scenes don't look good at all. It all depends on how much bandwidth the network uses which dictates how much compression is used. More compression = worse picture. Field sports (football etc) become almost unwatchable, the screen becomes cluttered with artifacts unless the network has bought a big chunk of bandwidth. BBC sports coverage is good, but you can't watch matches on the ITV network.
Sound quality, for us at least has taken a tumble. Analogue transmissions were usually in Nicam Stereo which was pretty good but we don't have Dolby transmissions here so plain ole stereo, which the digital stations use, sounds pretty flat in comparison.
We've been living with digital TV for 7 years in the UK and the cost of set-top boxes has fallen through the floor. Less than 20 quid will get you a brand new STB from High Street retailers, no hidden charges or subsidies, no subscription required. This gets us 20 or so mainstream channels and another dozen or so shopping channels of one stripe or another. It also gets us a couple of dozen digital radio stations.
Without this $3B hand out I would've been surprised if the cost of an STB in the states would've topped out over $20 or so. What are they gonna do now ? Give them away ?
I don't know what the capabilities of digital transmissions will be like in the states but in the UK it's been a mixed bag. Picture quality *is* sharper, true, but any kind of motion or dark scenes don't look good at all. It all depends on how much bandwidth the network uses which dictates how much compression is used. More compression = worse picture. Field sports (football etc) become almost unwatchable, the screen becomes cluttered with artifacts unless the network has bought a big chunk of bandwidth. BBC sports coverage is good, but you can't watch matches on the ITV network.
Sound quality, for us at least has taken a tumble. Analogue transmissions were usually in Nicam Stereo which was pretty good but we don't have Dolby transmissions here so plain ole stereo, which the digital stations use, sounds pretty flat in comparison.
