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Technical Editor Paul Rako looks at analog technology in power supplies, interface, the signal path, and life in general.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Analog TV ripped off by the government

Now that TV stations and the press are announcing that analog TV is going to die next year, it is obvious that there is a lot of consumer confusion. I read one article where a reporter seemed to think the converter box was where the signal came from. Wrong, the death of analog TV affects people like me that use an antenna. They are mostly low-income people that cannot afford cable or satellite. You still need the antenna, it is just that you need a converter box, really a tuner, to demodulate the digital TV and then send it as an NTSC signal to your TV. You don’t need a big old yagi VHF antenna, a little loop will do. There is also some confusion about if all TVs are affected. Wrong, only TVs that use the NTSC modulation scheme need a converter box. My 5-year-old Sharp 45 inch LCD has an ATSC tuner and will not need a converter box. The same goes for my 47 inch ~~Olivia~~ [Olevia] 747i. The government will give you a coupon for to help pay for the converter box, but it will not pay for the box like they promised five years ago.

One source of confusion is that the FCC is really doing two things: 1) Changing the modulation standard from NTSC to ATSC, 2) as well as shutting down channels 2 through 13. You will still think you are tuning to channel 4 with a converter box or an ATSC television, but the station is really up on the UHF band 14 to 51. It used to be 14 to 83, but the FCC already pushed everybody off of channels 52 to 83 and auctioned off the spectrum for many billions of dollars.

The real howler is that the press thinks that this is about improving the quality of TV. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real reason is what drives most every political and business decision: filthy lucre. By pushing analog TV stations off channels 2 to 13 the FCC can turn right around and auction off that spectrum for about 30 billion dollars. In general, the quality of digital TVs reception sucks, just look at digital stations right now. The digital TV ATSC tuner does support 1080i high-definition, but one of the ways the FCC tried to bribe the old networks off their precious channels 2 to 13 was to allow for digital compression that can then broadcast up to 6 stations on the bandwidth of one of those old analog UHF stations. Sounds good, but to observe how badly this works just tune in 9.1, the PBS station here in the SF bay area. It is a high-def station and at first you really think it looks great. Then something moves and the screen fills with blocky jpeg artifacts since there is so little bandwidth available. See, PBS channel 9 has decided to really use all those extra station, so they broadcast HD on 9.1, reruns on 9.2, political stuff on 9.3 and kids programming on 9.5. I think 9.4 is used for cable, I don’t get it over the air. Since they have so many stations crammed into the bandwidth of one old analog station, the picture quality is abominable. Any time the screen has motion, especially fire or running water, the picture is ugly and blocky and pure crap. The digital compression can provide better resolution for a given bandwidth, but HD needs all the bandwidth it can get.

The other crappy aspect of digital TV is range. Everyone knows that UHF stations do not punch out across the countryside like the old VHF stations on channels 2 to 13. Indeed, that is why the FCC bribed and bullied and pressured the old stations off the VHF band, the wireless people are salivating at getting frequencies that can punch though buildings and into tunnels and bridges. There are sure to be people that have antennas that work great on channels 2 to 13, but will never be able to get good reception for these new digital stations. The government does not care, these people are poor and probably don’t vote.

The final crappy thing about digital TV is the way it handles interference and weak signals. See, when you are on a fringe area of an old VHF station on channels 2 to 13, all that happens is the pictures gets snowy and the sound gets static, but you can still see the picture and hear the words. Digital TV needs a nice contiguous bit-stream. If one packet drops out, well, reboot for setting to take effect. This is especially infuriating when listening to concerts. There will be frequent audio dropouts. Since the UHF band is higher in frequency interfering sources such as airplanes and CB radios and other sources pretty much insure you will have audio and video freezes and dropouts.

Now, if this hidden tax was not depressing enough, needless to say, like pretty much everything else the government does, they made a complex botch of the whole implementation. See, this was all about filthy lucre for the government, not your viewing pleasure. But there are hundreds of low-power stations that the FCC did not want to buy off or pay for new transmitters. So there is a low-power analog TV pass-through mode, I assume this is allowed since it will not clobber the wireless stuff that the FCC will license and auction for the analog TV bands. Or maybe they only allow analog on the UHF bands, which is more likely. Anyway, these new converter boxes should have a pass-through mode and indeed, most new televisions should also have a NTSC tuner so they can get these low power analog stations. This should be a real mess.

In order to see what unforeseen consequences will happen when they close down channels 2 to 13 and change the modulation format from NTSC to ATSC, the FCC is doing a trial run in Wilmington ~~Delaware~~ [North Carolina]. The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) has issued a release:

NAB Statement Regarding DTV Test Pilot in Wilmington, NC

Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the creation of an experimental test market – the Wilmington, N.C. designated market area (DMA) – for the full-power television station transition to all-digital broadcasting. In the FCC experiment, full-power stations in the Wilmington market will shut off their analog signals on September 8, 2008 – a full five months before the national transition to digital television (DTV) occurs on February 17, 2009.

NAB’s Vice President of the Digital Television Transition Jonathan Collegio issued the following statement:

“The FCC-initiated experiment in Wilmington can shed light on a number of issues surrounding the national DTV transition in February 2009. The results must be objectively reviewed to determine how or whether the findings can be applied nationwide. NAB will be fully supportive of our local television broadcasters in this effort.

NAB hopes that this experiment will answer important questions that will help all parties ensure the success of the DTV transition, including:

What is the coordination plan between the federal, state and local governments to distribute information about the September 8 experimental analog shut-off?

How will the government ensure retailer coordination so that enough coupon-certified converter boxes will be available given the increased demand of the early shut-off date?

In particular, what specific actions will the government take to ensure that retailers have “analog pass-through” converter boxes available, given the low-power television stations in the Wilmington market, including one major network affiliate?

How will the government prioritize converter box coupon application requests originating from the Wilmington DMA, given the current national backlog of coupon requests?

What action will the government take to ensure that national messaging or messaging from bordering markets about the February 17, 2009 transition date does not result in confusion in the Wilmington DMA?

How will the government ensure that satellite operators accelerate their coordination schedule?

How will the government ensure that cable operators serving the Wilmington market are prepared to coordinate an early analog shut-off and have they made plans to ensure viewability to analog television subscribers?

We look forward to working closely with our Wilmington stations, the FCC, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and other parties as they move forward with this initiative.

Broadcasters nationwide have led the private-public partnership to ensure a successful DTV transition, committing more than $1 billion towards a multiplatform campaign to educate Americans.”

Note that anytime you hear the expression “private-public partnership” that means business and government are colluding to rip you off. Just thought you would want to know.

Perhaps a little analogy would serve to illustrate what is really going on. Instead if ethereal radio spectrum lets make the property in question be beachfront property maybe down by Malibu. OK, so in 1930 a bunch of little travel trailers pulled on the property and enjoyed the view. These were the radio stations. Even though everybody got along pretty well the government saw a opportunity to tax and regulate, and it passed the 1934 Communications Act. By pretending to arbitrate between trailer owners, the FCC said it would help them. But the real deal was that the FCC took away the property rights of all the trailers parked on the oceanfront. The trailer trash did not own the oceanfront property, the “people” (i.e. government tax pigs) really owned it. They would let the trailers stay there and would tell them where they could park and what new trailers could move in and what kinds of yard decorations the trailers could have. The trailer trash loved it because it protected them from competition. The FCC loved it because they could control what was done and said, always good for propaganda. The politicians loved it because those little brown envelops started pouring in for “campaign expenses”. Everybody was happy.

In the 1950s in came the TV stations, analogous to triple-wide trailers. The FCC carved out new beachfront for them and provided the same deal- monopoly privileges in exchange for money, censorship and propaganda rights. Another match made in heaven.

Well the 1990s come along and that oceanfront property is looking pretty good. The cell phone pigs, in our analogy lets say condo developers, really want that property. The nice thing is that the trailer-trash broadcast industry does not really own the land, the FCC just lets them park there. So a few city council meetings and the condo people, who have fatter envelopes and more glib and persuasive lobbyists, convince the FCC that it they should evict the original trailers, the ones with the best view, and then allow them to put up condos. This happens in real life with eminent domain abuse so it is no surprise it also happens in the virtual worlds of spectrum allocation. A bunch of bureaucrats clack a little wooden hammer down, a bunch of meetings and proposals, and pretty soon the triple wide trailers (VHF stations) are getting towed over to share the lots with the doublewide trailers (UHF stations). The old single-wides (radio) are left untouched but perhaps only because talk-radio would raise such a fuss if the FCC tried anything.. The condo’s are going up in 2009, and we all get to pay way more for whatever wireless service that buys the spectrum, since the auction price will be astronomical.

The real problem is that spectrum is not handled like property, as it should be. If the radio and TV station owned the frequencies they broadcast on, some would have surely already sold to the wireless companies and we would have 20 dollar a month cell phone service instead of 60 dollars a month. But with the way it really works, the government can issue a hidden tax in the form of spectrum auctions, which we pay for since the wireless services has to pay that off. The cell carriers don’t care, they just pass the costs to us, as long as there is no low-cost alternatives they are safe, and the FCC will make sure we have no low-cost cell-phone alternatives. The broadcast industry must really feel left out, but they can’t deliver the brown envelopes or the lobbyists, so the FCC gives them some deals as hush money and hopes they stay quite. All we the people do is pay pay pay. Welcome to Amerika, where the government is not broken, it is just for sale to the highest bidder. The wireless people have a lot more money than the TV people. They win.

Now, do I really think the FCC is on the take and all telecoms are pigs? Not really, they are all just wallowing around in a bad system, each of them trying to get over on the others. The FCC does at least understand that more wireless bandwidth may lower costs, but I always root for the underdog and the old analog TV stations and the people are surely the underdogs in this little situation. I hope all you high-dollar engineers have cable and satellite. Us ascetics will not be surprised when the government comes after the next batch of money, perhaps a lot closer to home. Enjoy the picture show.

Related entries in: Analog |

Reader Comments

(Add your comments)

at 5/14/2008 11:02:57 AM, Darren Holdstock, UK said:
We've had terrestrial-broadcast digital TV in Britain for a few years now, and I can confirm the fears outlined in the article. The signals are so heavily compressed that the audio quality is significantly worse than NICAM (itself a step backwards from FM), and the video is heavily compromised even without interference and with a strong signal from a dedicated yagi dipole digital antenna. The video compression can't cope with high-bandwidth signals (e.g. snowy, foggy, or just fast-moving) and stutters in protest, and is very prone to interference. It's an opportunity missed - instead of a few high-quality digital channels, we now have dozens of channels of mediocre technical quality, and now that the broadcasters (and advertising revenue)are spread more thinly the programme quality has suffered. Filthy lucre indeed.

at 5/14/2008 12:37:05 PM, Francis L said:
Street price for those converter box are around $60 and the govt. coupons are worth $40. You can get them at www.dtv2009.gov It''ll be really funny if the test pilot program failed miserably and they had to push back the national shut off date. And it does seem the digital tv isn''t reliable enough. They really should use a scheme where it''ll actually degrade in quality gracefully? Or perhaps use the bandwidth they auctioned off as redundant channels.

at 5/14/2008 2:04:32 PM, george said:
Olivia or Olevia?

at 5/14/2008 2:20:50 PM, JimE said:
I'm one who will be affected. I live partially surrounded by hills and have a huge antenna in my attic. I get our local channels 3/6/10/12 fairly well, but above that, it's rather poor. When we switch to ATSC, I don't know if I will get any channels. My coupons from the government are here, but I'm waiting for a box that has analog passthrough, but since my coupons expire in early June, I may not get that function. One more thing; I think there's a mistake in you article when you say that channels 52-83 are already gone. We have a local station on channel 69 here and it is still being broadcast. I'm pretty sure that channels above 69 are the ones no longer in existance.

at 5/14/2008 2:23:24 PM, Jesse Lackey said:
Please take your "us" vs. The Government and Big business hyperbole and paranoia to a political website. NTSC was invented approx. 60 years ago. I can't wait for it to be replaced. In the end, if the video quality and transmission range are as poor as you claim, and many people are dismayed, the TV industry will continue to slide and they have nothing but themselves to blame. Most people don't notice or care about motion artifacts, free TV is free TV (with a one-time $20 expense), and I want to see that bandwidth get used for something, anything, else by Bad Big Business or whomever. The switchover could and should have been handled better. We got the White House administration "we" (not me) voted for. How much longer should we wait before dumping NTSC? 5 years? 10? forever?

at 5/14/2008 2:25:04 PM, Shane, Raleigh said:
I dropped DirecTV for OTA digital on a Tivo Series 3 over seven months ago. And it has been great. Although I did have to move my Channel Master 4228 when the leave came in this Spring. But the antenna had been leaning on my deck rail for 6 months working well. However, I agree. The switch to on-demand delivery is only a matter of time. However, I believe a Tivo type box in the living room is going to be the desired form factor. The only real hurdle appears to be the DRM limits and changing how everone thinks of delivery. The early roll-out is actually Wilmington, North Carolina. I believe North Carolina also had the first live commercial HD transmitter, WRAL in Raleigh. <<In order to see what unforeseen consequences will happen when they close down channels 2 to 13 and change the modulation format from NTSC to ATSC, the FCC is doing a trial run in Wilmington Delaware.>>

at 5/14/2008 2:31:09 PM, Rick R said:
Couple of errors in the original post: "You don’t need a big old yagi VHF antenna, a little loop will do. " Sometimes this is true, probably not if you are some distance away from the transmitter. In my case some of my channels which come in well on analog; don't come in at all on digital. "the FCC is .. shutting down channels 2 through 13". No. Just 2 through 6.

at 5/14/2008 2:33:13 PM, Sick of it All said:
TV is for people with nothing better to do. That's pretty sad. Pick up a book, buy a newspaper, go for a walk, weed the garden, read to your kids, help a neighbor, build a birdhouse, paint the living room, clean the gutters, scrub the tub, sweep the walk, talk to your neighbors, swim, kayak, anything but sitting in front of a boob tube. As far as I'm concerned, with a few exceptions, nothing on that box is worth my time to watch. Flush the whole business down the loo, we'll all be better off for it. TV is a wasteland of lost opportunity.

at 5/14/2008 2:33:14 PM, Tom L said:
Wow, what insight. being a licensed ham radio operator since 1956 I have seen our bands scammed and reassigned many times. Then we pioneer the new trashy ban and make it work and it happens all over again. Then comes the cable operators that recompress the compressed video and audio to the point where I need a cold compress on my forehead. Thanks for the great incite, this confirms what I compressed in my mind.

at 5/14/2008 2:43:26 PM, Dave Robertson said:
> You don’t need a big old > yagi VHF antenna, a little > loop will do. That depends on your location and distance from the transmitters. > ...as well as shutting down > channels 2 through 13. > ...the station is really up > on the UHF band 14 to 51. Not so. There are digital (ATSC) channel assignments in the VHF (ch 2-13) band as well as UHF. See: www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6466009.html follow link to FCC final channel assignments document. > screen fills with blocky > jpeg artifacts You mean MPEG-2 blocky artifacts. Really, a little less hyperbole and more fact checking please.

at 5/14/2008 3:01:36 PM, A. Atanasian said:
On a bright side all this should accelerate the death of the traditional TV and will make more people to move to Internet based TV-like services. I''m just afraid that Internet may be next on the list...

at 5/14/2008 3:08:22 PM, wallen said:
Wow - you''ve put such a negative spin on a such a positive step in television! You have obviously focused on the possible problems, and have ingored the benefits. I''ve been watching ATSC channels for 6.5 years, and find them to be clearly superior to their NTSC equivalents. Freedom from noise, ghosts, interference makes for great images, and the sound can be significantly better. Of course there can and will be problems with certain installations, but the problems are comparable to those encountered with the NTSC transmission system - but the rewards here for solving the problems are much greater. And note that Channels 2-13 don''t go away, only the upper UHF channels (over 50) will no longer be used

at 5/14/2008 3:18:48 PM, Tim, Washington St. said:
This is a thought-provoking blog. I thought I would take a couple of minutes to clarify a few points. Point one is that the FCC is no taking away complete bands of television signals. What they are taking back is what broadcaster''s were initially loaned to begin the digital conversion, namely the second digital "companion" channel. The ongoing television spectrum will be Channels 2 through 51. That includes the current low band VHF, high band VHF [2-13] and UHF, up to Channel 51. Above Channel 51, the government will receive monies collected through spectrum auctions as well as redistribute new spectrum out to public safety entities. The real concern broadcasters are facing are new wireless digital manufacture''s, such as Microsoft, Google, Cisco and others, concepts to co-mingle computer applications within the television bands. These "digital spectrum sharing" devices are proposed as unlicensed, and could be very injurious to television reception for years to come.

at 5/14/2008 4:32:32 PM, JohnR said:
Yeah, the government is colluding with business to rip us off, nothing new here. What, we should abolish the FCC and let the loudest transmitter on any band win? OK, enough hyperbole. All politics aside, the only reason for confusion is the massive stupidity and idiotic ludditry (?) in the American public. My Mom was in this category, but after a few minutes of explanation and encouragement I got her signed up, or at least resigned. Analog reception is crappy at best, and over-compressed digital channels are the fault of the broadcaster; talk to them, don't blame the government. I don't readily accept the hyperbolic statements about needing to restart the receiver whenever a packet is lost. If you read the Amazon user comments for the conversion boxes, some people say that their quality improved dramatically with the digital reception where it was fuzzy in analog. Of course some said it got worse. As always YMMV but the existing facts pretty much guarantee that it's not an objective disaster. Only if the ripoff media companies abuse the compression will it be bad across the board. Case in point: DirecTV (Satellite) compresses heavily, about 4:1, but it's very watchable even with rain fade. In contrast, the monopoly sodomist ComCast serves some really badly compressed channels. So where are these highly touted "market forces" that the Libertarians and Neocons love to talk about shaping and saving our nations? They're in the bottom of a beer can.

at 5/15/2008 1:36:49 AM, emc2logpi said:
Come''on Paul! Tell us how you really feel! :-)

at 5/15/2008 7:06:48 AM, Jim W., Canada said:
I was at first intrigued by the original article and fascinated by the following comments. But then I started wondering how long before us folks here in the ''Great White North'' start down a similar path? Our esteemed Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council has established a history of dictating what ''they'' will ''allow'' us to watch while at the same time portraying themselves as only following the public bidding. People used to wonder why I kept my old 15" BUD in my backyard for 25+ years, now they are asking if they can tap into my signal!

at 5/15/2008 11:20:31 AM, HAS in MS said:
There is a bit of truth to all this, but the details are so factually in error that I wonder how this can be an analog tech "editor". Unless perhaps they have been educated in some foreign language. The writing is a bit less that stellar, but the facts are along the line of dis-information. PLEASE go back and re-read your blog, edit the errors and then re-establish the rant. In reality I DON'T disagree with your perception at all, as Jack Webb would say, "just the facts,Mam" and the correct ones please.

at 5/16/2008 7:05:54 AM, marcucci said:
My big concern being on the edge of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is that with all of our recent hail storms and tornado watches, my DirecTV satellite feed was dead, the graciously supplied over-the-air tuner on my DirecTV box couldn''t lock into a signal, and the only signal I could get was the analog one still being broadcast. When this signal is stopped I am going to have to try a higher-gain antenna than what I have or resort to using the radio, which has been VERY inacurrate and slow. It''s nothing like being able to flip on the TV and see an up-to-date radar map with torandos and hail storms accurately referenced. Our town also has no tornado sirens. I suppose my family will revert back to the "old days" when we would have to huddle together in the closet or basement for an evening whenever bad weather approaches.

at 5/16/2008 12:49:51 PM, Michael said:
Paul, you rant and rave but don't have facts to back you up. You obviously live in the Bay Area and know it well enough to envision where I am. I live in Almaden Valley behind a hill which partially blocks the SF transmitters some 50 miles away. I've had a big attic antenna for the last 30 years. When I pick up my Zenith converter box, I immediately got beautiful sharp pictures in place the crappy ones I use to have. More than that, I get way more channels than I used to, all very good all the way up to channel 65. As for channel 9.1 2 and 3, I watch those quite frequently and they are exceptionally good. I don't know how you can live with yourself spewing falsehoods that you do regularly on your column.

at 5/18/2008 10:46:46 AM, Mike W said:
I'm amazed that someone writing an article to clear up the confusion about digital TV made such a huge error: TV stations are not being pushed off channels 2-13. These VHF channels will still be in use in the post-transition market, though UHF channels will be more common. It's true that right now almost all stations are using UHF channels for their digital signals, because that's where all the unused channel space is. But they were allowed to choose their post-transition frequency designation, and many (including San Francisco's channel 7) chose to move back to their original VHF frequency. VHF isn't going away.

at 5/19/2008 4:12:03 AM, dave said:
Sir: This column does both you and EDN a disservice. Channels 2-13 are not being lost to TV (check the FCC website for details). Additionally, you should know that VHF frequencies don't propagate well into concrete-and-steel buildings (although they propagate very well in free space). That being the case, there's little chance the wireless industry is going to be terribly interested in the spectrum, particularly Channels 2-6. Please check your facts before launching your opinions.

at 5/19/2008 2:22:43 PM, RJH said:
Jeez you guys... why shouldn''t we just lock into a San Francisco writer''s anti-government views? ...just like "MAN-MADE" Global Warming... with these folks, the GOVERNMENT is almost always either the problem, or the solution. My opinion is the smaller the government, the better. But EDN should certainly review past propagandistic "technical articles" from him, and replace this dude with more objective ''technical talent'' - unless it wants to be added to a long list of liberal rags (ie Newsweek, NYT, etc.) I no longer bother to browse.

at 5/20/2008 3:21:36 PM, Gordon said:
Everyone already picked up on your inability to get your facts straight. You must be a professional reporter. You have no business writing articles for a technical journals. Save you boss the trouble and resign.

at 5/20/2008 4:24:22 PM, Glen said:
Paul - you've earned an honorary doctorate in Electro-Politics, or maybe Socio-Electronics. I don't have cable and never will, so I appreciate your forecast of the situation. Your article has certainly provoked much positive and negative feedback. Only one suggestion; when it comes to government these days, the word "educate" should be replaced with "enslave".

at 5/21/2008 8:18:58 AM, daBear said:
The unintended consequences of this move by the government may be very good for democracy. $20 for a converter box isn’t much to most engineers, but to people scraping by it could be an issue. I expect many will also miss the $40 coupon, especially those who don’t have internet access. In the end there will be fewer watching TV. These people will miss their daily dose of corporate/government propaganda, and might start talking to one another and even organizing to get what they need. In the end they may become better educated and more engaged. That would be good for democracy and society, but bad for the current power structure.

at 5/21/2008 12:36:27 PM, Mike W. said:
Yes Paul, your articles have a trend of negativity. BTW - Are you a technical editor or political commentator? Mike W. - Cypress, TX

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Analog TV ripped off by the government

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