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.