The end of NTSC analog TV

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Fri Apr 27 13:46:28 EDT 2007


On 4/27/07, Shawn K. O'Shea <shawn at eth0.net> wrote:
> ... the FCC believes that the government can make as much as $15 billion
> dollars on the auction.

  You can bet that's RF spectrum is the story behind the story of DTV.
 One popular conspiracy theory was that all the OTA broadcasters would
switch to DTV but stick to Std Def, which would give them something
like a 6:1 compression savings on the same programming.  They could
then sell off all the other spectrum to the highest bidder.  That's
not what's happening -- we are at least seeing a lot more High Def
broadcasts -- but there is still a ton of money to be made selling and
reselling that spectrum.

  You can bet the networks aren't doing this just out of a desire to
improve the American TV viewer's experience.  ;-)

> The FCC's official site for the switchover
> http://www.dtv.gov/index.html

  Complete with annoying flash animation and sound effects!

  "If I had wanted your website to make noise. I would have licked my
finger and rubbed it across the monitor." -- istartedi on Slashdot

-- Ben


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