celticquill

Hi. I was wondering what the analog bandwidth will be used for after Feb.17th?

ShowMeRon

HTNut

It's already been chopped up into certain frequencies for auction and for public safety use. Ron's link is probably you're best bet for more details.

I wonder how those companies are going to be compensated if Congress delays the digital transition.

staticMHZ

my guess is they are very dissapointed about it. This is only making it more confusing then it already is. No matter when it happens there will always be people who aren't ready. The only way to get it over with is to pull the plug and then people will get off their butt and do something.

gnuarm

The purpose of the change over is to free up the spectrum currently used for channels 52 through 69. The change to DTV is being made part of this just because they can. It's not at all essential for analog TV to be dropped in order to allow DTV and DTV is not needed to free up the bandwidth. You can pickup DTV signals right now while still receiving analog TV as well.

I am sure that people will say it's too expensive to maintain both analog and digital transmitters, but I don't buy that. That's what the broadcasters are doing right now!!!

There is a "cliff" effect with digital TV where the picture quality goes from great with a strong signal to great with slightly lower signal to very bad to none at all with a moderate strength signal. I'll put it this way, none of the stations that I watch using analog TV will be receivable once they switch to digital. If the analog picture has noticeable snow, not objectionable, just noticeable, the digital signal is likely to not be receivable. I don't know what level of multipath will prevent receiption, but that can also be a problem.

So if you live in a city that has TV stations, you will likely receive a DTV signal ok. But if you live further out from the city or are behind hills so that you get a weaker signal, you are likely to not be able to receive a digital TV signal over the air.

Rick

HTNut

Well put, but not so sure I agree with not being able to receive signals outside of a city or behind hills. There's no doubt that obstuctions can make signals harder to receive, but I have seen some instances on other forums and the net where people have been able to receive digital signals from 140+ miles from broadcast stations, under not so perfect terrain conditions. Just as well as analog signals. For people further out than that, I'm sure they're receiving most of their stations via repeater, which will not be updating to digital this year.

cowboyup4christ

it was to cost PBS in NC 22 million to run both transmitters per month thats a big cost.