USA mandates HDTV

[richard@auscoms.com.au]

Bernard -- you ain't been paying attention. We Aussies also beat the US to the
punch in mandating a new TV standard; within (?)15 years, buy a new TV or you
won't receive TV. This without, as far as I can see, any proven consumer benefit
beyond "it's new, it's digital, the pictures are great." At least colour signals
were backwards compatible with B&W receivers...

So just like Americans, we Australians will have the choice of the same old
crappy content on wonderful new TVs, or no TV at all...

Richard Chirgwin
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    USA mandates HDTV
Author: Bernard Robertson-Dunn <brd@dynamite.com.au>
Date:       27/10/98 12:11

<brd>
New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/biztech/articles/26hdtv.html
you need to subscribe, but its free and available to citizens not in
the USA

Now that's what I call a mandate!!!!!

BTW, there is still confusion between HDTV and digital TV.

I find this report truly amazing. In the land of the free, to be
told that you will have to upgrade your technology within a single
decade or you will not be able to receive TV -- well its just not
American.

I suppose we got in first with this approach my mandating the death
of the analogue phone network. It's nice to know we can set world
standards in something other than swimming.

But seriously is the drive behind this the government or big
business?
</brd>

The Dawn of HDTV, Ready or Not
By JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON
In six days, the nation begins the government-mandated changeover to
digital broadcasting -- a transition with no real precedent.

No other national technological transition has ever been backed by
this sort of government decree. Nobody was forced to trade a horse
for an automobile, a Victrola for a radio, a typewriter for a
computer.

But this change will eventually affect almost every household in the
nation. Sometime in the next decade or so, by federal mandate,
today's television stations will go off the air, to be replaced by
all-digital stations. At that point, everyone will need a digital
receiver to continue watching television.

... lots more.

--
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd@dynamite.com.au