[LINK] The US Digital TV conversion experience

[Scott Howard]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/technology/22digital.html?_r=2&ref=business
>
> Hopefully the Aust. Govt is watching what's happening in the US.


This proves nothing other than that people are stupid - the only question is
wether it's the people running the survey or those being surveyed.

"41 percent think that every TV in a house must have a new converter box,
even those that are already connected to cable or satellite."

Every single "Digital TV" ad (and there are a lot of them being run)
specifically states that TV connected to Cable or Satellite will work fine -
I simply can't believe that 41 percent of people would get enough from the
ads to know they "need" a new box, but not realise that they don't need one
if they are using cable/satellite.

A few days ago a number of the networks started doing something very simple,
but very smart - they are broadcasting a DTV "test" at specific times -
basically just a different message on analogue to digital, so if you're
still on analog, and thus need to take action in the next few months, you
can tell very easily.

The US transition has one major difference to Australia, and that is the
fact that only a relatively small percentage of the US has free-to-air TV.
I live less to 5km from the nearest TV transmission towers, yet my unit
block doesn't have an external antenna - the expectation is simply that you
will connect to cable which is wired to every unit.

  Scott.