thankGod wrote:bdickens wrote:Wow.
All the real problems in this country and we got Washington worrying about whether a bunch of professional couch potatos are gonna be able to get digital TV or not.
That just makes me proud to be an American.
Exactly! Washington should not even be involved.
This is a very overly-simplistic, misunderstanding of the issue.
Like it or not, the FCC (and thereby the Federal government) regulates the usage of the radio spectrum in the USA. There is a limit to the amount of spectrum available and it is licensed or reserved for various things. The television spectrum (UHF and VHF) has been around for a long time and analog TV broadcast required a relatively wide band and what is known as a "guard band", or an amount of unused bandwidth between bands in order to allow analog television tuners to acquire the signal and separate it from the adjacent channel's signal. Digital TV uses error correction and a data protocol in order to ensure you are getting the stream you are after so the guard band is not really necessary. This allows the spectrum to be re-allocated. Since the standard for digital TV allows channel numbering to be independent of the actual frequency, unlike analog TV, then TV stations can move their broadcast spectrum to another space without having to deal with informing viewers of the change and changing their "branding" so to speak ("Channel 7 news!" etc.).
Anyway, the point is we are running out of spectrum as we continue to move towards wireless devices such as cell phones and wireless networking. We used to continue to use higher and higher bandwidth but there is a practical limit to how fast you can broadcast that is dictated by physics. They still use microwave and other high-frequency transmission but there are major drawbacks so this unused, dormant space in the UHF and VHF spectra comprises a very valuable natural resource.
Lest you think this is a waste of time or it doesn't affect our economy let me give you a quick economics lesson. The radio spectrum that is being used by cell phones, digital TV, wireless internet devices, wireless computer networks, etc., all enables bandwidth. Bandwidth availability drives content. Content drives bandwidth the other way. People are employed in the making of the content, building equipment and selling it to make new content (where do you think HD video cameras come from? Servers that have to store huge amounts of video data for editing? Editing workstations? Monitors? Digital TVs? Chipsets?). Something has to broadcast all of that bandwidth. That drives sales of equipment for broadcast, installation of said equipment (cell towers, cell phones, wireless access points, etc.), pays salespeople's salaries, sells chipsets, employs engineers. Someone has to lay all that fiber, pull up the copper wiring, build the data centers, test it, write code for it, administer the networks, answer phones for the service providers. Then of course, bandwidth drives hardware. Once the fiber goes in, some head-end has to be built. Maybe it's a Cisco switch. The back-end, CO, or metro devices have to be upgraded, more fiber installed, eventually you are going to buy that swanky new DVR (which someone had to design, build, make, sell), a new TV, stereo system, etc. And of course a new computer. There are many companies right here in Texas that depend greatly on the increase in bandwidth for their business, especially in Austin and Dallas. If this dries up, thousands upon thousands of Austinites will lose their jobs. So fixing this spectrum issue is a real economic problem that needs to be solved.
Anyway, if you have a beef with the Feds being involved in licensing the air waves then I guess you have a right to your opinion but this has been this way since the dawn of radio. Otherwise we would have mass chaos and nobody would be able to communicate reliably via radio. There was no business incentive for TV stations to make the switch, and no real incentive for consumers to make the switch, but it was something that we (the people of the USA, represented by our elected officials) deemed necessary on a national level so a FCC rule was required to make it happen. There was no way that TV stations or consumers would make the switch without the law.
Now I agree the gov't shouldn't be giving away converter boxes or coupons. That was not the FCC's idea. That was, again, your wonderful elected officials. Problem is that we expect the government to do everything for us.
You may not watch TV so maybe you think it's wasteful for the gov't to spend $40 for someone else to get a converter. But that's very low on the list of ridiculous government spending. Tilting at windmills. Howabout the fact that I don't use public schools but I still have to pay the government $8000 PER YEAR out of MY OWN POCKET to finance the schooling for other people's children. That's a much more serious waste of my tax money than the $40. Even if the government gave a converter box to every man, woman and child in America, it would still cost only about 1% of the cost of our so-called "Economic Stimulus Package". I suggest you redirect your rage in another direction.
Quite frankly I'd much rather these politicians waste all of their time on this meaningless junk that costs barely anything compared to the serious damage they can be doing (and are doing) to our economy. If they did nothing but argue about digital TV and converters all of the time and never did a single other thing we would usher in an era of prosperity like never before.
And all because people who don't want to change realize that their elected reps will keep giving them free passes. Those who haven't prepared yet aren't going to until they're forced.
