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posted by martyb on Monday July 19 2021, @06:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the Never-Twice-the-Same-Color dept.

A long while back, the FCC set a hard deadline of July 13th, 2021, for shutting down the last NTSC television transmitters and transitioning channels to being digital fully. The other day, the last of the NTSC transmitters were shut down with hardly anyone commenting, except Hackaday which noted:

A significant event in the history of technology happened yesterday, and it passed so quietly that we almost missed it. The last few remaining NTSC transmitters in the USA finally came off air, marking the end of over seven decades of continuous 525-line American analogue TV broadcasts. We've previously reported on the output of these channels, largely the so-called "FrankenFM" stations left over after the 2009 digital switchover whose sound carrier lay at the bottom of the FM dial as radio stations, and noted their impending demise. We've even reported on some of the intricacies of the NTSC system, but we've never taken a look at what will replace these last few FrankenFM stations.

NTSC has been the analog protocol used in the US for television since 1941, initially for black and white and then by 1953 / 1951 for color. NTSC was sent at a 3:4 aspect ratio with 525 lines per frame at 30 frames per second. PAL and SECAM were the other two analog standards and used in other parts of the world. Four competing standards for digital signals are in use so far. They are DVB-T, ATSC, ISDB-T, and DTMB. The US uses ATSC.

The US has been among the last countries to switch over to digital television transmissions. The FCC gave stations lots of lead time, several extensions, and multiple exit strategies, including the choice of shutting down the channel and ceasing operations permanently.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday July 19 2021, @05:27PM (4 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Monday July 19 2021, @05:27PM (#1157954)

    For many reasons I was very unhappy about the switch to digital. I don't have, and have never paid for cable TV. Although there are a couple of channels I'd like on cable, no way am I going to pay for all that "stuff" I don't want. And I'm stunned at how much it costs now. And I don't watch much TV, especially now.

    I always had a dozen or so good NTSC channels. Although I'm somewhat far from the transmitters, and sometimes had to readjust the "rabbit ears", we always had acceptable reception.

    When they went digital TV, I got zero channels with indoor antennas- even small amplified ones. I was forced to put up an outside high-gain antenna with amplifier. And even with that I have 2 with a switch. They make them with electric rotor, and some will even "talk" to the TV / ATSC adapter and aim as needed, but there's a big delay- no "channel surfing" with that setup.

    But after all of that annoyance and some cost, I end up with several dozen clear high res. channels, of all kinds of "stuff", so it's a net win.

    My only ongoing complaint is that when digital TV breaks up due to weak signal, interference, etc., it cuts off hard. With analog, it generally faded in and out a bit, not the hard-cut audio mute you get with digital.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @11:14PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @11:14PM (#1158094)

    Human brains are great at detecting patterns and filtering out noise. I think the creators of ATSC didn't realize how good it is. Their argument about digital is that you could get worse signal than analog and still have the complete picture vs the noisy analog equivalent. Except that "noisy" analog worked just fine for a large number of people, especially if that is what they were used to having. Sure. the audio wan't perfect and the picture was faded and a little fuzzy, but you weren't watching HD video on audiophile speakers anyway and your brain can fill in quite a bit of the gaps, doubly when you consider that we are more sensitive to luminance than color and how the signal fades. And there is the obvious adage that even on the worse days, something is better than literally nothing.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday July 20 2021, @12:59AM (1 child)

      by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday July 20 2021, @12:59AM (#1158120)

      Yes yes, I think you've got it. With analog, you could still see all of the motion, and filter out the noise. And just like film / video frame rate, your brain can interpolate. But, when the image breaks up in random staccato, our poor brains can't get into a rhythm, and can't find a thing when and where it expects something to be. Our brains are significantly pattern-matching machines, and they mostly like it when something fits, including motion. (Too much fitting can cause boredom too).

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:08AM

        by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:08AM (#1158142) Homepage

        See above how I became accustomed to watching baseball on such a bad signal that my sister, unused to it, couldn't tell there was a picture.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @05:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @05:58AM (#1158665)

      A great example is this picture. [wikimedia.org] There are three patterns interposed on top of each other. Despite the end result meeting most tests for randomness, our brains can easily pick out each of the patterns used with a little bit of focus.