flynn23 wrote:
I guess the thing about this that makes me bristle is the whole question of why? Who gives a fuck about digital television?

The chief argument is not "because digital television looks better" or "is more modern". As I pointed out to bucy above, yes, there are parts of industry that likes this push. But most of the television industry is in push-back, not push mode. They don't want this.

The primary cited reason for why is -- bandwidth is limited. When wireless transmission and uses were less well understood, a whole lot of spectrum was allocated to analog television.

Now we are finding ourselves constrained by those initial practices. Analog television stations are extremely bandwidth inefficient, and at fixed frequencies. Whether your local community uses all VHF 2-13 channels, your millions of analog televisions can receive them, and so effectively the entire range is out of use nation-wide. With digital broadcast, you can fit many more stations per segment of bandwidth, as well as take advantage of advances in signaling technology -- televisions won't be bothered by signals not intended for them.

Basically, they want to reuse half the television spectrum for emergency communication systems, without risking damage to all televisions. That's the why, and that seems like a reasonable why to me.

Why not provide broadband internet access to every citizen?...

For $1-3 billion dollars? Good luck. I'll return fire with the same argument I made above: 100m households. $3b / 100m = $30/household. I won't even extend my numbers to consider present broadband penetration, because I hope it is obvious that that isn't even going to make a significant dent.

Same with your health care and education items. Yes, I agree with you that they should be handled or at least made a significant discussion beyond political posturing. But this digital television item is a line-item in a budget. I believe we're still spending $1b/month in Iraq. This is not a Congressional Issue like healthcare or even broadband internet access (do you really want the USGov to be your ISP?).

Given that television content (and nearly all media content ) will be packetized inside of 5 years organically

Source? That's a very bold assertion if I understand what you are saying, and I would want a reputable citation before I accepted it.

Is this similar to Bucy's assertion that this isn't worth the hassle considering 80% of televisions get their signals from terrestrial broadcast? Why bother upgrading the signals if you can just download it over the internet?

subsidizing the conversion from analog broadcasting to digital seems like a lost plotline from a Max Headroom episode in 1986.

I am fairly confident that the $1-3billion dollars proposed is not anywhere near the actual cost of this conversion. It isn't going to the people who make money using digital television. It is going to making the technology for the consumers to change their consumption more affordable.

RE: Senate Sets 2009 Digital TV Deadline - Yahoo! News