The frustration level is rising...Trip on over the fold for a good old fashioned rant.
I. AM. A. Geek. I have been a geek since the early '80s and I'll probably be a geek until the day I die. I devour new gadgets. I drool over nifty cell phones. I had a laptop when it was a luggable. I've built computers, worked as a technical support technician and set up a Linux box.
I knew DOS commands once upon a time!!!!
What has this geeky-girl so flummoxed? The Digital TV transition. I know, I know... everything you ever wanted to know about the transition is out there on the intertubes. Lib Dem FoP did a great diary back in January on some of the meat and potatoes of the switch over.
The government's website does an OK job of getting the information out, to those that can understand it. What about the not-so-technically-inclined? The PSAs that the TV stations run about the switch, address those with analog TV's and those with Digital TV's but not those in the "maybe" category. I'm pretty smart, but I didn't know that my 32 inch HDTV was not able to receive an over-the-air digital signal. I had to dig for it.
In my excavation, I found out a couple of things:
*The TV may have all kinds of digital words on the outside, but there is no standard for labeling. I have an HDTV, but it doesn't have a digital tuner. It should be labeled HDTV-ready, but it's not. You need to do your research on each and every TV that might be ready to receive digital signals.
*There is no standard resolution! TV stations broadcast in different resolutions, 1080i, 1080p, 720p, 480i, and 480p. My TV is only capable of playing 1080i, 480i and 480p. What happens when you receive a signal in a different resolution? I've found that we need a "special" box or boxes. We need something that will up-convert the signal to one our TV can handle, without the use of an HDMI cable, which our TV doesn't support. Sounds like we have a pretty crappy TV, right? We actually have a very nice TV that we purchased approximately 5 years ago for a pretty penny, when HDTV was just starting to catch on. Oh yeah... We need another converter box to go back to analog for our second TV.
I really don't know how it could be made any easier. One suggestion is to have a designated "channel" in every large market that broadcasts a "yup, you're viewing a digital signal" message, so there was at least a local standard to find out if your TV works. It wouldn't help much, because "not working" could be anything from "You don't have a digital tuner" to "um... the coax cable is not tightened all the way." One thing I do know... I know that if I'm frustrated, there must be people out there that are completely defeated. In my mind's eye, I can see hundreds of depressed little old ladies giving up on their perfectly-good TV's and shelling out $ at the big box store, simply because the challenge of getting "tuned-in" with what they've got is just beyond them.
Now that I've got the TV figured out, it's on to the stations. There is a new way of saying channel two! Now it's 2-1 or 2-2. From what I gather, the digital TV signal can be split and have more than one set of data transmitted. So, your local PBS station can broadcast two shows on one slice of bandwidth, or 1 high quality show, or a show with interactive stuff, or, or, or... The naming thing is going to confuse a LOT of people. I can just imagine telling an elderly relative, "Turn to channel 2-1, please," and getting an "are you nuts?!" look from him.
Televisions are also broadcasting on temporary frequencies, and may or may not change the channel designation at the time that they go exclusively digital. Now... Uncle Frank just got used to going to channel 34 (a temporary UHF designation) and it may switch in June to channel 2-1. How many more layers can we add to the confusion lasagna?! I'll be surprised if Uncle Frank doesn't shoot his TV out of sheer frustration.
I just canceled my DirecTV service and am transitioning to antenna combined with TV from the PlayOn service over the Internet. It has its bugs and we're still working out the antenna "thing", but there is just NO WAY Uncle Frank could ever do it. Uncle Frank's choices? He can swear off all TV in the future. He can keep his current TV and be a slave to the Dish or Cable company. He can shell out big bucks for a new TV. OR... He can call on Laurdet to make sense of the mess behind his entertainment center, tell him what he needs to buy and install it for him just so he can watch the Monday night game come fall. Yep... I'll get right on that... after I figure out my own freaking TV situation!
Disclaimer: Uncle Frank is a fabrication and not a real person. Any resemblance to a real person is stereotypically intended.