TV: Why digital is necessary

[tothedj]

I think many people who currently have television sets, are asking the question,
why change?, as one reader said in his post earlier, television these days is
"mindless", and i agree with this person; Getting rid of his cable subscription
was probably the wise thing to do, because his children today are better off,
look how many choices we have, but the trouble is many of our cable networks
repeat things over and over, and most of the time nothing appeals to me, even
though i'm a cable subscriber; Whoever said back in the early 1960's that TV
is a "vast wasteland" knew something ahead of time, and will the conversion
to digital make a difference, i don't think so!

 

[anotherguyTN]

Springsteen's song updated for the 21st century: "500+ channels and nothing on..." :

 

[w9wi]

Also, the stations that are trying to hold on to lo-VHF need to get a grip. Hi-VHF even has problems getting picked up with a UHF antenna. If we just put everyone in UHF land we would be better off.

Numerically, surprisingly, there will be two more low-band DTV stations after transition than there are now, though the numbers will still be pretty small (40 stations, nationwide)

• 16: low-band DTV stations that will remain on their current interim low-band channel. Three of these are new stations that didn't receive a second channel.
  
• 16: stations moving to low-band from UHF. Five of these had UHF DTV channels "outside core" and were required to move.
  
• 
  Two: stations moving from high-band to low-band.
  
• 
  11: stations moving from low-band to high-band.
  
• 
  9: stations moving from low-band to UHF. (in all but two cases, the UHF channel is the station's current analog channel)
  
• 
  6: stations moving from one low-band channel to a different low-band channel. (in four cases, swapping between channels 5 and 6)
  

 

[dhett]

Three of these are new stations that didn't receive a second channel.

Which stations are those? I would have thought that they would have been eligible to participate in Round 2, like KFTU-TV 3 Douglas AZ did.

 

[Morgan Wick]

Interesting article suggesting the growth of high definition and DTV could see a resurrection of OTA antennas.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RABBIT_EAR_REVIVAL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

[w9wi]

Three of these are new stations that didn't receive a second channel.

Which stations are those? I would have thought that they would have been eligible to participate in Round 2, like KFTU-TV 3 Douglas AZ did.

My post was poorly worded...

There are three stations that received no interim DTV assignment and whose permanent DTV assignments are on low-band. In two of the three cases, the station's permanent DTV assignment is the same as their current analog assignment. (KVNV-3 Ely, Nevada and KPTW-6 Casper, Wyoming. The latter station filed for a license-to-cover just a few weeks ago.) The third station (KCWX-2 Fredericksburg, Texas, probably better known as KBEJ) has no interim DTV assignment but has been assigned channel 5 for their permanent DTV operation. (they can't use channel 5 for their interim operation because of nearby KENS-5 in San Antonio)

Why KVNV and KPTW didn't file for high-band or UHF channels for their permanent DTV operations? Good question. Seems to me pretty much the entire UHF band would have been available in Ely. And the situation in Casper has to be pretty much the same.

KBEJ (as they were then known) filed for channel 63 for an *interim* operation but was denied.