EchoStar & DIRECTV Could Miss Digital TV Deadline

[Peter Parker]

IS that true that tehy must carry the analog till the end? IF so that certainly sounds like an area where the rules should be modified.

 

[Hall]

The local stations aren't going to stop analog broadcasting 'til they're forced to. In fact, they probably suspect that the Feb '09 deadline will be moved out *again*.

Geronimo: D* and E* don't have to carry anything. If they switched from the analog locals to digital locals, we (customers) really wouldn't know they did this. You might notice a change in PQ but otherwise it would be pretty transparent.

 

[navychop]

Another problem is that the sat providers MUST carry the analog signal as long as it is on the air. To add a digital signal too doubles the needed bandwidth until Feb 2009.

Dish and Direct are asking stations to flip to digital and turn off NTSC asap so they can start converting to digital feeds not the required analog feed.

I believe this is the case. They must carry the analog signal, if they carry anything at all. Digital is somewhat different. Perhaps the FCC could allow a transition, where satcos and each station agree on a certain date to switch to carrying digital. But then- just the "main" channel (which could be -1 or -2) for the people subscribing to SD locals? Then do SD locals "go away" on 2/17/09? Lot's of questions, and it's been known that these things haven't been answered for years. I suppose worst case would be a lot of locals being dropped on the transition date. It's really rather late in the game for the FCC to get off their butts and do their job.

 

[Peter Parker]

The local stations aren't going to stop analog broadcasting 'til they're forced to. In fact, they probably suspect that the Feb '09 deadline will be moved out *again*.

Geronimo: D* and E* don't have to carry anything. If they switched from the analog locals to digital locals, we (customers) really wouldn't know they did this. You might notice a change in PQ but otherwise it would be pretty transparent.

That was what I thought (and I even posted almost the same words earlier) but another poster mentioned that no they have to carry the analog signal. The post you responded to was in response to that. That si why i started the post with the words "Is that true?"

 

[aegrotatio]

They will want to downconvert the HD feeds from the stations into what is now the MPEG2 SD feeds they currently offer, so as not to shut everyone down who doesn't have the MPEG4 equipment.

ATSC is MPEG-2, so I'm confused by this statement.

As for the other post about letterboxing, it seems to me that when analog is turned off and people buy those digital converters for their old SD televisions they will experience the same squashed letterboxing that DiSH and DirecTV SD viewers would (on the SD feed).