[geeks] TiVo Observations (new owner)

[Phil Stracchino]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 11:59:08AM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> OK, but do most people really live in areas where OTA HD is sufficient?
> I look at the antennaweb site refered to by the above site to find that
> most of the people broadcasting HD-TV here are people who I had trouble
> recieving NTSC from using a roof top antenna.  I don't have confidence
> that it will work out well this time around with HD-TV.

If you have difficulty receiving NTSC over the air, the odds are indeed
poor that you'll be able to receive HDTV off the air.  The FCC, after
ten years of deliberation, took the easy way out and picked the
broadcast format candidate for HDTV that would require the least
equipment changes from NTSC, in blissful ignorance of the fact that it
was the crappiest of all the offered methods for broadcasting HDTV.
Ironically, it works *worst* in urban areas with lots of highrises and
multipath reflection issues, exactly where most HDTV subscribers and
transmitters are expected to be.

Your tax dollars screwing off on the job, as usual.

I don't know what came of it, but a few years back almost half the TV
broadcasters in the country were lined up behind a protest demanding
that the FCC change to a different broadcast spec for HDTV, because the
one the FCC selected basically barely even worked.


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