February 17, 2009 - the end of analog TV

[bascule]

http://www.digitaltvdesignline.com/news/179101979

[skroo]

http://www.digitaltvdesignline.com/news/179101979

Cool - I can keep my CRT Magnavox for another three years, then upgrade after the cutoff when DLP sets are dirt-cheap and standardised!

[TheCotMan]

Imagine the issues we will have with people trying to dump their old sets that may contain heavy metals. Imagine the money that will be spent to get rid of old sets added to the money that will be spent buying new sets. Resellers and manufacturers stand to make a lot of money, and brisk sales will (hopefully) bring down the prices of video capture cards that do on-card encoding of DTV.

/me budgets for new purchases of video capture cards and TV in 2 years.

[Deviant Ollam]

i have understood this legislation to be geared toward ending analog over the air broadcast television... services like cable will not be affected in any way. this is more about reclaiming precious and scarce spectrum space, not about forcing people to digital service. personally, i don't plan to upgrade any of my TVs for at least a decade, if i will even be watching any television by then is anyone's guess. chances are i will, like now, enjoy about two or three shows... all of which i'll be able to download in the blink of an eye. (by the next year or two, my guess is that mythtv boxes will have sufficient add-ons that a P2P style network will exist between them, all encrypted and all anonymously routed... shows that you like will not always have to be captured by you, but instead could be fetched from somewhere else. commercials automatically cut by means of publicly-generated edit point lists will likely be a part of that solution, methinks.)