Journal: Editorial: DTV and IP

Today, the United States transitioned almost entierly to ATSC, a dubious new television transmission technology marketed as "digital television".

ATSC replaces NTSC, the National Television Systems Committee, the color system used in the U.S, Canada, Japan and Korea.

NTSC, sarcastically said to stand for "Never Twice the Same Color" is admittedly a system that was creaky and rusty and full of problems, it was an engineering nightmare, a dreadful hack that squeezed color information alongside the existing black and white channel, which was cleverly re-purposed to store luminance information.

This meant that no-one had to buy a new set, unless they wanted color. The FCC should have taken a page from the color transition, no-one should have to buy new equipment unless they want the purported benefits of DTV.... right?

That's of course impossible, the difference between monochrome and color is nothing compared to the difference between analogue and digital. The two are fundamentally incompatible.

The problem lies in the fact that the FCC rammed the transition through very, very slowly with numerous postponements, but rammed through never the less. Television encoding technology is another thing to add to the long list of venues not appropriate for government involvement.

Of course, the internetworking protocols themselves are due for a major, and likely tumultuous upgrade, the IP protocol is now at version 4, so great is the upgrade that it has been labeled version 6, skipping 5 altogether.

IPv6, unlike DTV is truely a necessity, the IPv4 pool of addresses is close to exhaustion, IPv6 has enough addresses to assign several to every molecule on earth. It should last us a good ten years of future Internet growth.

The other major difference between the IP and TV upgrades is that the IP upgrade is not likely to be rammed through by ill advised government meddling. The IPv6 upgrade is happening slowly, organically, according to the laws of supply and demand, and that's a good thing.

Radio is also facing a potential digital revolution, sans government interference. A number of radio stations are experimenting with "IBOC" a questionable digital radio transmission method marketed by an outfit named Ibiquity. IBOC seems to be catching on, in spite of problems with side-channel interference. There does appear to be at least some market for it, time will tell.

The FCC should have taken a page from IPv6 and IBOC and allowed broadcasters to make the DTV upgrade at their discretion, protests that that would have meant that no broadcasters would have made the upgrade are irrelevant, if the market for something doesn't exist why force it through?

Thank you Government.

For VNS technical support for DTV converter boxes, and a DTV Q&A as well as a list of problems with DTV see Support.DigitalTelevision

<< Contact Scraping & Social Engineering | News Index | Pulseaudio Fix and Further News on IVR >>

News & Notes is the a journal of The Vistua Network Administration and the factuality of this content is guaranteed. From time-to-time, this content may contain normative statements or set policy.