Friday, June 19, 2009

Digital Transition

As most people in the United States know, last week was the day in which most analog television signals stopped being broadcast, switching to digital (a few local ones in some places still are broadcasting in analog). I'm between not caring and really dislike that this has happened. The reason I don't care is because I watch very little television (I do not have cable or satellite), preferring to watch things on dvd/the computer. I do not even know most of the shows that are on television and the ones I do know about I mostly don't want to watch (if asked what shows were on I'd have no idea). I have had the required adapter for awhile know though (ready before the February date that was pushed back).

There are quite a few reasons as to why I dislike it though:
1. Have to acquire a new device to make televisions, which have worked for decades, continue to function the way they were created to.
2. Having multiple televisions requires the purchase of several of these devices.
3. The box has to be plugged in which means more electricity is being used.
4. Old televisions which still worked but had no antenna/internal antenna and/or many of the portable televisions are now just garbage (I threw away an old black and white still working television because there is no way to get it to work).
5. No place near me recycles televisions for free, computers and computer parts they do, televisions they charge you.
6. Four to five second delay changing channels, I like to flip through channels when I do watch television, this is now more annoying.
7. Lost a channel, signal too weak. Problem was this was the best channel on the tv, PBS, and really there is no reason for this, I'm less than two miles from the antenna broadcasting the signal. It's not completely gone, just most of the time it seems.
8. Have and still use a VCR, recording programs, specifically setting it to record programs on multiple channels, is now very difficult/impossible depending on what and how you wanted to record it.
9. Many people have trouble setting up and/or using the new box's particularly old people.
10. Some times acts likes a broken/scratched DVD, i.e. digital distortion, picture freezing and pixelation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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antimatterenergy said...

After a year with the digital broadcasting I am still pretty unhappy with it. The problems I encounter the most and find the most annoying still is digital distortion, lose of voice, picture freezing, signal not found error message, and pixelation. There really is no reason for this since I am not very far from the broadcasting antennas and am using a large antenna not a small one. Walking by the TV and storms seem to regularly cause these problems.