Digital TV slower than analogue television
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The future is sluggish
We are told it is the land of plenty, more channels, more choice, but it actually is adding to the couch potato time of New Age digitised viewers.
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The Analogue switch over! We are being sold the future as digital; cars, kitchen appliances, cameras, TV, radio, supermarkets. But the future is sluggish. The future is not performing and there is no instant gratification...
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| 11-6-2010 | Digital TVs actually cost more to run than Analogue,do not give as good a picture,and are more prone to faults.But my pet Gripe with digital is that when you are watching an outside broadcast news item from god knows where all you seem to get are heavily pixilated completely out of sync "man on the spot "reports,often so bad as to not be worth seeing. | arrawn |
| 06-5-2010 | Reason for going digital is simply so more channels can be fitted into the same space so increasing advertising revenue. HD is an attempt to make digital quality up the analogue standard, digital tv cannot give the same quality as analogue but the 'last' generation got used to poor quality video and images, eg mobile phone quality pictures and video recorders using tape so will now accept the poor quality that digital tv delivers. Digital TV is a step backwards re quality but commercial interests were more important than quality. | artuksa |
| 26-2-2010 | Gripe Number 1: Upon expiry of our old CRT TV, we set out to replace it with a flat screen LCD device. Not so easy! We could find nowhere that had a good range of makes/models that were actually properly tuned into TV channels - both Currys and Comet admitted that we could not compare picture quality because of this. How on earth can one make a choice ? We eventually opted for a small local dealer who at least offered a personal service and included delivery and installation in the price. No, one cannot just bring it home & plug it in any more.
Gripe Number 2: Installation ascertained that we could no longer receive some analogue and some digital programmes via our aerial. Since we have SKY this is not an immediate problem BUT if (or perhaps I should say "when") Sky goes down, we do not have access to some programs via the aerial. Also, I cannot use my video to record all analogue channels while they're still available.
The reason? We are told that these new TVs need a lot stronger signal and we would need a new aerial if we wanted all channels via the aerial!
It's all a nonsense, isn't it! Did the world really have to "go digital"? | Gus |
| 01-11-2009 | Thank you Lafcadio - here are my experiences of Digital TV.
In the past 18 months I've bought 3 digital receives simply because the old ones gave up - very green.
I've had a new TV aerial fitted, the chap that fitted stated that because of "some trees the signal might break up abit". He then proceeded to give me some widget to screw into my main aerial receiver as and when the signal gets poor (then simple swap next time signal deteriorates!!).
Just to be clear I'm in South Bucks, 25 miles from central London.
Most of the Digital Channels are rubbish/repeats/blank or only one a certain times of the day.
My old Analogue signal and 5 channels was fine.
Oh and I can't even move to Broadband - local connections speed is sub 1Mb - pathetic isn't it!!
Is it all hype, or just me?
Cheers
Dunc | Duncan |
| 12-7-2009 | DTV Those of us who have antennas find that the reception is always breaking up and we don't get the stations we used to. There is no place to gripe to and when you do find a place to gripe they tell you you need a new antenna. So I guess my gripe is why does the Government look for stuff that works so they can screw them up. | Dave |
| 27-1-2009 | uh oh...I am in the wrong country. I meant for it for the USA. I do apologize. That explains why I couldn't understand a lot of the above post. | Wilmingtonian |
| 27-1-2009 | We have had digital television since the first of September...Wilmington, NC. "They" tried to act like we were really privileged. If it doesn't improve, there are going to be a bunch of unhappy people soon. I now know not to get involved with anything...and to try not to look forward to anything on television...like the movie that wouldn't come in well last night because the weather wasn't perfect. Then there are the moments when something really significant to the plot is about to be shown or the punch line or a news event just to have the screen freeze until it is over. There are some periods where it works well....as long as it doesn't rain too hard, or get too cold, or there is too much rain or wind...or sometimes some other atmospheric condition that I am not even aware of. I read that the dust has calmed down and they are getting about the same amount of complaints in this area as they received prior to the "big switch." Some of us complain and then what...what good is it going to do? Are they going to stop the switch? Are they going to improve the weather? Should I just put their number on speed dial and call weekly? I have enjoyed reading more and the public radio station here is great. Good luck to the rest of you who will soon be getting this. | Wilmingtonian |
| 03-10-2008 | grumpyoldwoman; 10 out of 10 for this gripe? I'm afraid I'm going to lower your average, Lafcadio and supporters, with a resounding 0/10. Oh, for the test card from midnight to the early hours (after all, why should I choose my own bedtime?), 3/4/5 channels, snowy pictures (even in a summer film), a choice limited to cricket (yawn), star trek (I swear I saw that wall swaying as he slammed the door), little & large (give me strength)..... hmmm, maybe not. Tell you what, you can have three seconds off my life and I'll keep my sky. | BadMood |
| 01-10-2008 | Like most respondents, I appreciate your elegant gripe and the sentiments which generated it. The answer to your original question - without going too techie - is that it's the fault of the 'guvmint'. Our Lords and Masters have discovered tha radio spectrum, like many other resources which we have hitherto taken a bit for granted - is worth money and the existing analogue television service takes up too much of it. The process of digitisation allows the broadcasters to squeeze more channels into a small piece of spectrum by chopping the signal up into packets and sending them out all on the same frequency multiplexed (mixed) together. Now, something clever at the other end has to reassemble all of these little packets into the service we actually want at the receiver. This can take time. Sometimes a packet or two gets lost. (There's probably a lost packet office somewhere where you can go and collect them). All of this can add up to a detectable delay which you don't get on the spectrum-hungry analogue service. So, the pips will regularly be late on a digital radio: and Anne Robinson will regularly be late on a digital television - the later the better as far as I am concerned. I guess I could start a new gripe about the advent of high definition television services - the same rubbish programmes but in greater detail. | Gilgamesh |
| 20-8-2008 | Reading this has filled me with a bit of nostalgia. I remember that test-card. I think that particular young girl must be getting on in years by now. I remember too when TV used to go off at around midnight and we were serenaded by the national anthem before bedtime. We had three channels then, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. I think that ITV was actually the new kid on the block too.
To me, back then television programming seemed to be of a much higher standard, or maybe it was the lack of choice - we were happy to receive what we could. Ah... fond memories of watching Star Trek after tea time! Maybe there would be a Hammer Horror film on later or they'd show "When Worlds Collide" again! | Gavin |
| 20-8-2008 | "Well said", Lafcadio, in both senses of the word. You've hit the nail squarely on the head in this gripe, and you've said it beautifully and humorously. Indeed an excellent piece of writing.
I'm about to give up our Sky subscription because we have about 3500 channels of utter rubbish, and that's just the basic subscription as I've stripped out the sport (I loathe sport), the music (because 99% is not the type of music I like and even if it were, the visuals don't add much to it), and movies because most of the the stuff is dire and came out years ago.
Most of our viewing time is spent on the standard 5 or so terrestrial channels, but unfortunately we need satellite as our main home has no terrestrial reception. The only other stuff of any value is National Geographic, History Channel, etc. This costs me about £25 a month.
It could be worse though. I was in North America last week and we had cable TV. I stopped flicking through the channels at about number 400, unsure whether soap operas, God, Bush, sport, or shopping was the worst. As for news, utterly parochial. What a waste of time. | MikeP |
| 20-8-2008 | Most of the digital technology that is going to be forced on us is, like most things these days, unnecessarily complicated with far too many features that nobody wants. Has anyone thought about how old people are going to manage?
As you say it is also slow; I bought a hard drive recorder a while back and it takes forever for the programme guide to load itself.
The machine itself takes such a long time to come on that the very first time I switched it on I thought it was faulty because nothing happened for several seconds. I pressed the button again & then lost track of whether it was on or off before realising it was just very slow to respond! It also frequently ignores me when I press a button on the remote and there are about 20 buttons that I never need!
There is also the problem with digital that when the signal goes, it goes completely rather than the picture just going a bit dodgy for a while. A bad picture is surely better than no picture at all.
Then there are digital boxes that only receive one channel; alot of people probably haven't realised yet that they will not be able to watch one channel while recording another on a video any more. I think this was kept a bit quiet when cheap boxes were being sold as the answer to "going digital".
To top it all some of the poor people who bought these boxes have now found them obsolete after an upgrade to the service!
Is this really progress?
Oh and yes! 10 out of 10 for the gripe, it is good to read something that is properly spelled & punctuated (as well as being very entertaining).
I get totally sick of some of the semi-literate rubbish posted by people who seem to have slept their way through school! | grumpyoldwoman |
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