Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

What? Digital broadcasts did not flop in the US. I cant' imagine how you come to that conclusion.

You only need an adapter box if you have a non-HD TV. If you have a HD TV all you have to do is plug in an antenna directly into the TV. The government subsided conversion boxes when the transaction happened, which was around 2008 IIRC.

If you have a non-HD TV you aren't going to have an HDMI port to plug your Roku into, so that's a moot point anyways. There literary is no "Roku vs conversion box" it doesn't make sense.

There is also waaayyy more channels with HD broadcasts than analog broadcasts. I'm saying that as someone who went through the transition personally. In 2008 I had a CRT TV and was using rabbit ears to pick up local stations (yeah, I was a "cord-cutter" way before it was cool). I bought a converter box (which the government paid for half of it) and switched to HD when they cut off my analog.

And how were "broadcasters killed by their own greed?" How is broadcasting TV for free "greedy?"

Oh, and the transition was mandated by the FCC and Congress (with the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005) not "greedy TV stations." It was done in order to free up spectrum for other stuff. The amount of spectrum the Earth has is finite. Duel broadcasting digital and analog of the same content at the same time was taking double the spectrum. Verizon bought some of the previous analog spectrum to use for their 4G network.



Oh, and if you were wondering what happened to the rest of the analog spectrum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_sp...


Finally someone talking sense in this thread. Just cause Dvb has the capacity for many more stations doesn't mean the spectrum will be used for that purpose. There are so many better uses (WiMAX, metro wide internet) of the new freed up spectrul can now suit.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: