Should Congress do more?
From Some Press for More Notice of Transition in TV in today’s New York Times:
On Monday, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights will release a report that criticizes the government’s publicity efforts so far. “The cost of a Senate campaign in Ohio in 2006 was nearly $9 million,” according to the group’s news release, “but for the nationwide campaign to educate consumers about the DTV transition, Congress has so far allocated only $5 million.”
If anything, perhaps the advertising campaign should have been started sooner, but there will always be people who resist change. I also don’t think that most people, such as the woman in the article, see any benefit in the switch, but billions in revenue will be generated by the auction of reclaimed broadcast spectrum. Certainly, the technology also allows for a better product to be produced by broadcasters in the form of higher quality broadcasts and more channels.
The NTSC broadcast system has been around over 50 years, it’s time to retire it. Very few things in the electronics world last 20 years, much less 50. When NTSC started the signal was a simple B&W, then they added color, then stereo, then captions, then other data. You can only do so much with 50yr old technology.
That being said I do believe there should have been more time between the mandate of ATSC tuners and the NTSC signal cutoff, 3 years wasn’t long enough. “What do you mean my 4 year old TV/DVD recorder/VCR is already obsolete?”
It should have been MANDATED years ago.
If it were not now mandated KFOR would be blasting their blury puke green picture forever.