Broadcast minister Shaun Woodward said: "The countdown to a digital future has begun.
"In October, Whitehaven will start the process of digital switchover. Residents will be able to reap the benefits of a greater choice of TV channels and better quality pictures and sound."
Bollocks. The compression hates cross fades. It doesn't exactly like the sudden bright lights of pop concerts. And I watched the Tennis from Eastbourne on digital and it had bloody JPEG compression artifacts. Static picture, dammit, yet it had rings round the tops of the buildings. Gah. And don't even try looking at the stripe pattern in the grass of the court.
Plus I love the way that the government is double charging on the great analogue switch over. The BBC gets to pay for it (sure), and to do this it is allowed to raise the licence fee above inflation. Yet the Government gets the revenue from selling off the freed up spectrum. Not the BBC. Hmm. And I wonder if the licence fee will go back down in 2012 once the BBC is no longer paying for the switchover?
Yeah, I remember I got really suspicious over here in the US when the digital craze began and I was simultaneously hearing "digital is great because it's better quality" and "digital is great because it lets us fit in more channels." Turns out the quality was not that much better than just having a dedicated cable or satellite pipe and the only real advantage was the compression that achieved more channels. And of course, I knew immediately that compression did not mean better quality, although it might still be satisfactory to me. But marketing is marketing, and so they'll sell it any way they can. And quality is somewhat subjective and varies from application to application, so I think they can get away with it. But I'd far rather get my choice rather than move by government mandate.
Today we don't actually get a television signal at all any more. No more satellite, and we just sold our last TV with rabbit ears.
I have been saying for a long time that the whole Digital TV thing is a complete rip-off whose only purpose is to make money for the Govt by selling off the freed up spectrum. Bah.
On top of that, I have yet to see any digital channels worth watching.
Re:Bloody Rip-Off
drhyde on 2007-03-16T11:08:13
BBC1 2 and 3 are occasionally worth watching. But not worth enough to schedule one's day around them. Hooray for time-shifting!
