Thursday, February 19, 2009
some comments on the first scheduled analog / dtv transition date - no static ?...
From: Craig
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 10:15
Subject: funeral for a friend...
report's of analog tv's demise are premature, if only for a bit. instead, it's going to be a long slow illness, at least until june 12. and if the one local station that did quit analog is any indicator, after june 12 there will be zombie signals, alternating multi-lingual dtv how-to segments with a "blue screen of death" style static announcement display telling you that they are no longer broadcasting analog, go call these numbers for more info. i should get a picture / recording.
so why are they even on the air ? morons. if you're going to continue with that transmitter, why not just feed the normal shows ? otherwise, shut the damn thing off. it's saving no one anything. well, they are also the same station that must hire high school druggies for weekend & late night work, there have been frequent mistakes over the years, problems occurring without fixes, showing movie "reels" out of order, and so on. so I'm not surprised that other things they do make little sense.
i was hoping that the analog signal ended with some recognition. at least play the national anthem like they used to do when stations went off the air nightly back in the 70s, then a test pattern for a few minutes, then static. one of the local pbs stations still does that. not sure if it's only their analog signal; their schedule shows all night programming, but they always did have that habit of going off-air even before this dtv cvrap.
one shutdown tradition i liked was a station (in detroit) that ran a tape of the poem "high flight" being read while a fighter plane (?) was shown going ever higher into the sky. followed by the national anthem, then a test signal, of course.
one might hope for something less ignoble than a dtv transition loop, or a simple switch off - although this latter option still preserves at least some sense of dignity. perhaps just a run-through of old test signal displays. better would be an extended version of the old sign offs that they used to do. best would be some sort of special broadcast, some recognition & dignity for what has probably been the most globally transformative technology to date, internet / world wide web included. this transformative power is still being felt in areas of the world today as broadcasts get up and running ... but those are mainly satellite feeds now. somehow the relatively low-tech radio wave signals seem far more egalitarian, and certainly more accessible.
wonder what the aliens will think. you know, the hypothetical ones watching "i love lucy" re-runs light years away. the move to digital is likely to look like static to them, unless they perform sagan's "contact" routine in reverse. and what is the relative coherence of digital vs. analog signals in such a situation, in terms of snr, etc. ? so they may just think that we've blown ourselves up, turn off their sets, and move on with other pursuits.
which is what i'll be doing when all this draws to an end.