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Digital TV in the US flopped, as far as I can tell. Broadcasters were killed by their own greed. If a Roku is cheaper than an adapter box, and some of the cha

Digital TV in the US flopped, as far as I can tell. Broadcasters were killed by their own greed. If a Roku is cheaper than an adapter box, and some of the channels on it are also free-with-commercials, as well as cheap paid content, broadcasters push people away with the transition.

iamdave 10y ago
as far as I can tell Genuinely curious, but what are you using to measure this, or better asked: how do you define flopped? A year ago before I finally had everything in line to drop out of the workforce and go to Grad school I spent a lot of time in rural America and I met a LOT of people who didn't have Cable, but relied on rabbit ears plugged into converter boxes to get digital TV. Heck, for a while I even used it-and preferred it, forced me to do something other than sitting on the couch staring at a big rectangular box. Got me my local stations, which were more than enough to have soap opera / background filler noise on while I worked from home and got my Sunday football fix. Middle America conveniently forgotten once again?
- bmm6o 10y ago
  When the switch was made to digital I was really surprised at the picture quality and the number of channels available with just rabbit ears, for free. This was in LA so it could definitely be different in less populated areas.
  - donatj 10y ago
    I live five miles outside of downtown Minneapolis and have trouble picking up anything inside my stuccoed house. I've tried many many antennas and short of poking a hole in my wall and running an antenna outside nothing has worked. I was able to watch many many analog stations without issue.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Yeah the problem with digital vs analog is digital is "all or nothing." There's no fuzzy picture, there's either a picture or no picture. Which sucks!
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >and short of poking a hole in my wall and running an antenna outside nothing has worked. Isn't that what one's supposed to do in the first place? At least I live in a country and for the whole lifetime of analogue tv (and now digital) we've had antennas outside.
rb808 10y ago
Digital broadcast TV is usually better quality for the main channels than cable. Plus its free, a great companion to streaming.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
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.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Oh, and if you were wondering what happened to the rest of the analog spectrum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_spectrum_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_sp...
- omegaworks 10y ago
  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.
Johnny555 10y ago
Flopped? I dropped cable and went entirely with over-the-air (plus Netflix) in part because OTA digital broadcasts looked better than the overly compressed video that the cable company was pushing - compression artifacts were very visible and annoying.
gozur88 10y ago
In my social circle a lot of people have canceled their cable service and gone back to broadcast since since the digital switchover. There are dozens more channels than there used to be, and with better quality. If digital TV has flopped you wouldn't know it here.

iamdave 10y ago

as far as I can tell Genuinely curious, but what are you using to measure this, or better asked: how do you define flopped? A year ago before I finally had everything in line to drop out of the workforce and go to Grad school I spent a lot of time in rural America and I met a LOT of people who didn't have Cable, but relied on rabbit ears plugged into converter boxes to get digital TV. Heck, for a while I even used it-and preferred it, forced me to do something other than sitting on the couch staring at a big rectangular box. Got me my local stations, which were more than enough to have soap opera / background filler noise on while I worked from home and got my Sunday football fix. Middle America conveniently forgotten once again?

bmm6o 10y ago
When the switch was made to digital I was really surprised at the picture quality and the number of channels available with just rabbit ears, for free. This was in LA so it could definitely be different in less populated areas.
- donatj 10y ago
  I live five miles outside of downtown Minneapolis and have trouble picking up anything inside my stuccoed house. I've tried many many antennas and short of poking a hole in my wall and running an antenna outside nothing has worked. I was able to watch many many analog stations without issue.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Yeah the problem with digital vs analog is digital is "all or nothing." There's no fuzzy picture, there's either a picture or no picture. Which sucks!
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >and short of poking a hole in my wall and running an antenna outside nothing has worked. Isn't that what one's supposed to do in the first place? At least I live in a country and for the whole lifetime of analogue tv (and now digital) we've had antennas outside.

rb808 10y ago

Digital broadcast TV is usually better quality for the main channels than cable. Plus its free, a great companion to streaming.

nommm-nommm 10y ago

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.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
Oh, and if you were wondering what happened to the rest of the analog spectrum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_spectrum_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_sp...
omegaworks 10y ago
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.

Johnny555 10y ago

Flopped? I dropped cable and went entirely with over-the-air (plus Netflix) in part because OTA digital broadcasts looked better than the overly compressed video that the cable company was pushing - compression artifacts were very visible and annoying.

gozur88 10y ago

In my social circle a lot of people have canceled their cable service and gone back to broadcast since since the digital switchover. There are dozens more channels than there used to be, and with better quality. If digital TV has flopped you wouldn't know it here.