4 ms·

Going on a tangent, one advantage of the analog TV was that often one could watch a channel even in the presence of interference or a weak signal, whereas with

Going on a tangent, one advantage of the analog TV was that often one could watch a channel even in the presence of interference or a weak signal, whereas with the digital this is no longer possible.

primis 5y ago
This is actually a misnomer for the most part. While it is true that analog TV degrades gracefully to static and digital cuts out, Digital actually requires a lot less signal to noise to display. When digital cuts out it's actually at much lower signal levels then when analog tv is basically static. I will concede that the analog audio inside the signal is more robust, humans are very good at picking out sound from static.
clktmr 5y ago
There are codecs which support this. I don't know if it's used anywhere because it certainly only makes sense for terrestrial broadcasting.
- anthk 5y ago
  Yet, AM/FM radio is much better on remote, isolated places than DAB. I woudn't trust DAB on a emergency.
  - clktmr 5y ago
    At the cost of a much higher bandwidth. I don't disagree, just wan't to clarify it's not a issue of digital encoding.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. My car radio stays on FM because DAB is horrible.
      - clktmr 5y ago
        > The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. That's unlikely to be the reason. A 64 kbps AAC stream definitely has more potential than FM. If the DAB station sounds worse than FM station, it's probably because they use the same sound processing for both which is still optimized for FM.
criddell 5y ago
Analog TV could change channels as fast as you could turn the selector. Changing the channel on my TV now often takes more than 5 seconds. This seems like something that could be improved. Channel surfing is dead.
- pkamb 5y ago
  I use an antenna + HDHomeRun device on my network, then the Channels app on an Apple TV. This works much better and faster than relying on the TV's native tuner, remote, and channel-switching capabilities. https://www.silicondust.com https://www.silicondust.com https://getchannels.com https://getchannels.com

Going on a tangent, one advantage of the analog TV was that often one could watch a channel even in the presence of interference or a weak signal, whereas with the digital this is no longer possible.

primis 5y ago

This is actually a misnomer for the most part. While it is true that analog TV degrades gracefully to static and digital cuts out, Digital actually requires a lot less signal to noise to display. When digital cuts out it's actually at much lower signal levels then when analog tv is basically static. I will concede that the analog audio inside the signal is more robust, humans are very good at picking out sound from static.

clktmr 5y ago

There are codecs which support this. I don't know if it's used anywhere because it certainly only makes sense for terrestrial broadcasting.

anthk 5y ago
Yet, AM/FM radio is much better on remote, isolated places than DAB. I woudn't trust DAB on a emergency.
- clktmr 5y ago
  At the cost of a much higher bandwidth. I don't disagree, just wan't to clarify it's not a issue of digital encoding.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. My car radio stays on FM because DAB is horrible.
    - clktmr 5y ago
      > The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. That's unlikely to be the reason. A 64 kbps AAC stream definitely has more potential than FM. If the DAB station sounds worse than FM station, it's probably because they use the same sound processing for both which is still optimized for FM.

criddell 5y ago

Analog TV could change channels as fast as you could turn the selector. Changing the channel on my TV now often takes more than 5 seconds. This seems like something that could be improved. Channel surfing is dead.

pkamb 5y ago
I use an antenna + HDHomeRun device on my network, then the Channels app on an Apple TV. This works much better and faster than relying on the TV's native tuner, remote, and channel-switching capabilities. https://www.silicondust.com https://www.silicondust.com https://getchannels.com https://getchannels.com