We're about a month away from the end of broadcast television. ... Maybe.
The United States, eager to auction off valuable spectrum space, has set Feb. 17 as a mandatory cut-off date, when all televisions must stop analog transmission and switch to digital.
The problem is that millions of television sets are not capable of receiving digital television signals and won't be able to receive anything after this date.
No problem, the government says. They'll institute a rebate program on converter boxes that receive the digital signal and spit out an analog one that the TV can read. Every household can get a $40 coupon, and the program will cost about $1.3 billion. Yeah, sure, that's throwing an insane amount of money at the problem, but it's much less than they would gain in auctions of the spectrum to various wireless interests.
But there's a problem. The budget has run out, the coupons are on a waiting list and millions of people don't have their converter boxes a month before the turnoff and switchover is supposed to take place. It's gotten so bad President-elect Barack Obama is already suggesting there be a delay in the switchover.
In Canada, the switch happens on Aug. 31, 2011, for the entire country except the North. We're facing the same issues two years down the road.
Less is more is less
Canadian broadcasting allocations in the electromagnetic spectrum
The chart above (from my favourite wall chart, which I guess shows how nerdy I am) is Canada's spectrum allocation table. Anything that transmits information wirelessly does so on a frequency allocated in the boxes above. I've noted the big broadcasting allocations for AM/FM radio and television. Note that this is a logarithmic scale, so every row is 10 times the size of the previous one.
Each television channel represents 6 MHz of bandwidth, which is huge. For comparison, the entire GPS system uses 25 MHz of bandwidth, air traffic control and FM radio are only 20 MHz each, CB radio only 1.7 MHz.
Multiplied by the 67 channels that can be allocated, that makes 402 MHz of available bandwidth, or enough to double the entire bandwidth currently allocated to cellular phones. Currently, the U.S. plans to reallocate only channels 52-69, or 108 MHz. And only part of that would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. But it's still worth tens of billions of dollars.
Digital television uses far less than the 6 MHz of analog, and under the ATSC standard that North American digital television uses, that same channel can hold up to six digital channels. This means that under the new digital system, more television channels have space to broadcast even though the total space goes down.
But is that really necessary? How many broadcast television stations exist in even the most dense urban area?
In Montreal, there are only nine:
- CBFT-2 (Radio-Canada)
- CBMT-6 (CBC)
- CFTM-10 (TVA)
- CFCF-12 (CTV)
- CIVM-17 (Télé-Québec)
- CFTU-29 (Canal Savoir)
- CJFP-35 (TQS)
- CKMI-46 (Global)
- CJNT-62 (E!)
If we include U.S. stations in nearby Burlington and Plattsburgh, we have six more:
- WCAX-3 (CBS)
- WPTZ-5 (NBC)
- WVNY-22 (ABC)
- WETK-33 (PBS/Vermont Public Television)
- WFFF-44 (Fox)
- WCFE-57 (PBS)
And for good measure we'll throw in CJOH-8, which retransmits CTV Ottawa's signal from Cornwall.
That's a total of 16. Even if we double that to account for larger cities like New York and Los Angeles, that's still about half the total number of channels available.
So here's my question: Why not keep analog television, reduce the number of channels to, say, 40, and move stations like CJNT, CKMI, WFFF and WCFE to lower channels?
Channel allocators used to worry greatly about interference, so they would avoid having a station on the same channel in Montreal and Quebec City, but the number of people who have TV antennas powerful enough for that to matter has reduced to near nothing.
Sure, it would be annoying for those stations to switch, but older TVs could still find them.
Can't stop the future
But even if we assume my argument makes sense, it's academic now. Broadcasters have already bought the equipment, lots of people already have their converter boxes, and 90% of TV watchers already use cable or satellite which isn't affected by all this at all.
An optimist might hope that with all these new channels available, new local TV stations might start up and we'd have more diversity in television. But if you think that's true you're insane. The Internet of today is the public access TV of yesterday. And at some point, probably many years in the future, we'll look at our current method of television delivery and laugh at the idea that people just sat and watched whatever some broadcaster decided to air.
As the VHF and UHF knobs on our ancient televisions become useless, I leave you with this song to contemplate what might have been if TV was made up of individual stations and original programming instead of national network rebroadcasters.
I don't have cable (use good ole rabbit ears instead) and because I'm near the port, I can't get any of the US channels and Rad-Can and TVA come in snowy (TQS and Télé-Qc, on the other hand, come in perfectly). I wonder one thing: can HD over-the-air signal resist interference better? i.e. If I bought a flat-screen TV tomorrow with an HD tuner, would the HD reception be easier to get?
Digital television's error-correction will resist minor signal degradation better than analog television, and the government would have you believe that whatever you can receive now will still be viewable under digital TV.
The big problem though is the "cliff effect", where the signal degrades enough that the digital receiver can't make heads or tails out of it anymore. Stations that you receive snowy might not pass this threshold and would be lost.
Great post but one small point: digital signals will still be terrestrial broadcast, so it's not the END of broadcast TV, just analog TV. Extra special thanks for the Canadian spectrum map. I'd been wanting one.
Do you actually have a physical wall chart of the spectrum allocation table? Where did you get it??
I've seen them, though I don't own one right now. I'm not sure where you can get one, though you might be able to get some large poster printer to make one from the PDF.
I used to have one of those wall charts, but I can't remember where I bought it. I'd suggest asking at a bookstore which sells federal government publications/maps, such as the one on the east side of University just above René-Lévesque, across from PVM. You could also drop a line to Industry Canada; maybe they sell them by mail.
[...] Fagstein has an excellent post on the end of analog TV signals in the US, and the same fate that will fall upon Canadians in 2011. [...]
We have basic free cable package that Vide@tron forgot to cut when previous tenants moved out 5 years ago. Is our adapter going to obsolete in 2011?
Cable isn't affected by any of this. Nothing will change there.
Most stations in the Toronto area are available digitally over the air (OTA).
Not so for Montreal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_in_Canada#Deployment
For people that have an HDTV with an ATSC tuner, digital OTA is great. No need to pay for cable if all you need is the basic channels. In Montreal, you can only get Radio-Canada, CBC and TQS... if you are lucky. Unless it changed recently, Radio-Canada/CBC digital are broadcast from the antenna on top of the CBC tower, so if you're on the other side of Mount Royal, you can't get it. TQS digital transmission in Montreal is also weak as well and they plan to change that with the 2011 switch.
Some people in Montreal have hooked up big roof antennas in order to get digital TV from Burlington/Plattsburgh:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=95756
Works for some people.
I don't see what the number of stations has to with digital TV. We can still have less channels and use even less bandwidth if you reduced the number of channels to 40 using digital. Digital TV works and looks better on a digital TV, so maybe flat screen TV are also a mistake. On a 52" TV 480p looks 10 time better than the analog channel .
I live in southern Ontario and could only get a couple of clear channels and a bunch of snowy ones. now I get them all crystal clear and couple more. One post above mentions the cliff effect. You get a perfect picture with a bad or great signal or not at all once the signal is to weak. That’s something to rave about not complain about.
Can we go back to black and white TV?
I live near downtown Toronto and most of the GTA digital signals are good, except that I do get bad reception occasionally in the Evening and weekends. I do not get CITS & CBLFT (no loss really).
[...] already argued that this digital transition is completely unnecessary, and that goes double for remote areas with few television stations. But the CRTC is going ahead [...]
I'm surprised there's been no comments on CTV Montreal going "HD!!!".
But only on CABLE.........
I find it ironic that CTV Montreal chose one of the "evil cable companies"
for their first digital venture, while flipping the bird to people who watch
via antenna.
You can probably attribute this decision to the "low-hanging-fruit" method,
but IMHO, if you're a feudin' with someone, you don't smooch their butt.