Don't take my space telly away...

[babysimon]

I can get cable. But only analogue, until summer. Still, worth having if ITV Digital does collapse.

Comments

[ajva.livejournal.com]

If?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!


just my professional opinion...

[babysimon]

I meant if digital terrestrial vanishes from this country, not if the company currently known as ITV Digital goes into receivership. Sorry - didn't make this clear. In fact made it very unclear.

I know the probability of the latter is close to 1, but what do you reckon to the former? The government *does* want to turn off analogue terrestrial.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Phew. Well, of course, this is the Big News round my way. Okay, there are a few issues.

Firstly, the administrators are not going to send round bailiffs to collect the set-top boxes, as their resale value is minimal. So you have 1.3 million households with a set-top box, still able to tune into all the free-to-air DTT channels like the well-advertised BBC4, for example. A good basis for nationwide DTT, as far as the government is concerned? Maybe.

But you know, the UK was just about the only place in the world where digital terrestrial was getting anywhere. You may think the ONdigital/ITV Digital affair is a right fiasco, but actually it got further along the line than DTT in other countries. No bugger wants it, you see. The government may want to switch off the analogue signal by 2010, but it simply won't be able to if not enough people have digital. I suppose we all live with the assumption that "digital is the future" but actually digital TV signals are not all they're cut out to be. They can degrade badly - a lot worse than analogue. The technology is not good enough, and the money is not there to see the conversion through.

There are other issues that nobody thinks of. Like: what happens to your 2nd TV set? Or your third? All analogue sets would become useless at a stroke, so you'd have to replace all your sets, or get boxes for them all. Most consumers' reaction to that is "sod that", and rightly so.

It's a load of bollocks, really. The technology isn't good enough, the (pay-TV) content isn't there, people are happy with analogue terrestrial and/or cable/satellite and it's draining money from some of the biggest media outfits in the country.

OTOH, Men In Suits will want to save face over this. What may happen is that, in order to salvage something, the remains of ITV Digital's assets will be bought out and the government might try to find all sorts of cunning ways to entice us into DTT. Personally, I'm waiting until they start giving away the set-top boxes for free.

Until then, if you want to be absolutely certain of getting TV provision from a company that will never go bust on you, go with Mr. Rupert Murdoch. He is the Bank of England as far as media is concerned.

[babysimon]

Of course, I don't want to give any money to Mr Murdoch. He doesn't need any more encouragement. I know, I'm weird.

Personally I think we'll probably see some sort of ongoing DTT thing, even if it only has free-to-air BBC channels on it. I can't see the BBC being happy being an effective subsidiary of BSkyB.

Hopefully in another five years MPEG2 decoders (the main component in set top boxes) will be almost free, and getting a box for every telly in your house won't be insurmountable. But again, I'm an early adopter, and hence weird. And starting to resent analogue technology of all kinds on principle....

Oh my god

[babysimon]

Speaking of big expensive mistakes, I just remembered how much those UMTS licenses cost. I expect we'll be hearing about that soon too.

Re: Oh my god

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Yes. That's the other thing. The supposed reason the gvt wanted to go digital in the first place was the financial incentive of being able to sell off analogue frequencies. Duh.

And no, you're not weird to wish to resist Mr. Murdoch.