High Definition Television, what does that actually mean and how did we get from normal TV to here?

For those who don’t know, I am famous, how you might ask – I work in television. OK maybe I am not famous but I do work in television, behind the scenes hooking up all the gadgets that bring Barney, Curious George, Nova and Nature into your living rooms. I am sure by now you have heard about the shutoff of analog television, it was supposed to happen on February 17th but President Obama decided the country needed more time to get ready and extended the date to June 12th. There were caveats in the new rules though, your local stations could shut off on the original date, which many stations around the country did. There was also an option for television stations to shut-off analog any time between those dates as well. Where I work we have been working on the digital transition for 10 years and just recently I have been contemplating exactly what was forced upon broadcasters by the government and what the real changes to television are. Make no mistake about why the United States is shutting off analog television, it has everything to do with the government and an infusion of funds to the treasury. Broadcasters, on the whole, did not want to make the transition to digital, it cost each and every station literally millions of dollars and there was no business model to make money with it, an unfunded government mandate forced broadcasters to do it.

So having been involved with the transition for so long, I have lost any real objectivity about the subject, but as you know I will never shy away from commenting. I am not going to get involved in the governments merits for the original decision to make the change from analog to digital or the myriad issues it has created for people, young and old but I am going to talk about it strictly from the perspective of the massiveness of the technical accomplishment that has taken place. I have been in the electronics field for a long time and have seen countless innovations in many areas. Some have been successful – CD’s, PC’s and cell phones and others failures – Betamax, HD DVD and countless others no one has ever heard of. Through trade periodicals, trade shows, engineering conferences and a general thirst for technical knowledge and information about how things work, I try to stay on top of the newest gadgetry across industries. When you couple that with a base knowledge of the mechanics of how and why technologic advances work I feel well suited to talk about the subject.

So along comes an idea for digital television, it is NOT a new idea or plan, the first digital broadcast took place in the Washington DC/Baltimore market on September 16, 1997 – that’s right almost 12 years ago. It was the first live digital high definition television broadcast and they chose a Major League Baseball game to be the first. The game was captured on DTV cameras and transported via fiber and satellite to WHD and WETA stations in Washington and broadcast live, there were no consumer televisions at that point but the first broadcast was under the belt. We have come a long way since then and broadcasters have spent millions upon millions upon millions and I bet we are WELL into the billions as a group on hardware alone. That is just hardware let alone the additional gobs of money spent on educational programs and spots mandated by the FCC, and couple that with the revenue generation loss felt by having to educate consumers instead of selling spots. The cost of advertising on television is ridiculous and part of the reason for that is the digital television revolution. Working at a PBS station that is member supported I am worried that we still have folks who do not know that all analog television broadcasts are going to come to an end soon, our education program has been more intense than that of the local commercial stations.

So let’s think about and examine it for just a second from only the perspective of the technological achievement. An apt analogy, in my opinion, would be a program to replace the internal combustion engine with something else and have to do it without ever interrupting peoples ability to drive, their cars, trucks, motorcycles, trains, lawn mowers and anything else with an internal combustion engine. Imagine the magnitude of such a project, all without interrupting the consumer. With digital television the task was no less challenging. Every aspect about the way TV is created, distributed, transferred and ultimately broadcast is 100% different than the way analog television works, even the physical wires used are not the same, the cables are capable of passing 3gig signals . None of the equipment, from the cameras to the tape machines and video servers all the way to the transmitters are the same as analog. As we get close to the end of analog television broadcasting most people are unaware of the herculean effort that was required to make it mostly a seamless transition. When you think about that, it is analogous to changing the internal combustion engine to something else and not disrupting normal driving.

The feature set that is available with digital broadcasting is incredible, multiple channels in the same FCC regulated bandwidth, the transmission of data to automatically perform software updates on your new wide screen LCD and plasma screen televisions, the insertion of guide information so you can see what is on and what’s coming up. Lastly we have to talk about the incredible experience of watching a High Definition program in stunning clear 5.1 surround sound. It was only a could years ago I actually bought a set for my house, I was so close to it that I took it for granted. The first show I watched was documentary on PBS, of course, and I was completely blown away, my bride could not believe that I was gushing so much about it. I have been involved with it for a long time, I can tell you technical specifications, I can recognize macro blocking and explain the reasons. I can explain the modulation scheme of the transmission and yes it is still AM modulation, the same AM that is used for radio but I had never just sat down with a cold drink to watch it, WOW. The transition of the United States to digital broadcasting is truly an incredible technological feat and I can not think of any feat that compares, especially since to us television viewers it is still just programming coming into our living

What kind of television do you have?