[Nepeta]

I never said it was unconstitutional. I said that it was a mistake. Let me explain what’s wrong with digital TV:

I live no farther than 6 miles from all local transmitters, and within 4 miles of most of them. Nevertheless, heavy snow or wind or rain tends to block some stations. The mode of transmission for digital is not the best that could have been chosen. I have completely lost stations that were 50 miles away.

OTA digital is great--when it works--but it doesn't always work.

[MarkL]

Digital signals don’t propagate anywhere near the distances that analog signaling can.

A good example, from the days before wide-spread fiber optic use in computer networking was 10Broad-36, which was sort of an analog version of what many people call “ethernet.” It used 2 coax cables, but you could run a distance of 3600 meters, as opposed to Ethernet’s 500 meters without a repeater.

Another example is the fact that a POTS (plain old telephone system) wiring’s local loop could go a very long distance between your home and the central office, but the very same line that carries DSL is much more limited in distance.

Mark

[Strk321]

Yes. The analog signals would fade, but never freeze up or cause the sound to cut out. One problem is that digital transmission is at much lower wattages than analog. They could use higher power, but cell phone companies rudely demanded more bandwidth.

“OTA digital is great—when it works—but it doesn’t always work.”

Theoretically you have a better picture without our old friends Dot Crawl and Color Bleed, when as you said, it works.