Posted on 12/02/2005 1:35:43 PM PST by nickcarraway
Zoran, a little-known chip company in Sunnyvale, is providing a big service to Silicon Valley by smoothing the long and bumpy road from analog to digital television.
In about three years, all the familiar analog VHF and UHF channels -- such as 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 36 and 44 in the Bay Area -- will go away and the stations now at those numbers will be available only on digital channels. That's potentially a big problem for the estimated 15 million households who get their television over the air through rabbit ears or roof antennas.
Those folks won't be able to receive these, or any, digital channels over the air on a regular TV set without the addition of a converter box. And if that converter box is too expensive on the day VHF and UHF die, millions of citizens suddenly deprived of ``Jeopardy'' and ``Lost'' could riot in the streets.
Zoran is easing the potential pain with a new chip called the SupraHD 640 and related software that should make it possible to sell converter boxes for $50 when the transition happens -- far below the $200 to $300 cost of converters today.
Last month, the Senate set a deadline of April 7, 2009, for the analog shutdown. The date was picked because it's just after the college basketball Final Four, and there are apparently a lot of basketball fans among our elected leaders. Earlier, the House set a date of Dec. 31, 2008.
The House and Senate are expected to resolve their timing differences before the end of December, settling on a single date. And they'll compromise on the amount of money to spend on a program to subsidize the cost of converters. The House now wants to allocate about $1 billion for subsidies, while the Senate is looking at $3 billion. The subsidy programs could ultimately offer $40 a converter, so the final cost to consumers in early 2009 might be only $10 for each box.
Most of the 110 million U.S. households with TVs have nothing to worry about.
If you get TV through a cable or satellite set-top box, that box will convert digital signals for viewing on your regular, non-HD set. If you get cable service without a set-top box, by plugging your TV directly into a cable jack, your cable operator will probably come up with a solution. You'll either get a set-top box or the cable system will convert digital signals to analog before they reach your house.
But an estimated 15 million households, about 14 percent of the total, get their TV the old-fashioned way: over the air from local TV broadcasting towers. These are the people who will need converters.
There are also mixed households, with a TV in the living room that's attached to cable or satellite, but a second TV in a bedroom or kitchen that's only receiving channels over the air. These second TVs will also need converters.
Eventually, converters won't be needed at all. The Federal Communications Commission last year ordered TV manufacturers to start putting digital tuners into TV sets. By the end of 2007, all new TVs will be capable of receiving digital over-the-air broadcasts. As older non-digital TVs are junked, demand for converters will shrivel -- although it's likely to be many years before every last analog TV disappears.
Congress desperately wants to make this transition happen, if only because the vacated analog TV channels will be auctioned by the federal government for an estimated $30 billion -- a significant cash infusion in this era of soaring deficits.
Silicon Valley also has a big stake in the transition because the frequencies are likely to be used for advanced wireless services that will create lots of demand for new hardware and software.
Meanwhile, Zoran took an important step forward Monday by announcing a ``reference design,'' a kind of blueprint, for using its SupraHD 640 chip to build low-cost converters.
David Pederson, Zoran's vice president of corporate marketing, said Tuesday that the reference design should make it possible for manufacturers to start producing and selling converter boxes in the second half of next year for under $100, with the price dropping to $50 by late 2008 as Zoran develops even more efficient and inexpensive chips.
The SupraHD 640 can also be used to add low-cost digital reception to TVs. Instead of boosting the cost of TVs by about $300, what it now costs to include digital, Pederson estimates the price increase will be $40 in 2007 and just $20 to $30 by late 2008.
So chip companies such as Zoran and its competitors, including ATI Technologies of Markham, Ontario, get to sell millions of digital video chips for TVs and converters. TV manufacturers get to sell the sizzle of digital -- digital broadcasts look much better than analog even after conversion for viewing on non-high definition TVs, somewhat like the difference between DVDs and VHS tapes. The sound, too, is superior.
Pederson concluded, probably without much exaggeration: ``Nobody loses in this deal.''
I don't even have a tv.
Best explanation I've heard on this yet! IOW, it's not a bad idea to pick up one of the bargain TVs out there -- as low as $97 for a 20" analog. It will still work in 2009, one way or the other. It's probably even smarter to wait till this chip is factory installed on the analog sets, although the prices may rise appreciably.
Do I understand it now?
Will the 30 Billion materialize out of thin air, or will it be a hidden tax paid by those using services in the opened up frequencies?
Well, I wish that I understood it before I popped $600 that I don't have for a new digital, HDTV ready TV when my old one died last month. I could have had a larger one for half the price, if I'd settled for the old analog variety! At least I know that my smaller sets will still work in 2009. The new TV is great, however, even without HDTV installed. The cable company doesn't answer their phone, and they will increase my rate a lot if I sign up. So, I'll get along with the service I have.
And I agree with you about the garbage. Even Fox News is getting hard to take. But a brand new Monk debuts tonight! And tomorrow there will be a new show on the lives and journeys of the 11 Disciples, so that will be interesting.
Oh, I think you understand perfectly well. You can be certain that the $30 billion will be absorbed by the subcribers.
Written by someone who either has poor vision or lack of visual discrimination. The highly compressed digital signals that are being sent from cable and satellite providers make pix that are filled with artifacts. Yuck.
A strong analog signal will beat those pix any day. Now a full bandwidth uncompressed HD pix will blow you away, it's so stunning. But what's actually being delivered to homes is lousy.
In what way do you think the requirement that signals be viewable on black and white televisions impaired the technology? While there are certainly other possible encoding methods, the only ones I can think of that wouldn't be compatible with black and white sets would have required too much circuitry to be practical in a consumer-level product in the vacuum-tube era (Betacam splits a color signal into YUV components, then on each scan line it outputs Y at double-speed, followed by U at quad-speed and V at quad-speed; excellent method, but I don't know how to handle the conversion without using an analog shift register or other such buffering device).
By the way, I never understood why color televisions use a frame rate of 29.970Hz. I know it's 3,579,545Hz/227.5/525, but why not use a colorburst of 3,583,125Hz? Or if that would be bad, 3,567,375 (using 226.5 chroma clocks per line)? What's magical about 3,579,545Hz?
Well, I sure can't explain it to you! LOL.
My understanding is that this change is mandated so that the government can re-sell the old analog channels and use them for something else. It is NOT to improve our reception.
Digital signal, 400 channels, living colour, surround sound, and still nothing on...
It's divisible by 17, everyone knows that! Some people!
Yep, Just some things I don't understand, how can the FCC demand that TV sets have digital tuners. Consumers should have a choice. Since the TV is a receiver, and does not broadcast I don't see how they can force people to buy the equipment. How is this Constitutional?
Are you sure? USA's website says January 13.
They did. The regulators, and the market, appears to have settled on 1080i60 (1080 lines of resolution, interlaced, 60 hz - 60 half-frames per second) as the main standard for broadcast. The main reason for using an interlaced broadcast format was due to the limited internal bandwidth of analog tube-based televisions. They could have just as easily settled on 1080p30 (1080 lines, 30 full frames per second) which would have no higher broadcast bandwidth requirements, and would be easier to deal with on the increasingly common fixed-pixel displays (Plasma, LCD, LCD and DLP rear projection, etc). Tubes are basically a dead technology, which although good, will never be seen in any bigger sizes than currently available (34" diagonal for a 16:9 widescreen set). Anyway, it's not the end of the world, but it's not ideal, either.
In the beginning, about 20 years ago, it was being sold to us on the basis of the much higher quality HiDef images.
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