When the switchover occurs, say I am a luddite and refuse to get an HDTV, so I get the D/A converter box for my old 4:3 TV.
Will the picture I see be fullscreen or 16:9 letterboxed?
I always assumed that when stations move over to digital that they will abandon 4:3 content; why have to maintain two signals.
Can anyone enlighten me?
Basically I’m wondering when all “new” 4:3 content will cease.
I got this one for my father and it lets you choose between a few different formats. You can even choose to have some channels on one and others on another.
This is confusing. What native picture are the networks sending digitally?
If the viewer can choose 4:3, is it just the 16:9 zoomed and cropped?
Just wanted to say that Digital does not mean HDTV. Many stations are already broadcasting digital, and it’s a 4:3 format signal. The local St. Louis PBS station is available digital, in fact I believe they have four program streams, but at least the main stream is 4:3 format. Dish network doesn’t carry the others, so I can’t comment on those program streams.
Good grief; so channels are not required to get rid of new 4:3 content?
Crap we’re going to live with this mess for ages then.
Government control is so …
I should explain why I brought this up.
Our local cable company (Cablevision) decided to drop about 15 HD channels (under the umbrella name of VOOM). All these channels were part of basic service.
They are being replaced with premium HD content (meaning more $$).
I called to complain because I am not a movie watcher so I feel I’m getting a downgrade in service without a comparable rate decrease.
I was told about issues with band width. Now I thought that after the switchover that they’d drop all 4:3 versions of channels they were already providing in HD, with the reasoning that it wasted bandwidth, and anyone with an old 4:3 set could still watch those HD channels (albeit letterboxed), since the cablebox already did a D/A conversion (if you used those outputs).
Seems like they’re not doing this, and I don’t understand why.
Your choice. There is almost always a “Zoom” button to switch.
Because their cablebox doesn’t convert from HDTV digital to SD, it converts from cable-company digital to SD. It’s a different digital format, and everyone would need new cableboxes if they wanted to eliminate the old channels. They don’t take up much space relative to the HD anyways.
I disagree. I’m speaking of the cablebox outputs. I have HDMI out as well as analog/out on my cablebox. The analog outs go to my VCR (yes I still have one).
The HDMI goes to the HD set.
I’ve never had any problem using the analog output jack for recording, so I assume it would work fine with an old 4:3 TV
I should add that I only have HDTVs in my house and that the switchover is not an issue. My real issue was Cablevision dropping my beloved VOOM channels, and trying to tell me it was due to bandwidth.
I don’t think you can buy a new 4:3 TV anymore. I thought HDTV already had a significant buy-in in the country, so I assumed that keeping 4:3 consumers placated was not a major concern.
How long is it going to be before all the 4:3 “new” content disappears?
Target still carries a couple of CRT based 4:3 sets, with built-in DTV (i.e. not HDTV) converters, so they are equivalent to an old TV with a converter. They are significantly less expensive than HDTV flat-screen sets.
It’s going to happen, but not until 2012. That’s the date the cable companies will be allowed to turn off all the analog channels. That means every single TV hooked to cable will have to have one of their wretched boxes - which overjoys the cable companies, because that means more control, more revenue, and more stupid pay-per-view channels.
OTOH, a lot of the cable companies are only providing the legal-minimum basic as analog nowadays. Broadcast + a few free channels. So that really is a bit of a waste of space for all the users who do have a box.
One of the benefits of digital TV is that it is more flexible. They don’t have to maintain two signals for 16:9 and 4:3. What they do is include information describing the aspect ratio, and furthermore how display devices, which won’t necessarily have a matching aspect ratio, should display the pictures (fully letterboxed, partially letterboxed, cropped etc.) You just tell your convertor box that you have a 4:3 TV and it should display everything appropriately - 4:3 material full screen, 16:9 material cropped or letterboxed.
It depends. It depends on your convertor box and it depends on what your local stations broadcast.
As an aside, speaking as somebody who doesn’t have HDTV and no plans to buy one, I’m overjoyed. This gives me 3 more years to wait for the price to drop on those nice plasmas and LCD screens. And to think only a few years ago they were $3000.
What’s even worse is I got a 13" digital TV and when it’s in letterbox format it chops about 2" off the top and bottom and an 1" from each size. So while the TV is 13" the picture is even smaller.
Heck, the first plasma screen I set up? It was $12,000!
The thing with the switchover is that if you get the subsidized box, you shouldnt notice any differnece, as most of the will pick up digital air-broadcast just fine anyway, and then send an analog signal to the tv. The only real difference is that broadcasts will have to be digital instead of analog.
The tuner is the only real difference, so that it can convert the dtv signal into a (crap) ntsc signal that your tv is able to decode. There is no requirement for HDTV, and it will not change the aspect ratios – the station or whoever can broadcast whatever format they want as long as the actual broadcast signal is digital instead of analog. Cable doesn’t matter because the cable company is not broadcast, and they have already all switched to digital (except for maybe some backwoods cable cos). This is because it is far more efficient for the cale company to go digital, and the cable box translates the digital cable signal to analog if needed for your old tv.
To simplify it even more (probably too much), it’s basically like switching from AM to FM – it’s the same song coming out of the radio regardless of which format thew signal is in.
So – get a dtv tuner box, and your tv will work fine and your shows will look the same regardless of how the station broadcasts. If you have cable, it’s even less of an issue.
Of course, HDTV is a real step up, but it’s not a change from NTSC to HDTV, but just a shift in the format of the broadcast signal. Don’t worry that your ugly bad picture will become obsolete or look different because of the switch – your ugly bad picture will become obsolete because people want high quality non-ugly pictures. 