I don’t think I’ve ever used the tuner on a TV I’ve owned. I don’t think I’ve watched a TV that was using it’s tuner since I was, like, 12, when cable first became available. My signal comes from cable, satellite, video player, DVD player, video games, or whatever.
How many of you are using your TV’s tuner rather than cable, satellite or other.
Years ago I was shopping for a TV for my living room and I told the salesman I didn’t want a machine with a tuner, just a monitor. He said they didn’t sell such a thing, or if they did it would be even more expensive. The tuner is a throwaway. Some people need it, so they include it. It’s cheaper to make two million machines with tuners than to make a million with tuners and a million without. I could buy, like, a computer monitor, but it doesn’t have suitable styling for my living room.
But now, suddenly, the tuner isn’t throwaway anymore. TV’s are going to have to have digital tuners now, and those tuners cost as much as some whole TV’s. So my solution is, rather than complaining that your TV’s are goingt to cost so much more, just don’t buy a TV with a tuner. Sony and companies like that have to create a new market for monitors that are designed to be used as a TV in the living room with appropriate styling, but don’t have any tuner built in.
If someone was desperate to use a tuner they could just buy it as a separate component.
It’s estimated that 15% of the American public receives their programming over-the-air.
The HDTV conversion was supposed to be well underway by this point, with analog broadcasting retired in 2006. But the industry has gotten itself into a chicken and egg conundrum which it cannot or will not resolve on its own: producers aren’t churning out HDTV programming because broadcasters aren’t upgrading their transmission facilities because nobody has a television capable of receiving the signal. By forcing manufacturers to include digital tuners in all new sets over 13", demand is created from the bottom up, and the impasse is broken.
HDTV is intended to be a standard, not a luxury option. It’s time for the receiver manufacturers, who enjoy unfettered access to the world’s largest television market, to get with the program.
I use my tuner. Every couple/three years I take up the cable company on some special installation/cheap deal offer. When the deal is over with (usually 3 months at half price or something like that) I get disgusted with paying near 50 bucks a month for 60 channels where you STILL can’t find anything worth watching, so I cancel, and go back to broadcast TV.
I think the FCC did a fine thing. They had left the conversion timeline more or less in the hands of the industry, which had its collective thumb up its collective ass. We could have had a system in place at least 10 years ago.
My understanding is that the new TV’s have to be able to receive the digital signal, but there is no requirement to display it in HDTV format.
It’s like a black & white TV can receive a colour signal, and a mono TV can receive a stereo signal. Of course, in these cases the new signal was designed to be compatible with the old signal, but you get the idea.
Couldn’t they just put the $250 tuner in a crappy old machine and still display it in 4:3 and 400 lines (or whatever the old system is.) Would they do that?
yojimboguy, if you were in the market for a new TV, would you be adverse to buying a (less expensive) TV that has no tuner, and just buying the tuner as a separate component?
Seems silly to add a $250 device to every TV when only 15% of teh buyers will use it.
"It’s estimated that 15% of the American public receives their programming over-the-air.
"
What does that mean?
I use my tv tuner a lot cause I record another program with the vcr. Just wait & see what a vcr that can
record hdtv digital tv signal costs. wowza!
I have cable and I use my tuner all the time, but I don’t have a cable box.
The industry claims a digital tuner will cost $250 per set. The FCC estimates $16; quite a difference. I’m going with the FCC here, if a digital tuner is standard it will be put on a chip and add a neglible amount to the cost of a set. I think the industry just perfers the status quo where they can have a huge profit margin by charging a lot for digital for those people who want digital TV. If all TVs are digital, price competition will drive the prices down FAST.
I agree. $250 is an absurd estimate for the cost of a tuner. The set makers are using it as a scare tactic. Mass production will redice the cost to a small fraction of that.
It means that 15 people out of every 100 can’t get or don’t want cable or satellite TV.
The American HDTV standard encompasses a variety of aspect ratios, resolutions and frame rates. Thus the tuner component of a television set (perhaps more properly, the DTV decoder component) has to map the source format of the picture to the display format of the tube for all legal combinations thereof.
The consumer won’t see all the fabulous detail until he buys a set capable of displaying HDTV in its native format, however, he will be assured of perfect, crystal-clear reception that is currently only possible via cable or satellite delivery. See the ATSC Standards page for technical details.
One would think that the manufacturers would be having multiple orgasms at the idea of replacing the installed base of more than 100 million televisions. Why the FCC had to force them to comply with the standard is beyond me, but I’m glad that they finally did.
Note that most people are probably using their TV tuner, it’s just stuck on channel 3 (or whatever) all the time.
I don’t use it at all on my main TV since it failed a couple years ago (curse you JVC). RCA from cable/VCR to TV. Some people use S-connectors.
I think this ruling is a bad idea. They did the same thing forcing UHF on TVs years ago but still UHF stations lagged VHF in viewership (and still do). 85% will use the Cable/Sat. tuner (which is whole a different thing). The FCC should just accept that over-the-air NTSC is here to stay.
Now, if they had mandated a single stereo-AM standard for broadcasting, they could have saved AM. But 20 years ago they didn’t even want to set a standard, what’s changed?
I use my tuner almost all the time, I barely watch cable.
A while back, I decided to see what this HDTV stuff was all about. I put a small antenna up and now find that I can watch ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/WB/UPN/PBS digital broadcasts in Seattle.
The digital signals are all better than my cable, HD is breathtaking - better than DVD.
That 15% number for broadcast viewers may grow - once viewers see how much better than cable the image is - or cable may get on the bandwagon for fear of losing eyeballs to local broadcasters.
We only use our tuners. I hate paying money for TV! I know that there are channels that don’t have advertising, but they’re all premium. I don’t want to pay for basic cable when all the channel have commercials. Why isn’t that enough? If I had to buy the tuner separate, I’d do without TV.
I would use my tuner, and it would make things much simpler if I wanted to videotape something while I’m watching another channel; but the Cable Nazis insist that their signal must be received through a decoding box because we consumers are all a pack of thieves who would steal their signal without it. Of course, they’ll be glad to rent a second cable decoder box to me if I want to watch one show and tape another at the same time.
Fortunately I seldom tape anything at all, and if I miss a program I want to see I just live with it.
I’m not sure of the specific piece of gear you’re referring to, but probably you’re right, it’s just a tuner.
It is that expensive because it is new, and priced at a premium regardless of actual costs. And also becuse it is not produced at an efficient volume. VERY few people by them (now), so the unit cost is commensurately higher.
I owned the very first consumer TI 4-function calculator (back in 72?, 73?), and it cost me just over a hundred bucks. A few years later, you could get one (or one like it) free for opening a bank account, or buy one for under 10 bucks. And they were pricey for a while because there was not a pre-existing market for calculators, as there is for TVs.
The tuner hardware cost will go down dramatically and rapidly. Industry ALWAYS says that changes mandated by governments will be prohibitively expensive and will ruin the market, and it NEVER has turned out to be true, AFAIK. I’d be interested to learn of any product that contradicts this.