what is the TV technology situation in the USA

Factual Questions
1

Here in Britain we have interactive digital TV. There’s space for 1000 channels, many of the channels have an interactive service where you can look at different camera angles, different games in a tennis tournament, look at info, news, etc… it’s quite clever in some examples.

I have wondered sometimes what you have in America? how many channels? do you have digital TV? is it interractive? etc…

How many ‘terrestrial’ channels do you have? (if you call it that)

And why is the fox network always slagged off in the Simpsons?

thanks.

2

FOX makes The Simpsons. That’s why they make fun of them. No matter how mad FOX gets they’re not likely to sue their own show.

I have digital cable but it doesn’t sound like we have all the stuff you do. I have about 100 channels with another 100 that I can get for more pay. I have movies, local news, classic sports games on demand (and you can stop, pause rewind etc). I can order pizza (but only from Pizza Hut) and I can play some cheesy games (like backgammon and memory). They add new channels every now and then. The game channel was the last one.

I think my service has the possibility of doing some of the things you mentioned but they don’t, I guess to save on bandwidth or there’s just no demand. What’s really nice is that with my cable TV I have broadband unmetered web access. This is Oceanic Cable

3
  1. Because of the sheer size of the US market, the switchover from analog to digital terrestrial broadcasting will be slow. Every broadcaster has been assigned an alternate frequency for digital transmission, with full analog/digital simulcast ostensibly slated for 1996.

The US implementation of digital broadcasting is geared primarily to a single high definition program rather than multiple standard resolution programs embedded in the same bitstream, though both are technically possible. In essence, we’re willing to trade multiple camera angles for cinema-quality video wherever practicable, though we’re likely to see more of the former until consumer HDTV receivers reach critical mass.

  1. Terrestrially speaking, the typical U.S. city receives at least five networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and Fox) with multiple independents, some of which carry programming in a pseudo-network arrangement with producers such as Paramount and Warner Brothers. Eight or nine over-the-air channels would be typical, more or less depending on one’s position between two markets and the size of the markets in question.

  2. Rupert Murdoch built the Fox network using techniques borrowed from the tabloids, primarily an emphasis on sex, crime and sports. The programming was extravagantly low-brow even by American standards and became something of a joke in itself. Thus, the slagging you see in the Simpsons is Fox’s way of laughing all the way to the bank.

4

The closest thing to interactive TV I’ve seen here is pay-per-view movies.

The closest thing we have to teletext is closed captioning. There are a few different CC modes, a couple of them full-screen, but I’ve only ever seen regular subtitles used.

Many cities have independent stations (often religious stations, but not always), but most stations are part of a network. The major commercial networks are CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox. They’re all basically the same, but IMO Fox is more of a ratings whore and NBC has funnier sitcoms. There’s also PBS, which is noncommercial, supported by government/corporate grants and annoying pledge drives.

UPN (United Paramount Network) and The WB (Warner Brothers channel) are minor commercial networks. Many cities don’t have access to UPN/WB programming at all, and in some other cities, UPN/WB programs appear on channels belonging to another network, or on independent channels.

Those are only the broadcast channels. We don’t call them “terrestrial channels” because you don’t need a satellite dish to receive any channels. Land-based cable gives you the broadcast channels (at higher quality) plus additional channels such as Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, HBO, MTV etc. Satellite service like DirecTV gets you the same channels as land-based cable, but in greater quantities and higher quality.

Satellite service also lets you watch some shows ahead of time - with broadcast and cable, someone living on the west coast will only see the west coast feeds of ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. The Simpsons is on at 8:00 local time on both coasts, so someone in New York actually gets to see the show 3 hours earlier than someone in California. But with satellite, you can get both feeds, so you can watch the Simpsons at 8:00 Eastern time (5:00 Pacific) and again at 8:00 Pacific time (11:00 Eastern).

5

There is interactive TV available here in the states through the satellite service DirecTV. I’ve also seen advertisements lately for Nascar interactive TV for digital cable in limited markets so I think you will be seeing more of it. This may actually be one area where rural people who can’t get cable are actually a step ahead with satellite services compared to urban and suburban viewers. The downside is that if you want high speed internet with your cable/sat TV hookup you’ll pay more with the satellite provider.

6

I have digital cable, and get about 250 NTSC 4:3/525 channels – all the Central Florida “terrestrial” channels, channels meant for distribution on cable and satellite systems, and all the variants of pay networks including HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and The Movie Channel. The cable system also includes terrestrial and cable HDTV 16:9/1080 stations – about 15 so far – at no additional charge, if you have an HDTV set. There’s a couple hundred channels for pay-per-view movies and special events, and 50 channels of commercial-free music. The cable box includes a program schedule of all shows on all channels for the coming weeks, and I can flip through the channels with the time, channel name, location, logo, current show, and starting ending time displayed on the bottom of the screen. There are now similar schedules on terrestrial stations, which can be viewed with specially equipped televisions.

The whole thing – premium cable with broadband – sets me back about $120 a month. Not too bad, actually – I push my broadband connection to the limits (without uncapping the cable modem … I’m not crazy), and I like being able to sit and flip through channels for 20 minutes, not passing the same channel twice.

Although it’s “coming soon” in my neighborhood (a few weeks), many subscribers to the cable system I’m on now have the ability to order movies on demand – flip through a menu, pick the movie of your choice, and use the controls on the remote to your cable box to freeze, fast-forward, rewind, step through frames, and so on. That, and pay-per-view, is about as much real interactivity as I’ll get. There are special ethnic packages – I think $5 a month will get me about 15 more Spanish stations, on top of the four Spanish stations I now get. Some systems will have special packages for German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Russian speakers, depending on the demographics of the service area. There’s a few systems that have “born again” packages – about 20 or 30 religious stations for an extra fee. Many cable systems are starting to replace the religious stations offered on basic cable with other offerings, and shunting the healers and preachers to a separate tier – they know that those who aren’t extremely religious usually don’t watch 'em, and fundies watch them so much they’re willing to pay for the privilege.

NTSC televisions are CHEAP – about $200 will buy you a quality 27" set, and $500 will get you a high end model with all the toys. HDTV sets start at about $1,500 (a standard 4:3 screen that will letterbox wide screen shows), but for a unit with a tuner, wide screen tube, and flat tube, you’re looking at about $2,500. HDTV broadcasts can include digital “subcarriers” with music, teletext service, telemetry, and so on.

The cable system has high speed Internet service (RoadRunner). Just about everyone I know with cable television also has Roadrunner, but you can get broadband alone without subscribing to cable TV.

There’s no equivalent of the viewer-selected multiple camera angle services in the UK. In the 1970s there was Qube, which was popular in some parts of the United States. Qube broadcast sporting events with viewer-selected multiple angles, interactive game shows, live polling, and so on. However, few were using the interactive features, and the system was costly to run.

A few years back, there was some talk of scrapping the US digital HDTV standard, and implementing the European digital broadcasting standard. Thing is … cable penetration in the US is high, and theoretically a system can carry an infinite number of channels, given a wide enough pipe. The US HDTV system can already provide multiple lower resolution sub-channels on a standard channel.

7

Whoops! The US HDTV maximum resolution is 1920x1080.

8

TV technology is piss-poor, pretty much because TV caught on first in the U.S. IIRC, NTSC has fewer lines of resolution than any other TV standard in use.

Where it’s bad, it’s bad, where it’s good, it’s great. HDTV sets look freakin amazing, and the 16:9 aspect ratio is a welcome improvement too. The problem is, it will take forever and a day to get the country switched over.

9

I’ve got my eye on a 4:3 HDTV set in that price range (a Toshiba 32HFX71 model that my local Good Guys has on sale for $1299).

What I’d like to know is, it seems that a set can tout itself as being “HDTV” without actually supporting anything close to the full 1920 by 1080 resolution of HDTV. For all I know, this set might display a 1080i signal with only the old yicchy NTSC-grade 480 scan lines (vertcially compressed to achieve a 16-by-9 aspect ratio, of course). How do I tell what resolution a given “HDTV” set is actually capable of displaying?