Dec. 2006, NTSC deadline, ATSC and us

costanza

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Apr 2, 2005
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The deadline for ending analog TV won't affect us satellite customers, will it? I mean, will those of us with sat. boxes that only output NTSC ( I "lease" three 301's) continue to use these or will E* switch over to ATSC-only style receivers?
 
Correct. Cable and satellite subs are unaffected by the analog Over the air shutoff.

Which hopefully will happen in December 31, 2006 but they have to pass a hard date legislation to remove the stupid 85% clause they have now or either make the 85% caluse include cable and sat viewers.
 
No, in the short term their would be no need.

If you get your locals from Dish, you would not notice any change. They would continue transmitting the signal to you as they do now.

If you get your locals with an antenna, however, then you will have to get some sort of ATSC digital box. It would either be a seperate standalone ATSC box, perhaps a new box from Dish with ATSC built in (811, 921, 942), or perhaps even a new TV with a built in ATSC tuner.
 
The analog TV "shutoff" applies to "broadcasters", i.e. our local TV stations. The satellite providers and cable companies are more like "distributors". How are ESPN, HBO, TNT, and the others affected, by the way ?? I imagine they already have digital feeds but they also have analog, don't they ?? If they have to stop the analog feeds, what will cable companies who broadcast, for example, ESPN, in analog ?? They won't invest in digital-to-analog converters will they ??
 
ESPN isn't an over the air network. The law only applies to over the air broadcasters.

And ESPN and almost all other cable channels signal is digital over satellite already, but either way it doesn't matter.
 
It will effect E* and D* or your local cable co' where they "pull" local singals at the POPs via OTA (over the air) but its simple to "change out" a Receiver at the head end (POP) so that it pulls the Digital signal instead of the "no longer found" analog signal. But beyond that, it wont affect Sat or Cable end user.
 
i thought i heard a long time ago that the date had been pushed back to 2009 or that there were talks to push it back then. i can't remember where i saw it now, i may be completely wrong.
 
Would the analog televisions end up recieving anything in the future from the people that buy the frequencies in that range? I imagine that Dish Network will have all digital outputs instead of analog outputs on their recievers once they swap out everyone to MPEG-4 with an optional convertor to analog. if there is still a lot of analog tv's out there then maybe they would end up having both convertors in it built in.
 
Stargazer said:
Would the analog televisions end up recieving anything in the future from the people that buy the frequencies in that range? I imagine that Dish Network will have all digital outputs instead of analog outputs on their recievers once they swap out everyone to MPEG-4 with an optional convertor to analog. if there is still a lot of analog tv's out there then maybe they would end up having both convertors in it built in.

Analog TVs can still be used but a digital TV tuner would be needed to down convert to 480i (NTSC video). Channels 2 thru 51 will be available for OTA but will be modulated in 8VSB. Channels 52 thru 69 will be reserved for government use (could mean anything). All STB, satellite receivers and cable boxes will still have analog outputs in addition to digital outputs like DVI or HDMI. New HDTVs would be desirable over the older analog sets in order to get full benefit of picture and audio quality that digital TV offers.
 
I was just watching the FCC chairman today. Yes, it is 2006, but there's also a stipulation that 85% of households have to have access to HD OTA before analog OTA disappears. That isn't the case...so it extends the deadline.
 
Unless they count all the satellite and cable subs as being served too, then the deadline will stand. There is debate but I think they will stay with the deadline so they can make the 17 billion they want for selling off the analog spectrum.