taylor.WBST@Xerox.ARPA (08/30/85)
YES, THIS MAY BE MORE IMPORTANT THEN THE OLD "RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS", REFRAIN! 73 JIM (W2OZH)
STEPHANY.WBST@Xerox.ARPA (08/30/85)
The reason for the loss of freedom to receive radio signals is due to the fact that lawyers, if paid enough, can have any law or right overturned for their clients. It is cheaper to pay the lawyers and change the law than it is to put encoders on the signal. Note, the FCC has gone on record as saying they will not licese receivers so all the problems come under "theft of services". But done worry. Within 5 years all TV will be digitally encoded, then coding to restrict tapping will be very cheap, and very hard to decode and we can forget the "freedom" stuff. Joe N2XS
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (09/01/85)
"... Within 5 years all TV will be digitally encoded ..." No way. Not in 5 years. Not in 10 years. --Lauren--
STEPHANY.WBST@Xerox.ARPA (09/05/85)
re: "... Within 5 years all TV will be digitally encoded ..." No way. Not in 5 years. Not in 10 years. Explanation: Sorry. What was meant was that all satellite TV in the feeder channels would be digital. A conference 2 years ago standardize the TV digital code for exchanging pictures between nations. I agree that local home TV will not be digitally encoded in the near future. We will go to the 1025 line system probably with 2.5/1 aspect ratio first. Since Panasonic has a total digital TV set that can accept any TV standard, 525,625 and 1025 line, and deliver a 1025 line picture, the switch to, possibly, a totally digital TV on cable and satellite may be very soon. I agree that on-the-air local TV may be considerably delayed in the switch. Joe N2XS
lauren@rand-unix.ARPA (09/06/85)
Sorry, I gotta disagree even with your clarified comment. I see no evidence that the conventional cable satellite services have any desire to convert to digital systems. Perhaps a premium service or two may play with high-resolution systems, but even that is questionable in terms of economic viability. Remember that once scrambling is in place and people are buying descramblers, those millions of TVRO stations represent a significant commercial market for the carriers and their advertisers/operations. I don't expect to see digital TV transmission make signficant inroads except possibly in international traffic, where the number of transmit/receive points is fairly small. Another issue is the extreme unwillingness of most cable systems to make new capital purchases for their systems (say, for digital TV equipment) unless it has immense immediate profit. Digital TV may leak into the marketplace over time. But given the inertia and marketplace (and even political!) pressure of the 10's of millions of people (and cable companies) with conventional equipment, I expect the process to be extremely slow except in very specialized situations. The time scale? Maybe 10-15 years. Maybe longer. --Lauren--