The demise of OTA would bring much greater social issues with it. We already have a huge gap between the tech elite and the tech poor.
Please explain. Thanks.

Over the air broadcasting is egalitarian. Anyone within the coverage area can receive it, even those sleeping rough on the streets seem to able to find some beat up old radio. Anyone living in just about any form of dwelling seems to be able to find a sort of functional 4:3 TV. You don't need much either in the way of money or technical skills to be able to listen to a radio broadcast or watch analog TV.
Sometime in the very near future we'll be switching off our analogue TV transmitters, I think the time scale is around the same in many countries.
As much as I love the improvement in image quality that DVB brings I can't help but think about the number of people who will not be able to make the transition. Probably though at some point in the future we'll see DVB capable TVs on the kerbside and the balance will be restored, for a while.
If we switch from broadcasting over the airwaves to internet only then all that changes. Maybe by then the internet will become a "broadcast" medium, 3G is becoming pretty widespread and data rates are getting faster than ADSL. Still I don't know how easily the financially and technically challenged will be able to access this though.

To look at this another way. I have the financial and technical resources to participate in most of the new technology that comes along in our area of interest if I so desire. I love all this stuff, embrace it and promote it. Lately though I'm wondering how much of an elitist that makes me.

Or from another angle.
A few days ago I read an article on the technical challenges of 22.2 (twenty two point two, that wasn't a typo) sound for the new UHD broadcast system. And yet it was not that long ago that the BBC switched off their old ~350 line B&W service. Apparently there was still people watching that. Why? I guess it was good enough to entertain them.

Bob.

Hey Farss,

Talking about 1080p ... Goodbye Z1 ... Goodbye m2t's ... Goodbye 1440x1080i ... Goodbye Vegas Pro 8 crashers ... just waiting for a 24/25fps firmware update from Canon (hopefully! then it's 1080p ... and 21 megapixal stills built into my Redrock Micro Rig and hanging off my Steadicam. The Canon 5D Mk II looks very interesting ... check it out ...

Sorry, forgot how to make the links active in here ... just cut and paste mate.

Cheers buddy ... thanks for all your help in the past.

Darren Powell
Sydney Australia

http://www.vimeo.com/2606805

http://vincentlaforet.smugmug.com/gallery/6042742_wZKiA/1/429410814_BLGuz#429410814_BLGuz-A-LB

Hey Farss,

Talking about 1080p ... Goodbye Z1 ... Goodbye m2t's ... Goodbye 1440x1080i ... Goodbye Vegas Pro 8 crashers ... just waiting for a 24/25fps firmware update from Canon (hopefully! then it's 1080p ... and 21 megapixal stills built into my Redrock Micro Rig and hanging off my Steadicam. The Canon 5D Mk II looks very interesting ... check it out ...

Sorry, forgot how to make the links active in here ... just cut and paste mate.

Cheers buddy ... thanks for all your help in the past.

Darren Powell
Sydney Australia

http://www.vimeo.com/2606805

http://vincentlaforet.smugmug.com/gallery/6042742_wZKiA/1/429410814_BLGuz#429410814_BLGuz-A-LB

As fantastic as the images look the difficulty in obtaining them put quite a damper on my enthusiasm. I'd take a camera with real cine glass on it any day if I ever got the nod to shoot anything serious with a budget.

Bob.

Over the air broadcasting is egalitarian.

Well said, Bob.

Another thing that troubles me about OTA digital TV is communications in a disaster situation. There is no snowy picture with DTV. It is either good or gone. Needs a good signal from the broadcaster and a decent antenna with some equipment on the receiving end.

I live in the San Francisco bay area and was here for the earthquake in 1989. Power was out for me for several days. I had a small portable TV that ran off of batteries. It was somehow good to see some images of what was going on around the area.

I don't think small portable DTV sets are likely to sell much. With DTV I don't think there will be an option like I had. Maybe it is foolish to worry at all about this, as radio is more likely to work than any kind of TV and fill some kind of communication gap, but the more likely TV failure still bothers me a bit.

As you predict, any OTA TV may be disappearing rather soon, anyway.

Then without OTA TV stations turn into nothing but a website.
JJK

"Then without OTA TV stations turn into nothing but a website."

Not entirely, they could use multicasting over the web so they still have the look and feel of traditional broadcasting.
Thing is though the print media I'm told only stays in business because of the profits from their websites. OTA TV gets an increasing amount of their income from their websites. Using the internet rather than the airwaves has many advantages. The viewers could watch what they want when they want. The broadcaster is freed of bandwidth restrictions etc.
Down here shortly we'll have FreeTV with each station running (I think ) 5 channels. No doubt that means more compression and less quality
You see the trend here. OTA is becoming more like Youtube as Youtube becomes more like OTA. At some point it all converges.

My view is that human factors will determine the outcomes, well I hope that becomes the driving force. Watching the 6 0'Clock news is a landmark in most peoples day. When you can watch the news anytime you tend not to watch it. When faced with unlimited choice it becomes too hard to choose. Then again I'm an old fart, the next generation may have a different spin on this.

Bob.

I think the problem with TV news programs is that only the earliest baby boomers have the patience to sit and wait for the day's news to be dragged out over an hour and diluted with inane commercials.

When I check the news through latimes.com/nytimes.com, it takes me about 2-3 seconds to read the headlines, during which I pick the stories that are relevant to me. Then I go deeper into those stories, and I'm done!

Which leaves me 57 minutes to do something else that I couldn't have done if I had sat down in front of the boob tube for an hour of commercial brainwashing and stories about the "near miss!"

The "near miss" was last night's major news story about a STORM (this is Los Angelese for a Dark Cloud! that may or may not carry precipitation) and how it was approaching the City of the Angels, and almost got close to town on Christmas Eve. This nearly wrought havoc on last-minute shoppers' plans!!!

What hath God wrought? Near havoc, interfering with our last minute shopping...

This is news.

I would give it less than a year in its current form, with the advertising switching to Depends, Denture Cleaners, and Medicare Part D Health Plans "with no premiums, no deductibles, and no co-pays" (accomplished by having for-profit insurance companies bill the U.S. Government 30% more than gov't providers for the same services, a brilliant invention by a, cough, recent administration.)

I believe that there is about 18 minutes of news in a one hour show coupled with about 20 minutes of inane banter between the anchors. Then there's the weather---10 seconds of info expanded into 5 minutes of bullcrap with the "chill index" beaten to death.There is nothing over 1 minute deep in coverage. That's why I watch PBS.
JJK

And as for the "chill index," read this:

Wind Chill Blows - It's time to get rid of a meaningless number.

Well, Coursedesign, this article is seriously flawed. "have no freezing effect", is amazing dumb, the writer needs a few science classes at a real college. It demonstrates the writer doesn't know or seeks to miss lead how weather data is collected and calculated. To suggest that moving air does not have a cooling effect is really dumb, just turn off your computer cpu fan or your AC cooling fan(outside) unit see what happens. Granted, moisture leaving the body creates an immediate chill, ......... but remember space is -211 out of the sun and that is because there is no atoms, molecules, to radiate your heat back from you..... and the body does freeze if it does not have a reflective layer. The amount of surface skin expose compare to total skin vs body core mass, ---- this is one of the main reasons,( few more), that impacts the effect of chilling.

Chill index only applies to warm blooded biological life forms. It does not apply to inanimate objects since they are at air temperature regardless of the strength of the wind. If a fence post is 30 degrees in 30 degree air and the wind is blowing 1000 mph the fence post is still 30 degrees. However, if a human (98 degrees internal temp) is in 30 degree air with exposed skin the temperature of the human will very slowly drop but not much. If the wind is blowing at 20 knts his body temp will drop rapidly if the skin is exposed. With the old Air Force chill index (based on skin surface freezing, not the entire limb) if the temp was -20 and the wind was 20 kts exposed skin would freeze in 1 minute. If there was a cut on the skin it would freeze more rapidly. When it is -50 the parka with the fur lined hood was closed over the entire head leaving a small hole for visability. This pocket of warm air around the face would prevent the eyes from freezing. The eskimos did invent this technology. Normal finger gloves don't work at -50 so you have to use mittens. Also what they call iron pants. The chill index was later modified for us civilians in the USA from the old test of how fast water freezes to something new which escapes me at the present time. Gee, you know if those pioneers in the old wagon trains going west in those snow storms knew about the chill index a lot more would have survived. Maybe they didn't know how cold it really was.
The article forgot to mention if your body temp went down to even 80 degrees your dead, let alone 35. The old chill index was based on how fast your exposed flesh would freeze. The new index I believe was based on how cold it feels. The weather people are trying to cross the boundries inferring that the chill index is the actual temperature. This is more sensational. And yes, they are going the other way with the chill index calling it the heat index in the summertime. This index based on humidity. This could raise a lot of index fingers.
JJK

JJizak, definitely has a better answer. But Kinetic energy is the issue. if the moving air is doing "work" with an object, ie, an uneven surface, ie mountains or other things, creating dynamic pressure changes, this releases kinetic energy, cooling results.

To suggest that moving air does not have a cooling effect is really dumb

He is not saying that.

His main conclusion is that the air temperature tends to change slowly, but the wind fluctuates immensely, which means that the wind chill can become obsolete within minutes, so it doesn't have much value.

But Kinetic energy is the issue. if the moving air is doing "work" with an object, ie, an uneven surface, ie mountains or other things, creating dynamic pressure changes, this releases kinetic energy, cooling results.

Please call FAA and the National Weather Service as soon as their offices open up, to let them know that what's been taught in meteorology for the last 50 years isn't correct. They will no doubt welcome this new Kinetic Energy theory.

Weather is extremely complex, and I had to study it in far more detail than I would ever have wanted in order to pass the quite beefy FAA Instrument Rating Written Exam, including the various ways that air gets cooled down. Alas, nothing about the Kinetic Energy theory.

It may be that you were trying to oversimplify the explanation of a concept here.

"the quite beefy FAA Instrument Rating Written Exam"----- Oh, Please, this is almost a picture/text select ---bad cloud [=) --- good cloud ;-) more of flying under the "hood" test and using good judgement in 3D space, does not require any math or science of any meaningful value over Intro College level. BUT that say, the Instrument Rating is a big and critical step for most private pilots, especially wanting to move to multi-engine and commercial licenses. Which brings up the point, Coursedesign, did you get your medical issues resolved with the pilot license, if so, a big congratulations getting that so--o unfair paperwork monkey off your back!!!! ;-).

I'm going to, because of X-mas spirit, pass on the weather theory, the physics and math side, to avoid boring everyone about 3rd order diff equations,etc....... and simply say that simple closed system models/examples truly fail in a real open system ;-) and ............. Happy Holidays everyone!

Ha-ha! "Bad cloud/good cloud" is very funny actually.

Every airline pilot I've talked to, except one guy just before Christmas, has consistently said that the Instrument Rating was the most difficult of all certifications they ever took, including being more challenging than getting their ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) and their type ratings to fly say a 747.

The checkride isn't easy anywhere, and in Los Angeles (and probably also in New York) it is far more challenging because of the immense air traffic here.

Every pilot I know hates learning about all the various forms of cooling that creates weather (all weather is created by temperature differences, other than the not always small part played by the one bird turning its beak to the left instead of to the right immediately after takeoff (a serious science discussion actually).

Of course the instrument written is not Ph.D. level, or even M.S./B.S. level, it's just that most people would like to leave the weather forecasting to meteorologists (this is of course a really bad idea for pilots!).

Good point about the closed system being too limited.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to re-qualify for my aviation medical in March. Need to have one more surgery out of the way first, to be done by the surgeon who did two failed operations already for the same thing (I actually trust the guy, it wasn't his fault, or anyone else's either, just unforeseeable circumstances). Let's hope third time's the charm. :O)

Merry Xmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Other!