End of Shortwave?

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by superdeez

One intertesting rumor I've heard about the DTV switch is that possibly we might have to pay like $25/month and subscribe to a service just to watch broadcast TV??

If you have cable (analog or digital), you are already paying a monthly fee for the service. I have Comcast digital cable and pay close to $60 monthly for not only the standard broadcast channels, but all analog cable channels and the digital ones as well.

Some of us don't have a choice when it comes to cable. If you are in an area that has poor or no TV reception with an antenna (I live in an apartment building in such an area; the NBC station in Cleveland doesn't reach here at all without cable--the reception on the other six or so channels, with the sole exceptions of CBS channel 19, UPN 43 and WB55, not to mention Univision 61, is fair to poor at best with rabbit ears), cable or satellite is your only option if you want city-grade TV pictures.

The monthly cable fee doesn't bother me. I like certain shows on TV such as NBC's Law and Order, et al. so I wouldn't want to be without cable. I don't have HBO or any other movie channels; for movies I have a VCR and a DVD player, with a subscription to Netflix.com (and a rack full of old movies and '70s-'80s TV series I taped on VHS, some of them from AMC, TCM, TBS and other cable channels). Netflix has DVDs of all the old shows and movies I watched when I was growing up in the '60s and '70s; this alone is worth the small price I pay for the service, and believe me, I enjoy watching those older shows a lot more than much of what is on regular TV today.

Your comment as to giving up broadcast TV in 2009 when the standards change to all digital is interesting. That is certainly your right, and considering that much of what comes from the networks these days isn't nearly as good (IMO) as the stuff they had, say, 20-30+ years ago (as I've thought since about the late 1980s or so, when NBC was sold from RCA to GE and the other two networks followed suit shortly thereafter), you won't miss much. Cable, VCR and DVD offer viewers much more flexibility and programming choices than we had when I was growing up 35 years ago. With the popularity of DVD and on-demand video on cable, people now have the power to choose what they want to watch, when they want to see it; if you have a VCR and/or a DVD recorder or TiVo, you aren't bound by the networks' time constraints either--just set the timer, have the system record the program(s) you want to watch, and it/they will be available for you to see at your convenience, not when the networks dictate you must watch them. I do this all the time with my VCR; between that and my Netflix subscription, I now find TV watching more enjoyable than ever. If Comcast raises its rates for standard digital cable service much more than what I'm paying now, I might just cancel my cable when everything goes digital. Many nights all I watch on standard TV is the evening news, with the rest of my evening's viewing coming from DVD. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if more viewers do the same thing when digital comes along and replaces analog in 18 months or so, even if they still have their old analog TVs. Those people who can afford a big plasma/LCD set will probably still get the full cable package with broadcast channels, etc. but those of us on tight budgets, such as myself, will either forego cable or else simply subscribe to basic service. However, with the new FCC ruling stating that all TVs manufactured after a certain date in 2007 must have ATSC (digital) tuners in addition to the standard NTSC tuners, and new LCD/plasma sets coming down in price almost daily, not to mention RCA's line of SDTV (standard definition TV) receivers now available at very reasonable prices and the availability now of used HD and other widescreen TVs at, in many cases, almost dirt-cheap prices on ebay (I've seen opening bids on some smaller flat-panel sets as low as one dollar), more folks will probably be getting either SDTV or digital widescreen in the very near future, so it is probably safe to say that the days of analog TV are numbered.

Enjoy your old analog CRT set if and as long as it works well for you (even if it means using a digital cable box ahead of it), but be aware as well that the set which replaces it (if your analog set goes bad within the next three years) will be some form of digital or standard-definition set. I personally can see a day coming when CRT-based televisions will be museum pieces; if the FCC has its way (and they already have had their way about it, considering that there is now a definite date--early February 2009--for the full switch to digital TV) the old CRT-based analog television receiver will soon be a rarity.

As the old song says, "the times they are a-changin'" -- isn't that the truth!

[piece-it pete]

Originally Posted by devoid

Killing shortwave communication would be absolutely ignorant. The equipment is relatively simple to build and operate and just works when frail technological infrastructure hiccups. I'd like to see anyone build a microcontroller and write firmware from scratch and talk around the globe on one watt of power.

Amen to this, bro. I don't know much about shortwave but I know enough to hope it sticks around. Same reason I won't give up my land line phone, altho VoIP is cheaper in my area. Heck with 'puters running the land line I'm probably no better off, anyway.

BTW, since it's called a "ham" radio, do you rate the quality of the units by cuts of pork? Say, you picked up a real cheapie, would you say you picked up some chitlins??

Pete