Some of my acquisitions of December, 2008

[Sandy G]

Are you fellas going thru the digital/HDTV fiasco, too ?

[Captain Video]

Yeah. Digital TV was released here in 2007 with a LOT of fanfare by both the government and the TV stations. The way they promoted it, it was almost like the wheel had been reinvented and made into something better. Now, the enthusiasm is a LOT lower. Even the government, that spent BILLIONS in tax payers money on this thing ( while the public schools and public hospitals are in it's worse shape EVER ), now doesn't even mention it. The President of the Republic, who was the most vocal defender of the "wonders" of Digital TV, now doesn't say a word about it.

One thing is, sales of Digital TV sets were - and still are - WAY MUCH SMALLER than expected. Other is that promise of "interactive television" is NOT fulfilled yet. The sets and the converters are STILL without the software that would allow for real interactive television. There's some legal issue with the Japanese that is preventing the converters and the TVs to be released on the market with this software.

Other thing is that what is called "shadow areas" : even in cities where there's digital broadcast there are some places where you can't get any digital TV signal at all. To solve that they would need to put more antennas on this areas, to pick up signals from the transmitter and redistribute it to the local viewers - but to do that they need more specific government regulation on this particular subject, and that regulation was not made yet.

And, the TVs and converters are still very expensive, and what the average public on the streets is saying most is this: "why pay a lot of money in a high-tech TV set, just to watch the same crappy programing with a better quality of image?"

They ( the government ) want to shut analog off by 2016. I don't know... if things remain like this, I don't see it happening.

The thing that interested me the most in Digital TV was the possibility of watching TV in a car or a bus. Well, while I was riding a cab there, the driver had a mobile Digital set turned on on his car. I was not impressed. The image was like... well, it didn't really looked like a "live" TV image, like, let's say, a good image from a CRT TV. In many moments, it was like watching a video from a low quality Internet site, know what I mean? The colors seemed opaque and the motions of the people on the screen were slower than in natural life. It was not like watching TV - actually, YouTube provides BETTER image than that. Not to mention that sometimes the image would freeze, and we would receive no signal at all, depending on what part of the city we were in.

[Captain Video]

Need to know what model number it is... it doesn't have the back cover anymore. I believe it's a 15 inch set; compared to the 17 inch Admiral that I have it doesn't look even 17, looks 15.

Anyone could provide me with the model number?