Re: France hits a Million OTA receivers

tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote in alt.tv.tech.hdtv:
> > Sure...everywhere but the US, Korea, and Japan. All other countries either
> > have no HD or require simulcast of SD and HD on the same digital channel.
> >
>
> I think you forgot Canada.

Not as such...they (like Mexico) are included in the NTSC/ATSC config of
the US.

> Anyway, do they make digital receivers that
> are incapable of picking up HD signals

Not for ATSC (US, Korea, Canada, etc.) or Japan. For Australia, yes, in
the sense that the tuner can tune the channel, but if there is an HD
stream, the demodulator can't handle it. There are HD-capable receivers
for Australia.

> or is it just that the signals
> are not available?

In Europe, it's because of this. There are no HD signals (and no standard
for HD in most countries), so the current receivers are SD-only. This
will make transition to HD extremely painful, as they will either have
to use separate bandwidth for HD content, or do what Australia does and
require all channels to be have SD streams with optional HD streams. This
will kill the quality of a lot of HD.

The US is a little slower on the uptake today because users need both an
HD tuner and an HDTV to see the full benefit (although digital of any form
via S-Video is better than NTSC for 95% of viewers). Europe will be
agonizingly slow to have HD in homes because of the success of the SD
digital (largely because of subsidies of some form...either box prices or
extra free channels that are not available at all on analog). Most people
already have an SD receiver and a widescreen TV (both fairly new), but to
view HD they will have to replace them both.

It's the same as in the US, but here we have the advantage that people
replacing older TVs right now really can't buy a non-HD set (at least in
the larger sizes), so they will already have half the requirement. That
situation won't occur in Europe for 5-10 years.

Also, Europe is used to cheap digital OTA receivers because they are all
SD-only. The MP@HL decoding hardware is a lot more expensive, and since
the biggest economy of scale country won't be using the same type of
receivers, it's likely they won't see sub-US$300 HD digital tuners for
about that same 5-10 years.

--
Jeff Rife |
| http://www.nabs.net/Cartoons/OverTheHedge/PizzaDelivery.gif
.

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