In 2009, the FCC will require that all TV stations cease transmitting in the VHF band they previously occupied. They will move to digital broadcasting, which takes-up much less bandwidth, vacating the “TV Spectrum” for other uses.

What’s the catch? Your TV will become a rather expensive paperweight, as traditional televisions cannot process the digital signals. If you have an HDTV, or a modern digital-ready TV, than you’ll be fine. If not, then you’re options are to either buy a new TV or purchase a converter box that processes the digital signals and feeds them to your antiquated television.

This isn’t news, the FCC has been planning it for a few years now. Why are they vacating the TV Spectrum? It can be used for other purposes, such as cell phones and wireless broadband, as the UHF spectrum will soon be. Unfortunately, there’s a depressingly high chance that the spectrum will simply be sold to a large corporation, where it will benefit no one except whichever telecom company has deep enough pockets to buy it.

Personally, I don’t mind the spectrum being vacated (as long as a corporation doesn’t gain exclusive control over it), though I am opposed to digital TV. I think it’s unnecessary, and that TV could be better broadcast over the internet.

It’s insane for the FCC to expect us to go out and buy new TV sets on such short notice, and don’t forget that their forcing the high-definition rubbish on us too. Sometime around the death of VHF TV, the stations will stop broadcasting in the standard definition as well. Does someone in the FCC have stock in the TV set industry? You have to wonder…

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 7:57 am by Matt and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.