Why did the government decide to stop Analog TV Transmissions?

Question

I know that digital is better, but what was the reasoning behind stopping all Analog?

Answer 1

The technology was there.

The government wanted to sell the digital frequencies, but they knew they'd get a better price for them if people were forced onto them, so they decided to cut the analogue by a fixed date to drive up the price they could charge.

This also meant that they'd have a second wave of digital frequencies to sell once all the analogue ones were free.

Answer 2

make a quicker transition, if they let it go out by itself it would be unfair to certain tv stations that had to keep viewers with analog and digital...

Answer 3

Top reason:

After the analog shutdown, what used to be analog channels 51-69 will be used for new wireless services and government purposes. Also congress auctioned the rights to use most of those frequencies for a lot of money. This lets them pretend that the government spending deficit isn't as bad as it really is. What they are spending on converter box coupons is a drop in the bucket compared to what they are going to rake in. (Of course, that money will eventually come out of our pockets in the form of higher prices on the new wireless services).

Second reason:

Running both analog & digital signals means that some digital stations have to run on reduced power to prevent interference between stations. After the analog shutdown they can go to full power which will improve digital reception on those stations.

Third reason:

It costs a lot of money to supply electricity to the analog transmitters. By getting rid of this expense, it's more economically viable for stations to keep on the air in less densely populated areas.

Fourth reason:

Converters are so cheap that it doesn't make sense to retain the analog transmissions.Now if consumers had to fork over $100 for a converter, it would be a different story.

Answer 4

I'm always amazed at people's surprise or outrage that analog TV is being "taken away". Folks, this has been in the works for 20 years. It's been delayed several times, but Feb 2009 is now the drop dead date.

A major reason for the digital transition is flexibility and variety.

Each TV channel has 6 MHz of bandwidth assigned to it. Analog channels use the whole thing to show a single low resolution channel. With digital broadcasting, however, the 6 MHz translates into 19 Mbits per second of video data. The station can choose to use it all for a single HD channel, or split it up into 4 or 5 separate channels. They can all be SD (comparable to analog quality) or some combination of one HD and a few SD channels.

If you've ever seen digital TVs, you'll see channels labelled 8-1, 8-2, 8-3, etc. These are the multiple channels mentioned above. So far, stations seem to be using them for news, weather, traffic, etc. But it seems likely that they will eventually use them for higher value purposes.