Death of Digital TV

http://www.kcet.org/about/pressroom/...rtnership.html


http://www.networkworld.com/article/...-stations.html


After working in the set top box industry from its meteoric rise to its disintegration, these stories had some interest. By the time digital TV was finally mandated in 2009, the idea of towers blasting gigawatts of scheduled programming was already obsolete. Digital TV was amazing when its 1st blips appeared in 2002. Watching HD movies off the airwaves in 2005 was amazing. By 2009, the party was over.

Never actually watched anything on a commercial digital TV. Only watched some olympics by cobbling together mplayer, pcHDTV, or using custom software for day jobs.

5 years after mandating it, the FCC is already phasing out the digital TV spectrum. TV stations are already abandoning the transmitter in favor of the router. The solutions are wider, more packetized, but strictly private.

Radio spectrum is allocated like the 1920's when everything was private & the government decreed which private business got what. Even bridges were private in those days. Not sure it would all be private if radio was invented today. There would be cries for spectrum neutrality.