Quote Originally Posted by shadesofsisyphus View Post
The question I have with this is why did the government have to get involved? In almost all other tech transitions that I know of (in my very limited experience) was industry driven, not government regulated.

The freeing up of bandwidth for emergency use puzzles me. All the tv stations in my area will still be broadcasting on the same channels, but we get several subchannels... whoopee... how does this free up bandwidth if they are still broadcasting on the same channels? (I am assuming that each channel corresponds to a certain bandwidth signal) Just confused I suppose.

Geoff
My suspicions are that this is another example of industry lobbying congress for forcing a transition to a technology that will make them a bundle of money. An expensive technology that most of us would still opt out on if given the choice. Emergency services, police and military operate at frequencies higher than analog TV.

Even though there are substantial quality increases in digital signal vs analog signal and more data can be transmitted simultaneously by the digital signal, digital is still just a niche market that not all are willing to buy into. We are being forced to buy this technology by the equipment manufacturers who now appear to have congress working for them to create a huge market for them. In short it is all about money. The freeing up of frequencies thing is a "Red Herring".

To me this is another blatant example of government, industry and do-gooders eroding away your freedom of choice.