In case you wondered… HDTV Over The Air

In the interest of repurposing TechComm content into ‘Distance Learning’ I’m posting this

eLearning and Blended Learning Business Development Tip - sound smart to the big office crowd

This content allows broadcast television stations in local markets to compete with the 500 channel special content cable providers have enjoyed for years.

That means that educational content has much more of a market in the broadcast media. As you’ll note from the picture below, the ‘Education’ category has three times the access shown.

What does all of this mean?!?

After all, the multicast capability allows much more content during non-prime time hours.

So I’m looking at how to not pay $100 a month for my HDTV signal and found some good resources about the impending over the air broadcast due by 2009. Guess what? In San Diego, we already have some Digital Television broadcasts (DTV) in the area.

I checked out my lat/long on this site and narrowed down the options to the DTV currently broadcasting. It also works for your street address.

Personally it means I’m not a slave to the satellite reseller who struck a deal with the devil (my apartment management company) and cut all the competing cable provider access, forcing a monopoly.

Thought that the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 took care of forced markets, obviously I was wrong… My only protest until now was in refusing to buy into the whole deal, and my life hasn’t suffered for lack of television. That’s what Netflix is for.

Salvation, salvation, salvaaaation… (that 1990s song)

So now I find the time to check into things and lo and behold! Digital TV (DTV) is supposedly broadcast in San Diego already! DTV is best defined from this information on MyFreeHDTV.org:

DTV brings viewers three (3) video formats, each different in picture quality…

SDTV: Better Than Regular TV

With DTV, SDTV (Standard Definition TV) picture resolution is better than today’s analog (640 x 480 min. vs. 440 x 480 max.)-a noticeable improvement. The audio is digital, too, so the sound is of higher quality than on analog TV (like a CD compared to FM radio) and may even feature multiple channels of surround sound.

EDTV: Really getting good

With DTV, the next level of digital television is EDTV (Enhanced Definition TV). EDTV features a minimum of 480p scanning lines, for a more detailed picture than SDTV. You can see the difference. EDTV also can reproduce Dolby® Digital audio. EDTV provides DVD quality pictures and sound!

HDTV: the best you can get

HDTV has all the benefits of EDTV, but goes far beyond it in picture resolution and audio features. The HDTV specification requires a minimum of 1080i or 720p scanning lines, far higher than EDTV and about five times the resolution of analog TV! It’s a level of detail that you’ve never seen before. The added benefit is 5.1 channel Dolby® Digital sound (movie theater quality sound), at home!

I’m going to say that the coolest thing I’ve seen is the ability to multicast on this signal. This means a lot for the non-CSI or non-Law & Order prime time programming.

Picture’s worth 1000 words… or worth 1080i resolution

Here’s a graphic, from MyFreeHDTV.org that explains the potential:

So what’s this mean again - to me?

You’re looking at the potential to push out corporate communication through local access programming. Marketing can repurpose some media content, training videos, etc. in order to gain brand name recognition. Technical Communication, in its blending and fusion, will end up touching into this market in one or another way.

Technical Communication has gained a new (old) market.