In case you haven't noticed, your TV signal went the way of the phonograph record and cassette player this month. It's now and all digital signal. Americans have grown up with TV. All those analog channels have been living with us, as my poet friend Richard Gylgayton might say, "like poltergeists who invite themselves to my house for dinner, who plan to stay as long as they want, and who will not help with the cleanup."
I remember the very first color TV broadcast days, when we oohed and aahed as the Wizard of Oz switched suddenly from black and white to full "living color" when Dorothy landed in Oz. For many, the TV is such a dominating presence that it is indeed like another member of the family, always on, yammering in the living room, staying up late each nite. And yes, it does look as if the TV itself created that mess in the living room when you stagger in the next morning for the chatty new shows that start our days. Once we could mute it and simply walk away, but now it has evolved to a flat screen digital behemouth, sprouting surround sound speakers and a subwoofer that delivers all the earth shattering realism possible when our DVD or Blueray movies spin out the latest blockbuster flick. The TV can now vibrate the walls of your living room! It's as close to Huxley's "Feelies" are we are likely to get for a while.
Well, we started with 10 or 12 channels, and took the ride through the 200 cable stations over the years. Personally, I have devolved down to 5 DTV signals that I can pull in with a digital antenna in my viewing area. Frankly, I liked the old analog world better. Yes DTV is a sharper image at times but, to my eye, it does not handle motion well, and when there is any interruption of the signal your screen just dissolves into a jumble of squares--much worse than a degraded analog signal. Oh well, I watch no more than an hour or two of TV a week, so it's no great loss. I have forsaken TV as a carrier signal of reality long ago, and if I want the walls of my room to vibrate, my DVD or stereo system still does the job well enough.
That said, the one thing that is just a tad disturbing about this latest "advance" in our multimedia technology is that it is fully editable at the source end. It was always said that one could never believe what they read in the papers, never believe the government, etc. But there was something about a photograph, a visual image, that did not lie--that is until Adobe Photoshop showed up. Still, Americans came to believe the images they saw on broadcast TV. It was a WYSIWYG world. (What You See Is What You Get). TV had tremendous power to command our attention and persuade us that this was, in fact, reality. Analog signals could be edited, but not with the ease of a digital signal. Cutting and splicing is in no way comprable to the creative power of digital special effects, now so advanced that it can make the arrival of Martian tripods seem a completely believable event--just as Orson Wells and his crew had thousands of people scared out of their wits when he first broadcast "The War of the Worlds" on radio. Now we live in a world where I will never be quite certian that what I am seeing on the screen is really there. If done right, a good effects team can create something that would seem entirely convincing, and we are habituated to believe our eyes, and take it on faith that what we see is real.
Yes, it's just a tad disturbing, isn't it? We don't live in a WYSIWYG world any longer. The only way you can recapture that certianty is to be there in person and actually witness an event. Like so many advances we have made in our Brave New World, truth is the first casualty. Well... Good luck at 720p or 1020i resolution folks. And, to quote a line from one of the first digital blockbusters to delight viewing audiences, "may the force be with you!"
I remember the very first color TV broadcast days, when we oohed and aahed as the Wizard of Oz switched suddenly from black and white to full "living color" when Dorothy landed in Oz. For many, the TV is such a dominating presence that it is indeed like another member of the family, always on, yammering in the living room, staying up late each nite. And yes, it does look as if the TV itself created that mess in the living room when you stagger in the next morning for the chatty new shows that start our days. Once we could mute it and simply walk away, but now it has evolved to a flat screen digital behemouth, sprouting surround sound speakers and a subwoofer that delivers all the earth shattering realism possible when our DVD or Blueray movies spin out the latest blockbuster flick. The TV can now vibrate the walls of your living room! It's as close to Huxley's "Feelies" are we are likely to get for a while.
Well, we started with 10 or 12 channels, and took the ride through the 200 cable stations over the years. Personally, I have devolved down to 5 DTV signals that I can pull in with a digital antenna in my viewing area. Frankly, I liked the old analog world better. Yes DTV is a sharper image at times but, to my eye, it does not handle motion well, and when there is any interruption of the signal your screen just dissolves into a jumble of squares--much worse than a degraded analog signal. Oh well, I watch no more than an hour or two of TV a week, so it's no great loss. I have forsaken TV as a carrier signal of reality long ago, and if I want the walls of my room to vibrate, my DVD or stereo system still does the job well enough.
That said, the one thing that is just a tad disturbing about this latest "advance" in our multimedia technology is that it is fully editable at the source end. It was always said that one could never believe what they read in the papers, never believe the government, etc. But there was something about a photograph, a visual image, that did not lie--that is until Adobe Photoshop showed up. Still, Americans came to believe the images they saw on broadcast TV. It was a WYSIWYG world. (What You See Is What You Get). TV had tremendous power to command our attention and persuade us that this was, in fact, reality. Analog signals could be edited, but not with the ease of a digital signal. Cutting and splicing is in no way comprable to the creative power of digital special effects, now so advanced that it can make the arrival of Martian tripods seem a completely believable event--just as Orson Wells and his crew had thousands of people scared out of their wits when he first broadcast "The War of the Worlds" on radio. Now we live in a world where I will never be quite certian that what I am seeing on the screen is really there. If done right, a good effects team can create something that would seem entirely convincing, and we are habituated to believe our eyes, and take it on faith that what we see is real.
Yes, it's just a tad disturbing, isn't it? We don't live in a WYSIWYG world any longer. The only way you can recapture that certianty is to be there in person and actually witness an event. Like so many advances we have made in our Brave New World, truth is the first casualty. Well... Good luck at 720p or 1020i resolution folks. And, to quote a line from one of the first digital blockbusters to delight viewing audiences, "may the force be with you!"
