Digital TV audio in cheap devices?

[Brolan]

I love my shower radio with TV sound. But I know it is going away in February when all the US TV stations go digital. I was wondering if anyone here knew how expensive it would be to add digital TV audio to a small radio?

I imagine it would be too expensive for a device like a shower radio at this time, but over time would become less expensive.

 

[JustAFriend]

Living in Florida, I'm much more concerned that the emergency
battery-powered tvs and radios that we DEPEND ON during
hurricane season WONT WORK.

....no one's thought about that, now have they....

 

[Brolan]

Living in Florida, I'm much more concerned that the emergency
battery-powered tvs and radios that we DEPEND ON during
hurricane season WONT WORK.

....no one's thought about that, now have they....

One thing I've noticed during summer thunderstorms is digital TV signals will freeze and be useless while the analog signals just show some noise. Makes watching for those tornado warnings pretty useless.

 

[USS KG5]

Living in Florida, I'm much more concerned that the emergency
battery-powered tvs and radios that we DEPEND ON during
hurricane season WONT WORK.

....no one's thought about that, now have they....

Well the problem is that the $$$$$$ they see in front of them from selling off the old analogue spectrum blinds them to everything else.

In theory there should hopefully be a market for digital replacements for those battery powered emergency devices.

 

[Mr. B]

I was just thinking I should have sold my handheld TV on ebay a long time ago.

 

[Jadzia]

I really don't rate digital tv that highly as a replacement. We should retain both imo.

Plus
Digital is good for recording - no snow. Sound has the potential to be as good as mp3 audio is.
Minus
Digital looks really poor when there's a lot of motion. All you can see is the quantization.

Decoding is non trivial. It takes a relatively large amount of electrical power for the digital processing to get the raw audio and video signals out. So the mobile devices are power hungry, unlike analogue which is really cheap.

If there is a poor signal, due to weather or whatever, your reception is broken up and interrupted with "Check your aerial" every 30 seconds. I'd rather have snow than that.

Sound and video are interleaved, but not naturally associated, so there can be lag between the two as the streams run at slightly different speeds, and the decoders go wrong often enough that you notice them out of sync. Then when it decides to resync, you get a 5 second silence.

I have an analogue option on my tv here, digital audio isn't always better, especially true on televisions for some reason. You get cleaner high frequency sounds with analogue. While digital doesn't have that background fizzing noise. For casual programmes I do prefer analogue. For listening to music I prefer digital.

 

[USS KG5]

Minus
Digital looks really poor when there's a lot of motion. All you can see is the quantization.

That is partly to do with the actual decoder hardware than a fundamental flaw with the technology - the same comments were made about DVD in the early days but due to clever players and better quality of production you do not hear so much about it these days.

Decoding is non trivial. It takes a relatively large amount of electrical power for the digital processing to get the raw audio and video signals out. So the mobile devices are power hungry, unlike analogue which is really cheap.

You certainly have a point here - DAB in the UK has still to resolve this problem and ultimately the lack of the only resolution (low cost low energy processors on DAB boards) will probably cripple the technology.

Shame really - I'd kill for an MP3 player with DAB built in.

If there is a poor signal, due to weather or whatever, your reception is broken up and interrupted with "Check your aerial" every 30 seconds. I'd rather have snow than that.

Well ultimately this does render analogue unwatchable as well - it just arguably takes a bit longer to lose the signal completely.

Sound and video are interleaved, but not naturally associated, so there can be lag between the two as the streams run at slightly different speeds, and the decoders go wrong often enough that you notice them out of sync. Then when it decides to resync, you get a 5 second silence.

This flaw can be resolved as well - in fact I have never noticed it on my Sky Satellite box.

I have an analogue option on my tv here, digital audio isn't always better, especially true on televisions for some reason. You get cleaner high frequency sounds with analogue. While digital doesn't have that background fizzing noise. For casual programmes I do prefer analogue. For listening to music I prefer digital.

Well - that treble being cleaner is probably due to unduly harsh compression - sadly a feature of a lot of digital channels. It is a limitation of how the technology has been implemented in that case rather than of the technology.

I'm not picking at you or criticising - I think there is a way to go with some implementations of the technology - but ultimately as with Vinyl and CD (and now MP3) digital does win the prize.