The wonders of the digital TV world

For my whole life, I have been using analogue TV, and in the last years, where cable and digital, payed TV plattforms appeared, I always said (and keep on saying) that I absolutely refuse to pay to watch TV. So I kept using standard, analogue TV.

Then, a couple of years ago, we all started listening to loud noise about the supposed countless wonders of digital terrestrial tv, which was going to transform the world of tv for much better. As in the case of CD, I think the guys promoting that stuff were pretty successful, and everybody was convinced it was going to be a real advance.

Now, here we are, only a few months before the definitive analogue TV switch-off. In Spain, from April 2010, we will only have digital terrestrial tv or else, ADSL or cable TV plattforms. So, for a couple of years already, I have digital TV tuners at home, and recently we purchased a new TV set with digital tuner onboard. In theory, the new TV with digital TV was going to be a much better overall TV watching experience than in the past. But you know what? It was not the case.

There are a few chains that are correctly received and then, the image quality is correct. But when I mean "correct", I mean it is being shown as intended by the broadcaster. Now, if I actually compare the quality of that broadcast with the same chain on analogue TV, the sad truth, in more than a few cases, is that the resolution of the image is significantly lower than in alogue broadcasts. So much for the advantage of digital. In a few cases, the quality is the same making that comparison, but NEVER, and I know what I say, never the digital broadcast is improving on the analogue one.

But wait, there's more: thanks to a media war which is currently being made in my country, between the conglomerates Mediapro and Prisa, Mediapro just launched a new chain devoted to football (Gol TV), and it will be the first to include many parts of coded signal, requiring a special tuner to watch them AFTER PAYING the corresponding fee per month. But this is not the worst: the worst of all is that, apparently, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Mediapro intends to setup a new plattform enabling other enterprises to broadcast their chains using the same system of payment. This means that countless digital tuners already sold and working at the homes of many people, will be unable to access such payed signals.

Now, the events described in the last paragraph don't matter much to me, since I won't pay in any case. What annoys me big time is the fact that, in the domain of standard TV chains, those with broadcasts of general content, there will probably be, very soon, an amount of emmissions requiring pay per view, and I bet they will be the few shows worth to watch.

I have the feeling that we have been betrayed by the government, who is allowing the transformation of generalistic TV (payed by advertisements) into the same, specialized, payed TV that has been a plague in the last ten years or so. In other words: I'm afraid that standard generalistic TV is on the verge of dying.

What a wonderful world, is that of digital.