Digital TV, a FAQ

From 405 to Digital TV

Back in 1988, I wrote a paper entitled "A possible projection into the future of Television Broadcasting" which allowed me to be elected to The Society of Cable Television Engineers, as an Associate Member, even though it ran against the flow of US cable TV dollars at the time. My premise that the satellite TV dish would empower the populous on the path to Digital TV wasn't accepted by my employers and I moved on.

What a tense time it was as I watched the launch of the first Astra satellite and a relief as the first test signals came through. The prospect of 16 channels of TV was awesome, while we can now access, theoretically, 100's of TV and radio channels, if not in the home, in the pub. Once all the programmes had been bundled and the hardware readily available in any High Street, I looked around for the next development. I'd been monitoring the growth of the PC, since buying a 4K machine back in '80, and knew that the new fangled stereo sound cards and fancy video cards had the potential to move the PC out of the office and into the home. My enthusiasm for this digital medium was confirmed with my introduction to E-Mail. Such enthusiasm found no support at that time and I moved on.

The rate of digital change during the last seven years of trading has been phenomenal and I've attempted through Drake's Vision to keep up with it all. As with all change though, something gets screwed up along the way causing delay, about a year now by my count. Such a delay has caused serious financial problems to companies such as Pace, who should have been manufacturing more black box's to put under your TV set. Sky Television have begun digital broadcasting and the terrestrial companies are fighting a rear guard attempt to sell their services but the Blackbird/project X innovations from Motorola should stir the digital broth in the near future and bring Internet on the TV ever nearer.

I hope that this web site will develop a viewpoint, and receive contributions, on the exciting changes that are about us and provide independent opinion on the benefits and pitfalls that accompany all new ideas.

The aggravation that Guttenburg caused when he started to print Bibles for any Tom, Dick or Harry changed forever peoples view of the written word. The poor old manuscript writers, so amply illustrated by the work of Bede as he interpreted ancient sacred texts, couldn't have envisioned such misuse of the word. The Periodicals of the Royal Society, the triviality of the fantasy novels of Flaubert and the penny News Sheets spread the word to an ever wider readership. The shocking opportunities proffered by such dreadful common communications developments as personal mail, tabloid newspapers and satellite TV sent waves of change that alarmed the information power brokers of their time. So much information for so many people has now metamorphosed into the Internet.

I'm now working to build this web site into a lively TV Channel, interesting and entertaining enough to compete in the digital maze to come and I now seek support, both financial and moral, to make my vision a reality.