Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Fuzzy Outlook for Digital TV

September 1, 2004

When digital television finally takes hold in the United States, vital radio spectrum currently used by analog TV broadcasts will be reallocated to other uses, such as advanced wireless technology and emergency communications. The Federal Communications Commission is now slated to take this spectrum away from analog TV broadcasters as soon as 85 percent of households in each broadcaster’s market own at least one digital set.

But the analog-to-digital transition isn’t going entirely as planned. By the end of 2003, only 8 percent of the nation’s 105 million TV-viewing households had bought digital TV sets. The government had hoped to hit the 85 percent threshold by the end of 2006; but now the FCC is considering a plan that lumps cable sets in with digital TVs, in order to reach the threshold by the beginning of 2009. At that point, holdouts who still cling to their old TVs and depend on over-the-air broadcasts will either have to sign up for cable or satellite service or purchase set-top boxes that convert digital signals to analog.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.