[mythtv-users] IMDB has TV listings.

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Sat Jun 23 21:08:48 UTC 2007


On 06/23/2007 04:12 PM, Yeechang Lee wrote:
> Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> says:
>   
>> Digital does not HDTV make.  (I.e. Daniel didn't say anything about
>> HDTV.)
>>     
> So? The US did it the right way, in making digital more or less
> synonymous with HDTV.
>   

"Right way."  :)  Actually, I'd argue that in so doing, the US has
doomed itself to be behind the rest of the world in HDTV for up to 50
years, but that's a different argument, and not on topic on this list.

> While the US launched free terrestrial HDTV as far back as 1998, the
> UK (to use an example) launched free non-HD digital terrestrial TV in
> 2002 after the collapse of its non-free non-HD digital terrestrial TV,
> founded in 1998. (And, of course, cable companies--which together with
> satellite have about 90% household penetration in the US--had begun
> shifting to digital in the late 1990s.)
>
> The US achieved essentially 95% population coverage for multiple free
> terrestrial HD channels a couple of years ago, *and* for years has had
> 90% cable/satellite household penetration on top of that. The UK
> achieved similar coverage for non-HD terrestrial digital TV, but in
> turn said service's bandwidth has become a massive obstacle for
> deploying free terrestrial HDTV. The current target is 2012, or in
> other words 14 years after HD deployment began in the US and eight
> years after the completion of near-universal availability. (Anyone who
> bothers to bring up the 450 person-strong BBC HD trial in London gets
> to wear the dunce cap in the corner.)
>
> If there's a European MythTV user who wouldn't want to trade "better
> EIT" for the already-bounteous and fast-growing amounts of free
> terrestrial HD programming his American counterpart takes for granted
> (not to mention the much more available through cable and satellite),
> I'd like to meet him.

It was definitely very nice of you to cut out Daniel's and your
statements from your response.  I wouldn't want to confuse the point
you're trying to make in this post (which seems to be saying I'm wrong
or stupid or something) with the actual point you were trying to
disprove originally.  I do have to admit, though, that I have no clue
what point you were trying to make in this post...  My top candidates:

    - Digital TV has equal penetration in Europe and the US.
    - HDTV takes more bandwidth than non-HD digital TV, so the Europeans
are far behind the US in digital TV penetration.
    - Penetration of non-free digital TV in Europe doesn't count in
statistics, but non-free cable and satellite digital TV in the US does
count in statistics.
    - You want to meet Europeans who are glad to have usable EIT data. 
Or, perhaps, HDTV without a guide is more useful than non-HD digital TV
with a guide.
    - HDTV is prettier than non-HD digital TV and, therefore, Europeans
want to be US citizens.
    - Regardless of whether it's digital or not, non-HD digital TV isn't
digital in Yeechang world because digital is supposed to be pretty, darn it.
    - I'm too stupid to understand all these (un-cited) statistics you
provide.  (I'll be the first to admit that I think statistics are simply
a way of telling a story without telling the rest of the story--which
may mean that I am stupid.  For instance, quoting the digital TV
"penetration" (meaning, to me, "availability") statistics without
providing any digital TV "usage" statistics tells a very different story
from quoting the number of analog and digital TV users in Europe and the
US.)

I know in this (and many of the other similar threads), no one is
actually listening to what other people are saying--preferring instead
to just type in some crap and post it.  It seems, though, that you're
not even interested in what /you/ are saying, yourself.

To help you recall what happened, here are the quotes:

On 06/23/2007 12:45 PM, Yeechang Lee wrote:
>
> Daniel Kristjansson <danielk at cuymedia.net> says:
>   
>> In most of Europe, guide data isn't as big a problem for
>> MythTV because they are further along in the digital
>> transition and provide much better EIT than we get here.
>
> Better EIT does not "further along in the digital transition"
> make. Europeans are as much as eight years behind the US in HDTV
> deployment. See
> <URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/244094#244094>
> and
> <URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/244146#244146>.
(cut to attributions shown at top)

So, here's the recap.  Daniel says, "they [most of Europe] are farther
along in the digital transition and provide much better EIT than we get
here."  You counter, saying that they are not further along in the
digital transition because they, "are as much as eight years behind the
US in HDTV deployment," (and you provide references to two of your own
posts--which themselves do not provide any citations--as proof).  I said
that digital TV does not mean HDTV and that Daniel never said HDTV.

Then, in your latest post you said some stuff about there being lots of
HDTV in the US and not in Europe so digital TV doesn't exist in Europe
or something... Again, as mentioned above, I'm kind of fuzzy on this
one.  I definitely missed the part where you proved that Europeans don't
have better EIT data than do US TV users (which, IMHO, would have been
on-topic).

Sigh.  I knew I shouldn't have posted anything into any of these
threads.  It seems that even my one-line post was too much.  I am
officially bowing out, now, so feel free to post a response.  You have a
guaranteed "last word" on this one if you do so, so make it a good one.

Mike




More information about the mythtv-users mailing list