9 is greater than 4...

9 is greater than 4
Sky is better than floor...

(That's sung to the tune of "High Is Better Than Low", which I know nobody else remembers, because that was even before my time.)

Since we seem to be in an audiovisual mood here at the ol' 'Pail, I'm going to regale you with what digital TV has in store for you. Digital TV has been hyped endlessly by the right-wing media for years. I remember a few years ago how the Cincinnati Post kept touting it in the human interest section with what appeared to be a drawing of Jerry Seinfeld arguing with Kramer on a TV screen, and I thought at the time there was no way in hell the government would ever be able to make the switch to digital. But now I'm in a position to be a watchdog for all the digital travails that loom.

The digital TV set I buyed today is probably the best you can get as far as tuning goes. The analog mode has the best reception of any new set I've acquired since the '80s, so you know it's great by today's standards. Digital reception problems are inherent in the medium - not necessarily a problem with your set.

Here's an analogy: Records versus CD's. A scratched record will offer degraded sound quality. Do the same to a CD, and the CD won't work, period. CD's are digital, so it's all or nothing. With the regular, analog TV we're used to, signal interference might create some fuzz or static, but the station can still be watchable. With digital TV, the same interference will prevent you from receiving the station at all.

Apologists for digital TV claim this isn't so. But it's so.

True to form, I can get 9 stations in analog mode with the new TV reasonably clearly. Yet I can get only 4 stations in digital mode (and they break up so badly I can barely watch them). I can't pick up at all one of the 3 powerful VHF stations whose tower is directly across the river.

Last I checked, 9 > 4. What was this again about digital TV offering better picture?

There's certain locations where some stations can be clearer using digital. I believe that. But these are exceptions, not the rule. Most people don't live on high enough land or close enough to a station's tower to enjoy this advantage.

The reception problems with digital TV could have been avoided. Many '80s computing enthusiasts know about something called a checksum, which is the sum of a set of numeric data designed to ensure the data was entered properly. I don't think the current digital TV standard employs a similar method, because if it did, reception would be better. The government could have instituted a much better digital standard, but stations are like the Mafia: They have territory. Their territory is called a DMA. Stations don't want an out-of-town affiliate violating their exclusive "rights" to programming, even when the out-of-town station doesn't preempt it every 2 weeks like the local station does. So they lobbied to make stations less easy to receive, so people can't pull in distant signals.

And if some areas on the edge of a DMA or in low-lying areas can no longer pick up any stations, they're told to spend $25 a month on cable. The industry doesn't care about anyone who doesn't already have cable.

It's probably too late for the government to come out with a standard that corrects this issue, because then all the digital sets that are coming out now will probably be obsolete!

This reception problem is why I think digital ain't going to last. I'm the first person I know of who doesn't have cable but has a digital set, so most folks haven't had to deal with this problem yet. When people find out they can't even watch half as many stations as they could previously view, they're not going to like it too much, and they're going to be on Congress's case like stink on shit.