Ignorant query about digital broadcasting
 

The cute animals thread was starting to drift into an interesting conversation about the new digital broadcasting standard, and I thought I'd put this here so the discussion had a home. Especially because I have a question about it, and some of you smart people might know. My question has two parts:

1) Once the analog channels are gone, will digital signals take over that part of the broadcast spectrum, or will that become "empty space?"

2) If the former analog part of the spectrum remains free and unused, would it be possible for enterprising amateurs with the proper equipment to produce pirate analog TV broadcasts? If so, I want in!

I think they've sold off all that bandwidth.

That was my understanding - part of the reason that some people objected to the delay.

Today was the original scheduled DEADLINE to pull the plug on analog, but there was an extension until June 12. Turns out that many stations went ahead and pulled the plug today anyways.

I believe just about all the stations have already switched on their digital signals.

Analog signals take up a much broader swatch of the airwaves than digital. The FCC made a lot of money auctioning off the newly available bandwidth (oh yeah: police, fire, etc. got some of the bandwidth as well).

There's a currently raging debate as to whether the government will be forcing the purchasers of the abandoned frequency chunks to reserve a small bit of the bandwidth for public works type uses.

There is also a technical debate on whether the stations interferance buffers (whitespace) were cut too close... less space needed for digital yes but they cut the channels awful agressively to pimp em out... I have trouble getting anything digital HD "Over The Air" except for channel 11 and PBS near LAX.

I hooked up the digital converter today. I don't know if I did it exactly right but as long as I have the TV, converter box, and VCR on I can watch TV on the smallish 1995 screen. It seems to be enough equipment to operate the Hubble telescope. This is my spare TV that I may use when I'm sewing. Or I may just watch videos.

My main TV is the newer one in the living room. I get pretty good digital reception with an indoor antenna as long as the pixels are feeling cooperative. Some days they are a little shy and hard to catch. I checked antennaweb.org today and found out my living room is on the wrong side of the building. Oops.