I’ve lived in the US for just over a year now and am an avid home theatre/HDTV fanatic. And I have to say it’s about damn time someone came out and pointed out the ignorance and ridiculous rubbish that is fed to (less informed) bajans in the local media. Chris, well done! I’ve read your info carefully, and it turns out you’re absolutely correct in the way you describe the the TV signal revolution currently going on in the US. Just tonight I had a discussion with a relative back home re: the odds of CBC/Barbados switching their system over to one capable of HDTV content. As you correctly pointed out, this would be a multi-million dollar project for the CBC, and would not just occur and be mentioned in some newspaper article later on.

The important take-home message is that digital TV is not equal necessarily to HDTV. I think some people around this blog need to do some wikipedia time!

Peace!!!

……Wait uh minute, this article is indeed about nothing. :D

Chris don’t you have anything productive to do? schuuupppssssee. :D

Actually, my choice to stand by my statements has not proven anything beyond the fact I am willing to stand behind my statements. (I won’t bother digging up the definition of “proof”… It’s probably spelt differently in England anyway .)

However, your statement has suggested (but certainly not proven) that perhaps I have more knowledge than some might wish discussed…

I, like all humans, am not infallible. If I’m wrong about this, or *anything*, I want to know about it. I was raised that it’s OK to be wrong from time to time, so long as you’re right more often. In fact, if you never make mistakes, then it means you’re not pushing hard enough.

And I do hope you, and *all* readers, “do the research” not just on what I say, but on *everything* which *anyone* says or writes. It’s called critical thinking, and there’s not nearly enough of it — here or away.

Question everything. Ask questions. Do research. Think!!! We were all given brains — some, but not all, choose to use them.

As an aside, I do also find it amusing and interesting that this is your (LDwtrz) first appearance here. Do you have a last name which you’re willing to share? An e-mail address? A blog?

Lori

What is known as DTV in the US and elsewhere is about transmitting digital signals in the UHF bands traditionally used for analog TV signals. Again, that has *not* been done here, contrary to what the article claimed.

-Chris

I stand by my statement that I feel the article was misleading. Except for “CBC Channel 8″ the “traditional” UHF television channels have not been used in Barbados. CBC’s Mutlichoice has always used the MMDS band up in the 2.5 – 2.68 GHz range.

The consumer excitement about digital TV is the move to HDTV. It costs tens of millions of dollars to migrate a studio and/or a broadcast facility to handle even 720i HDTV.

If the CBC make a public statement saying they have invested in any HDTV transmission ability, I will issue a public apology. Until then, I feel the consumer has not benefited from the transition to DTV here, and won’t for a very, very long time.

-Chris

Can someone send this link to James Husband, Minister Darcy Boyce or even PM Thompson? Let us duke out this business right now!!!

David

Over-the-air digital set-top boxes can be purchased at retail stores. Cable and satellite TV providers also sell or lease digital set-top boxes for their specific services. (Note: the digital set-top box described here is not the same as the NTIA program digital-to-analog converter box, described below, used to convert free over-the-air digital broadcasts for viewing on an analog TV set.)

Thank you for this. Having been trained in North America, I’m used to the NA forms. Despite the fact the article was speaking within a US context, I respectfully withdraw my issue with the use of analog vs. analogue.

However, what about the other three points I raised which were about technical errors?

Analog is the American spelling of Analogue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogue_electronics

Adrian H we don’t have Ezra Alleyne’s email address. Any member of the BU family can feel free to contact Ezra Alleyne to tell him that we would be willing to give him an unfettered voice in the blogosphere. If he feels comfortable starting blog he should consider that too. In fact we would relish the debate with this man who may still have a role to play.We are not sure if he has the testicular fortitude to face the robust exchanges which may occur from time to time. The choice is his to make.

PS. How could they continue with a column from the Foundation by (Wickham) but jettison Alleyne (Combermere). It’s just not right!

…why are you always talking about ‘the traditional media and their need to change…’ The normal mechanism of change is for the old to become irrelevant while the new takes things to a higher level.

The ‘traditional media’ are ‘dead men walking’, just waiting for the fall… they are already irrelevant.

Here you are, blazing a trail in innovation and worrying about the walking dead

‘let the dead bury their dead’

I think that the big news with respect to the Advocate in particular, is when they get a story RIGHT.

Have you ever interacted with some of their ‘reporters’? I am willing to bet that salaries are rock bottom and the output reflects this…

…best left to their own fate….

http://bararchive.bits.baseview.com/archive_detail.php?archiveFile=./pubfiles/bar/archive/2008/May/16/Editorial/57957.xml&start=0&numPer=20&keyword=ezra+alleyne&sectionSearch=&begindate=5%2F1%2F2008&enddate=5%2F31%2F2008&authorSearch=&IncludeStories=1&pubsection=&page=&IncludePages=1&IncludeImages=1&mode=allwords&archive_pubname=Daily+Nation%09%09%09

The great irony for them is if they continue with the status quo it will give great currency to the social media and Citizen Journalist. Carl Moore must be cringing!

Never before in the post-independence history of Barbados have our party observed such abject levels of conceptualizing and thinking on the part of one of those persons who informally belong to the intelligentsia and literati in Barbados. For, with that and certain other kinds of fallacious thinking in Barbados, e.g. like that the cost of living cannot be reduced right now in Barbados, there must surely be the feeling that we in this country have reached a very definite stage of profound intellectual and academic crisis, and one that certainly has very dire consequences for our further progress and development as a country.

What is even worse, intellectually and conceptually, is that Mr. Beckles goes on to remark in this same column that were government to (greater?) attach socially important functions to land use in Barbados, it would have to find ways to generate foreign exchange at a faster rate than it is consumed, or consumption must be constrained. Surely, it is in this last sentence that we find Mr. Beckles’ stout acceptance of the backward and henious practice of DLP/BLP Governments allowing many of our lands to be quickly sold off to make foreign exchange at given points in time, to be objectionable. Mr. Beckles must be told quite strongly that even with the best combinations (appropriate sectoral mixes) as to how to maximumly utilize our lands (agriculture, housing, tourism, manufacturing, commercial, etc.), there should still NEVER be a belief by him or any one else at any time that land use policy, or lack thereof, must or will be made to stand in the way of our country properly earning foreign exchange. Moreover, as there is always a relationship between land and the foreign exchange earning sectors of the so-called economy, what is so totally clear to many Barbadians is that this inherently price-valueless land is NOT these income-earning sectors, vice-a-versa. Also, what must be said by us is that it is unwise for this so-called economist to think about constraining consumption just to make the poor poorer and the middle classes more stressed in the final analysis, when it is obvious that there are so many political, material and financial obstacles, esp. of a structural functional nature, that presently totally undermine the foreign exchange earning capacity of the country and some of productive sectors ( TAXATION/INTEREST RATES/IMPORTS OF GOODS AND SERVICES INTO THE COUNTRY CARRYING THE PRICES OF BIGGER AND MORE COMPLEX FOREIGN ECONOMIESetc.) What is also very disturbing about Mr. Beckles’ piece is that in his final sentence he suggests that we would have a great price to pay (what is this price though?) for maintaining local ownership of our lands; such an utterance even without his properly and carefully considering the fact that many of our lands, instead of being “sold” to foreigners, can be leased on a relatively short term basis to them.

Finally, what we must state for the benefit of the understanding of this scribe and others is that a future PDC Government’s land use policy shall, contrary to Mr. Beckles loose thinking, be never limited to just two broad options, given that PDC has been long resolutely committed to such a PDC government absolutely stopping foreigners from “owning” our lands; given that it will be such a government’s intention to put reasonable caps on the maximum number of acres any Barbadian citizen, or any fully or majority owned business enterprise or entity can owned in the country; its intention to abolish land rent; its objective of making sure that land, whether “bought”, “sold” or “leased”, shall be done so at administrative/nominal costs; and making sure that lands that have been traditionally agricultural will be kept that way, or that where there are idle agricultural lands/agricultural lands converted to other uses, that these lands if as much as possible they can be returned to agriculture, will be done so.

PDC