Doesn't interest me, I am officially an old timer.
I see digital stuff not working well every day, and have to fix or adjust them.
There are many more failure modes for digital schemes, and all the error-correction in the world isn't as robust
as analog. I'd rather be able to get the message than hear or see only 15-30 percent, with the rest blanked out.
When they come up with something that works in electrical storms, let me know.
A week or two we had a huge storm with tornadoes bearing down on us, and all the digital channels were
broken up, pixellated, and blanking audio over 50% of the time. They were of no use whatever.
Fortunately, the analog signal was still fine, but with minor static lines in the picture.
The audio was 100%.
For next year, the FCC has decided over-the-air TV is NOT going to be the place to go for severe weather info.
Way to go, FCC, what is the next downgrade we can expect?
Mother Nature is a b***h when you refuse to work with her.
I got called away to Mpls-St Paul on a breakdown call..."the Press is DOWN!
They were frothing at the mouth all day monday to get me up here while I was knee-deep fixing someone else's digital
failures until after midnight. THAT customer had let 6 problems pile up until it was very hard to diagnose.
When I got here tuesday afternoon, they had discovered one of the 2 power switches on the
size-preset console was turned off. They still had some regular old-fashioned electronic/mechanical problems to fix.
Now this press is 20 years old and they are beginning to see downtime that wouldn't happen if all this stuff were manually operated.
When "improvements" are more a source of problems than helpful, we should be wary.
I do my part by laughing at our folly, and explaining to customers the weaknesses of a "digital world."
There are not nearly enough people around who understand technology, but lots of marketers who push this stuff as
the newest, greatest thing with no understanding of the tradeoffs/vulnerabilities involved.
Then the end users think they can get by without hiring ( having to pay) someone who understands it and can keep it running.
( But they'll pay big $ for some IT guys, who can't fix the problem, either, unless it's a network issue)
They don't understand it, but fully believe the hype and marketing.
Until it doesn't work and they go into panic mode.
The new failures are almost always less servicable than old failures.
Very few of the IT guys know squat about electronics. It is amazing to me that they don't even know basic electrical theory.
