Digital TV

When the J-com man came to check my 'TV box' he presented rather interesting information and an unrefusable offer.

The J-com man prompty turned up with his array of tools and started testing the little white box that my TV is connected to. After no time at all he announced that all the channel frequencies were fine as he showed me different numbers scribbled on his note pad. This only took 5 minutes but then he said he had something to explain to me. Let me summarise:

"Some time next year across the whole of Japan, analog Japanese TV will cease to exist and will be replaced by digital TV."

This was a shocking statement! In England, when digital channels started to become available we were not forced to make the switch and abandon traditional TV: we can still watch the old analog channels. The J-com guy informed me that it's Prime-Minister Koizumi's plan. It will help to boost Japan's economy; unfortunately anyone who wants to continue watching TV will have to switch to digital TV!

In my city we have two options for digital TV, he said. 1, We can buy a new digital TV or, 2, we can rent a digital set-top box from J-com. Doing this gives you access to over 60 cable channels and the digital channels once they arrive. The big draw for me: English channels! Now, at the moment I don't want to splash out on a new digital TV, and I suspect that many people are the same. This is where J-com gets clever.

So, if you decide to take up the J-com offer, you will need to pay 6000 yen (about 30 pounds) for the contruction work/installation costs - because they are having to perform upgrades to the existing infrastructure across the entire city due to the number of people signing up.

However, if you decide to replace your phone service, typically NTT, at the same time as signing up for J-com digital TV/Cable TV then you don't have to pay the installation cost. Further, once you add on your current broadband internet access payments you will probably find that the cheapest way of having all 3 services is to sign up with J-com for a package digital TV/Cable TV, phone and broadband internet access deal. If I remember correctly, in total this comes to about 10,000 yen a month (50 pounds).

Still, with promises of a faster connection than my Yahoo! BB 12MB connection - which was damn fast in any case - I decided on the whole package. The one disadvantage of this set-up is that I won't have Yahoo! BB Phone any longer - it enables me to call other Yahoo! BB Phone users for free but more importantly calling abroad is far cheaper than standard call charges from other companies. If I call the UK it costs around 7 yen a minute.

It's not until next year that you really need to sign up for such deals but by getting people to sign up early - at the same time as checking their little TV boxes - J-com can vastly increase business and easily lure people away from phone providers and internet providers such as Yahoo! BB with the promise of no installation costs and an all-in-one package.

Comments

[quik]

They reckon by 2006 all analog channels in the UK will cease as well. Or at least thats the government plan.

[Darren]

Really? Well, that wouldn't be so bad as digital TV will have been around for some time by then, whereas in Japan things will happen a lot quicker - unless I was mislead by the J-Com guy, which I accept is definately possible.

[quik]

I am personally still not a fan of digital TV. Too much room for error in the way it works. Do you do a module on Distributed Multimedia Systems?

I did and the under lying technology is pretty poor.

Whether it is the same in Japan or not, I dunno. UK will always take the cheap option. Shareholders ruin everything.

[Darren]

No, we didn't study digital technology. Do you think that the technology is different in different countries then?

Well, I am not a great lover of TV but digital does seem to have some neat features. Besides, over here my J-com set-up gives me a lot more English language programs that I can watch while I wait for digital to come out.

[Lee]

I'm sure the technology in Japan is miles better than what rubbish we get conned into buying here.

Our Sky Digital falls flat on it's face when it rains heavily. Also when the silly box crashes we have to unplug it to reboot it. Wish there was a reset button or even an on/off switch. How hard would it have been to put one in?

[quik]

We had a lecturer at uni who tried to get digital. Engineer came out to fit it, had one look and said 'You can't get digital.'

The lecturer replies 'why?'

Engineer: 'trees.'

Nuff said really.

Digital TV is designed on the same principle as a webcast. Hence some times things can go blocky if something interfers with the signal for a few frames. The whole idea is to fit more information into less bandwidth. When you lose the bandwidth you are going to lose some quality as well.

However I think they are hoping people won't notice and will be enticed by the extra features that a red button provides. Piff! Couldn't care less really.

What you could do is get a freeview digital receiver, hook it up to your PC and leave it cracking for a few days and see what stations you can pick up. Then digital TV becomes worth it. The good thing about digital media is it is easy to break the encryption. All you need is some time.

DOOM 3 is out, yay!

[Darren]

Trees?!

Hmm, personally I like being able to choose from various languages and subtitles and if it doesn't go blocky then I'll be happy enough. But in the end I probably won't even watch it much.