Gary Handman
UCB
At 12:28 PM 04/08/1999 -0700, you wrote:
>At 11:05 AM 4/8/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>Supposedly the deadline for all TV stations to offer a digital signal is
>>2006, although it is contingent
>>on 85% of US households owning the new digital tv's....so it may take
>>longer for the implementation.
>>For those who can't afford it, there will be converter boxes allowing them
>>to see a letter- boxed
>>version of the new programming on their old ntsc tv's.
>>Individual tv stations will have to spend several millions to upgrade.
>>To keep up, it means purchasing new vcr's, tv's, cameras, satellite
>>receivers, etc.
>>So How does a college go about planning for this eventuality..????
>>
>My two cents (one cent in U.S. currency):
>Quite frankly, I'm not very excited about it. I attended High Definition
>Television demonstrations in the early 1990's and here we are almost 10
>years later...
>
>Like anything else, academic institutions will eventually change over as
>required. It will ultimately be dictated by curriculum needs. In the best
>case scenarios it will come as a result of consultations between the
>instructional technology people, the media librarians and the faculty.
>
>Because the technology changes so quickly, long-term planning constantly
>needs to be revised. I recently visited a university that planned high-tech
>language labs 5 years ago. The design and final implementation ended up out
>of the hands of the people running it in the last stages (18 months), and
>of course now that the labs just opened they need changes, updates, etc.
>There is also the issue of convincing faculty members to rethink the way
>they teach in order to incorporate the available technology. Some resist,
>others embrace it.
>
>In the mean time institutions replace equipment yearly. This year, here at
>Concordia, there's some thought in purchasing digital 8 cameras as students
>are already doing work in a variety of digital formats. We're buiying more
>DVD players than we did last year but we're still replacing old VHS players
>with new VHS players.
>
>I've noticed that at the consumer level you can't seem to get away from the
>digital sales pitch. In Montreal, our monopolizing cable provider is now
>offering digital service in many areas, based on the fact that they
>recently put in fiber optic lines in the streets. That's great, but my
>apartment building has regular cable lines running from the street to the
>apartments, so even if I had a digital tv, I would still have an analog
>signal coming into my apartment.
>
>Oksana
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Oksana Dykyj voice: 514-848-3443
>Head, Visual Media Resources fax: 514-848-3441
>Instructional & Information Technology Services
>Concordia University
>H-342, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W,
>Montreal, Quebec
>Canada H3G 1M8
>__________________________________________________________________________
>
>