Month: July 2005

Digitalization of television became a major national project in Finland some years ago, when a decision was made to abandon all analogue tv transmissions, and provide only digital broadcast content. There were reasons of ‘cost efficiency’ (=money) behind the decision, but also the general techno-utopian spirit of our country is behind the whole Lets Be the Top Information Society in the World thing, or at least that is what I suspect.

Even as a self-admitted technophile, I have postponed the transfer into digi-tv to this point because of the ridiculous quality (or lack of it) digital set-top boxes provided. When television, the supreme and ubiquitous media terminal gets stuck every half-an-hour, when even switching channel can take 15 seconds, all subtitling is missing or erronous, it was very hard to believe in the future of this whole thing.

The latest generation of boxes finally seems to have crossed the boundary where they are “usable enough”, “stable enough” and the genuine benefits of digitalization become apparent (primarily the better quality of image and sound, combined with an accessible electonic programme guide and hard-disk recording). I got mine yesterday – Topfield TF5100PVRc model – and currently I am mostly satisfied. But the basic situation remains, complex broadcast-networked & computer-like systems are released in ‘beta’, the various national “standards”, networks and programs create a mess, which is resolved (or not) piecemeal, as users act as beta-testers, report the endless bugs and firmware updates fix something – and possibly introduce new bugs.

Link: the Finnish DVD Plaza Topfield TF5100PVRt May04 Bug report thread.