Digital Conversion: any new thoughts?

I haven't seen anything on this in a long while, so thought I would toss out some ideas, and see what you all think. Personally, I suspect that this move to all digital for television was made fort some very simple, yet nefarious, reasons. One, to make it easier to know who is watching what. With most people, either a cable company or a satellite service is used, and the rest use a converter box. How hard would it be (tech people out there) to monitor through these boxes what people were watching, and send signals back to someplace? Two, to make it possible to delay, even if only by seconds, all transmissions. Nothing would be truly "live" anymore. Now, in some cases, that could be good, such as wardrobe "mishaps", and the like. However, I think all will agree that this could be used to prevent something they didn't want seen or heard from getting out. That small delay, and you can always cut the signal, or create what looks to be a "glitch", so people don't see things the PTB don't want them to see. What those things might be is open to wide speculation, and that's what I am looking for. Your opinions? Ideas

While I not wish to avoid what you suggest - as I do think it will be used to monitor what we watch, for ratings etc (which could be a good thing, the more people watching quality programming, the more likely it will become profitable to show such programming). I think the major reason behind this move to digital is to free up the amount of radio frequencies we have flying around.

NASA has said its getting more difficult to transmit and receive transmissions because of RFI or Radio Frequency Interference.

Horrible. I get 3 channels on an extremely good day. Most days I have one channel. And when it rains or storms, forget about it.I miss analog.

I think its a marketing and liscensing move myself. They watch when the most people are watching and on what channels, so they can charge premiums to advertisers. Here in the uk we need a tv liscence which funds the BBC. They can monitor who has a TV but no liscense.

I think these coupled with the reasons above are all factors. But then it could just be more efficient and cost effective.

Our governments have shown how much they care for us with the switch over to digital - after all with all thats going on in the world making sure we have nice clear TV pictures just had to remain a top priority !

Why spend money on Health , Education , Transportation when they can give us X-Factor in HD ?

Nothing sinister going on.

Have to go now - Medication time !

PS: Remember the thread "Celebrities Alive that were Dead" - I'm convinced that they selectively broadcast false obituries as a test either to certain areas or individual homes to see how people pick up information and pass it on.

oops - better take the pills before I start to think some more.

You'll hear people talk about the old analog TV was a 60 year old technology. Digital transmissions allow more channels with less bandwidth of the radio spectrum.

The radio spectrum part of the equation is what most people are missing.

The free area of spectrum that was held by UHF TV stations will be worth billions of dollars to the wireless industry and the government.

The VHF spectrum being released from analog TV will go to wifi applications. Again, even more money than UHF frequencies, because of the applications being used.

This part of the conversion is about money not better TV reception.

As for cable boxes, your viewing habits have been followed for years. The new stand alone digital conversion boxes for HDTV do not report back to anyone. But if you have cable, just consider yourself being counted.

The last gent/lady had it right. The unused spectrum will be leased for other uses. That’s more money into the government till. All media was going digital anyway. The tv was the last holdout. We ended up with a better picture and ease of connectivity to other digital devices.

The other comment about someone monitoring our viewing habits missed the boat.
If you have/had a cable box, they WERE monitoring what you watched. The tv itself doesn’t have the ability to communicate what we are viewing.

Any video delay would be done at the network or station.