Today is the 31-12-2018. It is five years to the day, that all Australian analogue TV transmissions were mandated to have ceased.
The phase out of analogue transmissions commenced in 2010, which is ten years after the introduction of Digital Terrestrial TV.
All analogue transmissions had ceased by the 13 December 2013.

Since that day we have had to use, set-top- boxes, to enable us to run our “vintage televisions.”
Other signal sources, such as VCR's, pattern generators, and modulators, can also be used to display pictures on our sets.
Those of you that have sets with video inputs, have more options.

Never again, will I ever get to see the lightning fast, auto station search, of a Sony SL-C7 Betamax VCR. A sight to behold.

Happy New Year to all.

Wayne.

Panasonic digital TV's have very fast channel selection and program info update. It's as good as any analogue TV I've seen.

I don't know why other makes, particularly budget models, are so frustratingly slow.

I use a modulator bought from Jaycar which works very well and didn't cost a great deal. Audio is good with no frame buzz and picture quality is very acceptable being fed with a DVD player.

I don't know why other makes, particularly budget models, are so frustratingly slow.

I do - because you get what you pay for.

I work at a hospital and have the frustrating task of dealing with how televisions interface with the nurse call system. Some televisions do this job better than others. It's just the way of the world. But one thing I have noticed over the last five years or so is how slow some televisions are very slow when on auto-tune.

We need to tune both analogue and digital channels because all internal and Foxtel channels are still sent to a telly via analogue modulators, which is something I want changed but it won't be yet due to the cost of replacing around 25 modulators, their backplanes, power supplies, RF amplifiers and a few other things. The other problem with not doing this upgrade is that many popular telly manufacturers no longer make models with analogue tuners. For the time being, Hisense does and that is what we use for now for this reason alone. Unfortunately this isn't stopping most manufacturers changing their menus and this can also be problematic for us as we then need our nurse-call provider to allow for this in the TV firmware that gets uploaded to the bedhead panel in the room a new television is in.

"I work at a hospital and have the frustrating task of dealing with how televisions interface with the nurse call system."

Might be able to help you with this Brad, we did a little box some years back that does just this with no mods to the TV. You have my email...

Our main TV at home is an LG OLED 55 inch panel which makes a very nice picture indeed and is not a budget model by any means, but it's menu structure and info update etc is no match for the 10 year old Panasonic LCD TV in our family room which has instant response to channel change and always has the channel info available.

At the time we bought the LG OLED,(2 years ago) Panasonic didn't have an OLED model available unfortunately.

They do now.

In a way I mourn the loss of analogue TV. If the signal faded a little, you just got some snow. With digital, the picture turns into a coloured mishmash. If the fridge turned off, you just got a line flash, digital gives a loud click (or fade-out) of the sound.

I used to be into DX TV, having seen TV stations all over NSW, in QLD, SA and NZ here during the 1990s. Digital meant the most definite end of that hobby.

I don't bother with TV at all these days. Apart from the dearth of content worth watching, I have zero tolerance for advertising. I prefer to watch interesting and educational stuff online. I subscribe to many YouTube channels operated by knowledgeable and skilled techs.

OLED is the future, I think. LG's newest sets have the best picture I've seen on a telly and for something to beat plasma, it's doing very well. It's a shame that the TV networks and the ACMA seem to have no interest at all in 4K broadcasting which makes upgrading just for the sake of having the latest a complete waste of time. Samsung has just released an 8K set of around the 90inch mark. Again, no point unless you have your own 8K video source available.

Naturally, if your existing set breaks and needs replacing, a 4K set would be the way to go even though it'll probably never be used to its full potential.

I also watch very little TV and am content with the Panasonic plasma set that I bought just before the Delhi Commonwealth Games. The only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't pick up the new FHD format. That said, most of what's on telly these days sucks so I am not in a hurry to upgrade.

Ian, I received your e-mail. Unfortunately that box won't work with the system we have as it uses a proprietary communications method. All bedhead panels are IP based and completely self contained computers. It's like having a Raspberry Pie in each room. These all operate autonomously but do feed information back to a server which logs all calls and their duration for legal reasons. The remote handset uses pins 1,2,3 and 6 - one pair for the pillow speaker and the other pair for full duplex data. The same applies between the bedhead panel and the telly.

The reception problems are down to a DVB processor which recently got cooked by a surge. It got replaced today and cost a tidy sum.

Why do they call it 'organic' - "O-LED"? Why not fabricate an array of regular micro led's for screens?

I'm not sure of what they mean by "organic". To me, something that is organic is something that is alive and will decay when its dead. Many mobile phones now have AMOLED screens which is a similar technology, with the AM meaning active matrix. Again, I am not sure of what is inactive about a standard OLED screen.

When I went to school, organic meant it contained carbon atoms.

Chances are, all living things do in one form or another. It's a very common element.

It amazes me how the processed food industry gets away with how they use the word 'organic' on their food labelling, to imply that it is more pure in some way to a competitors product. I doubt there's any food on the planet that isn't organic. It's pretty similar to the silly claims and badging by some of the car brands.

EG: Madza installs super capacitors in their cars and charges them via dynamic braking and they call it "Skyactive Technology". Toyota once claimed all its cars had "The O2 Advantage". Don't ask me what that is supposed to mean.

Brad said in post #8 "I also watch very little TV and am content with the Panasonic plasma set that I bought just before the Delhi Commonwealth Games. The only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't pick up the new FHD format. That said, most of what's on telly these days sucks so I am not in a hurry to upgrade."

What is FHD?

My Panasonic Plasma (a TH-P42U20A) which was made in 2010 is capable of receiving MPEG4 and H264 content.

FHD = full high definition. Trouble is many sets existing now won't do MPEG4 and simply come up with unsupported format on HD channels.

Thank goodness for Netflix and Stan I say.

I think these streaming services will be the future and the greedy commercial stations will eventually fail.

People always eventually get what they want and I think paying a few dollars up front to not be bombarded with ads and reality TV may be it.

paying a few dollars up front to not be bombarded with ads and reality TV may be it.

I have never bothered with cable, but I seem to recall Foxtel being ad free for a short while and now I'm told by some subscribers that it screens more ads than free to air.