Toshiba quits HD DVD business

[LTR]

Source: CNN

TOKYO (AP) -- Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.

The move would make Blu-ray - backed by Sony Corp (SNE)., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios - the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/19/technology/toshiba.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008021904

---

What this means is that HD DVD is the Beta, and Blu-ray is the VHS in this little format struggle. Toshiba was the chief proponent behind HD DVD. The format war has finally ended

[Connie_Corleone]

1. I bought a PS3 last year anticipating this.

I have both HD DVD and Blu-ray players. But, I've been buying more blu-rays discs lately.

Bye-bye HD DVD. It's been real.

[Kajsa]

2. I've got to ask,

What happens to the broadcasting in HD, now?

All the major networks are boasting their HD formats.

Me- I'm still with a humble analog TV with digital cable.

[Beausoleil]

4. Shouldn't affect broadcast HD

Just DVD HD recording/playback.

[Kajsa]

7. Thanks!

I am eventually going to get an HD TV.

I'm still waiting for the prices to come down.

:hi:

[aquart]

37. We import our TVs.

Even if the price goes down for nations with a stable currency, you might want to remember that every day the dollar is worth a lot less. We have galloping inflation and no commensurate salary increases.

Do not count on anything being cheaper for an American to buy next year.

[octobit]

40. HDTV is NOT HDDVD

HDTV is a standard for sending a High Definition signal to a High Definition TV.
HDDVD was a standard for encoding a High Definition disc for playback on a High Definition TV.
Blu-Ray is a different standard for encoding a High Definition disc for playback on a High Definition TV.

The names may be a little confusing, but this is basically the most recent of the encoded disc format wars. (VHS v Betamax, DVD v DIVX). This will have no effect on receiving a broadcast HDTV signal. Though I am not sure whether Blu-Ray or HDDVD was the better standard, this is a good thing. Now you know which format player to purchase to play High Definition discs on your HDTV.

[LTR]

42. Ahhh DIVx

Fist time I heard about that one, I knew it would be a loser.

Destined to the dustbin of really dumb media formats.

[LTR]

9. HD DVD is a media format

It's the next generation of DVD. HD DVD and Blu-ray have been fighting it out for the past few years, ala the old Beta/VHS wars back in the 70s-80s.

HD DVD has nothing to do with DTV. That's going to be the new broadcast standard. And to reiterate, DTV and HDTV are not the same thing, though DTV, as opposed to analog, will make over-the-air HDTV broadcasts possible.

For more about DTV:

http://www.dtv2009.com

[Kajsa]

11. Thanks!

I always learn something new, here. ;)

As long as I have digital cable, I'm OK when the
analog signals are discontinued next February.
( signals- broadcasts)

By that time, I hope to replace my one analog TV
with an HD TV.

:hi:

[LTR]

17. Even with analog cable or satellite

Viewers should have no problem, unless the cable/satellite provider shuts down their analog, which will be coming in a few years or so. People who receive programming with 'rabbit ear' or rooftop antennas who have older TV sets with no DTV capacity will need to either buy a new set or get a converter box. See my previous post to get a voucher from the government that will help upgrade for little or no cost.

Analog TV broadcasting will be shut down in exactly a year from now, and DTV will become the broadcast standard. This transition is not limited to the U.S. Most of the world is doing this as well, and it's been in the works since the 90s.

[BearSquirrel2]

22. True but ...

It's true that HDTV and DTV are not the same. But I think there is a definite march towards 16:9 aspect ratio universally. Everyone seems to be ramping up for the 2009 crossover to have HDTV.

It's kinda like how color TV stations still broadcasted greyscale content. For example, the next season of the Venture Brothers will be in High Definition ... Cartoon Network is not HD in my market and probably won't be anytime soon. Cartoons do not lend themselves to HD. But, there are box sets to sell and most newer sets are now all 16:9, so why not do it in HD?

From what I've read, most local stations are doing both an HD channel and a crappy DTV signal with their new spectrum. Any broadcaster with a network affiliation will probably be in HD. SD will be a downgraded version and likely letterboxed.

[Chovexani]

28. Cartoons don't lend themselves to HD?

When I want to show off the upconverting on my Aquos player, I pop in my copy of Adolescence of Utena. Traditional cel animation looks light years better on it--to the point where I wish my anime collection gets converted to HD eventually, cause I can't fathom how much better it'll be when just upconversion looked that good. :P

CG animation looks way better too. I picked up the Pixar Shorts collection in BD and it's amazing. Now I can't wait for The Incredibles to come out in BD. :D

With the broadcast HD I just hope that there's some standards that come out so these bastards can't get away with the HD Lite they've been trying to pass off. *cough* TNT *cough*.

[heliarc]

33. "cartoons don't lend themselves to HD"

This isn't really the case... It just depends how the original picture is converted to digital. If the original artwork on a Cartoon is done by hand the resolution of the scan or capture to the Digital media will determine how good it looks in HD. And for the digital animators out there Flash or Maia vectors can be exported with a very high resolution. Cartoons lend themselves very well to HD. They just need to be captured correctly.

[BearSquirrel2]

38. Have you watched Cartoon Network?

Most traditional cartoons are inked and then colored in. Some have subtle shades and details. Most are just plain colored. Most of what is shown on Cartoon Network ... it wouldn't make a difference. As if the the generic "motion" backgrounds screaming by in some anime would really look better in HD?

Good cartoons have traditionally REMOVED as many details as possible. It tones down the "pseudo-realism" that messes with peoples mind (watch a roto-scoped cartoon, they're weird) and it also makes the whole process cheaper.

I agree that CG is something completely different. If the modelers have put fine texture and background detail, there is a lot more detail in there that will show up.

[heliarc]

45. I work in animation

I work on cartoons for a living. I've watched a few.

Resolution is better with HD... period. If you enlarge an image compressed for regular DVD the image looks digitized and horrible, regardless of inking shades and/or the lack thereof. If you can watch a bigger picture and not see digital shudder of the compression where the outline of a character and their "plain colored" body meet than your quality has improved. Quality of compression algorithms is another thing entirely. Some colors respond differently, and you'd be surprised how much experimentation goes into creating a regular DVD encode. Sometimes different encoding codecs are used for different scenes because of how the color turns out or how movement tracks. All of this affects quality of video whether it is live action or cartoons.

[BearSquirrel2]

46. I am aware of codecs ...

I am aware that different CODEC algorithms do a different job on different source. I've done some stuff with 1st person cameras that make a set top DVD recorder barf. However, a software encoding on my computer does a good job. Anyone who has put high bitrate stuff on YouTube knows for sure that different CODECS handle things differently.

My point is, with a cartoon, there just isn't a lot of information there. Compression systems work by identifying things that are "the same" and describing it. The more uniform blotches on the screen, the smaller it is in it's encoded form. Cranking the bitrate up just results in lots of duplication.

If you're hand drawing stuff and you're not a Disney feature animation, you're not putting very much detail there. It takes too much time (as you well know). Hell, Disney isn't even DOING feature handrawn animations anymore precisely because of the lower cost of computer animation.

Know with "The Incredibles" people have a point. But these are not cartoons. They're rendered models and unless you're looking at very early stuff, there IS A LOT of information on that screen.

Do I think that most animation looks different in HD ... absolutely not. Am I surprised people tell me so .... Well, I'm never surprised when audiophiles tell me why I need super expensive Monster cables when the cheap pieces of plastic coated copper wires that come out of the box do exactly the same thing. My only beef with them is they typicaly aren't long enough. In any case, people imagine up difference all the time when they just aren't there. Yeah, you can probably press pause and closely inspect an image. But it's animation, not a Picasso.

I'm 100% certain that HD won't make a lick of difference for 95% of the Hanna Barbara quality and deliberately cheap/cheezy animation originals on Cartoon Network. I love Venture Brothers, but I don't think HD will make a lick of difference expect for aspect ratio. No one is carefully shading and texturing Brock's shirt or Simulating single locks of Dr. Girlfriend's hair. If you can see digital artifacts, you're standing too close to the television!!!

[heliarc]

48. I do Audio for Animation...

And the guys I work for work in Flash. I think that you are right that noticeable differences are going to be slim, but when watching on larger screens the differences are already very apparent to me in both animated (Hanna Barbera) and live action in the jump to Blu-Ray... I even find it a little distracting to watch live action on Blu Ray because I can sometimes tell very minute differences in Aperture or Camera choice where before the film seemed more consistent... And there you are right. Live action improvements with HD will be more noticeable. But I think that digital artifacts are still very noticeable even at a distance watching either cartoons or live action.

As to your description of Monster cable... Monster is a company that makes a lot of money off of people's ignorance, but just to clarify the point you are making cable choice can be very important to audio quality at higher voltages (ie, speaker applications)... Particularly low frequency power can be impeded if cable lengths and density are not calculated. An example where this might be an issue is the typical amp rack on the stage Left side powering two subwoofers one on the Left (near) and one on the right (far)... If the cable runs are of inequal length but equal gauge there will be a loss of power on one side. Especially in the lower frequencies. This is one of the motivations for the production of Powered Speakers (where length of speaker cable is kept constant) and low voltage signal cable is the only cable run. Cable quality and specification has a REAL affect on analog audio transmission. Digital is a different story of course.

But monster simply wants to make you pay 25 dollars for an unbalanced cable that you are correct will probably transmit signal just as well as the one you bought for 2HKD from a bin in Hong Kong, but again to clarify your point, longer lengths of unbalanced consumer cable will always degrade signal more than shorter lengths.

[BearSquirrel2]

21. Different issues ...

All TV HD broadcasts are in 720P or 1080i. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD were just physical media for recording those formats to disc (with the addition of 1080P).

The people who are screwed after this ... those who bought HD-DVD. This was a pretty close fight. Sony went into serious debt with their PS3/Blueray gamble as they were losing big $$$ on every unit. Ultimately, PS3 was a HUGE factor as well as Sony's willingness to add more copy protection controls. The fact that Blue-Ray has double the capacity per layer also probably helped it gain traction with those who need to archive and transport data on removeable media (graphics professionals).

I'm glad Toshiba finally announced this. HD-DVD has been a dead man walking or a month now. Expect Blue-Ray players to drop seriously in price within the year as they will ramp up production on just ONE standard now since consumers can now commit with confidence.

Also, I would expect this to be the LAST removeable storage war. With internet delivery and lower prices on flash memory, removable media is fighting a losing battle with it's own demise.

[liberal N proud]

3. More artifacts for museums

BETA
8-Track tape
Cassette Tape
Floppy Disks
Compact Floppy Disks
Standards format CD
Standard format DVD
HD DVD

Now all useless. What can we all spend our money on next?

[Pab Sungenis]

14. Don't forget minidisc.

I remember when they were going to be the hot new thing. Broadcasting adopted it for a while, before hard drives got large enough and cheap enough to make pure-digital recording and storage feasible.

[heliarc]

34. Theater and the Minidisc

The minidisc was a godsend for theater. You could label tracks, loop repeat, trigger by keyboard, edit files... And it was cheap... It's too bad it went away. I still have my minidisc players.

[thereismore]

18. Laser disc too. Interestingly, vinyl is making a comeback. nt

[liberal N proud]

19. Forgot about the Laser Disk

I know the LP is coming back, my 14 year old daughter is going crazy over all of my old vinyl albums. I had to get a new turntable so she could play them.

[heliarc]

35. "Vinyl is making a comeback"

That's funny. I would have said that vinyl made its comeback in the mid-nineties. from what I see CD-Turntables have successfully emulated the benefits of vinyl for scratch DJS... but I still have my Technics 1200 and a wall full of 33 and 1/3rds. I've even got a few 72 RPMs and a French 19inch format! Anybody selling Wax Cylinder? I'm buying!

[LTR]

20. Some obsolescence, some failures, and several still in use

Some of the things mentioned were formats that enjoyed decades of use, but eventually became obsolete when better technology came along. Audio tape (well, cassettes anyway) had a long run.

The portability advantage of audio tape gave way to more efficient and higher quality digital means.

And let's face it, floppy discs are virtually useless in this day and age when one can burn roughly 600 times more information on a blank CD that costs a fraction of what a floppy runs.

Audio CDs are still in play, but is feeling the bite of digital. Still CD is a higher quality format. And as long as Blu-ray players cost $600, DVD will be around for awhile. It won't be obsolete for many years, or even decades.

[NMDemDist2]

5. well aren't I glad we didn't put out big $$$ for a HDDVD player at Xmas

I was gonna get one for hubby, glad I took a pass.....

[Kajsa]

8. Hi AZDem!

No kidding!

Don't you just hate when they switch format right
after shelling out big bucks for an "old style" player?

I'm still waiting for prices to drop on HD TVs.

:hi:

[NMDemDist2]

10. watch out for some of the HDTV

look at what we're dealing with here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=402x69

and did you see my big news??

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2886833

:hi:

[Kajsa]

13. Wow- Congratulations!

40,000 wonderful posts from a great lady!

:hug:

[NMDemDist2]

15. thanks dear

I have missed ALL my DU milestones, I was determined not to miss this one LOL

[LTR]

12. They've been really cheap lately

I was almost tempted to buy one at Best Buy that sold for $130 or so, also played standard DVDs (upconverted) and included several recent hit movies on HD DVD. But I knew that the format was not long for this world.

I've witnessed all kinds of media formats that have come and gone, including Beta, minidisc, analog tape, zip discs, digital tape (I used to use DAT in my work (radio), but always prefered using analog reel-to-reel tape, as it was more responsive, easier to work with and less harsh sounding.). I don't jump immediately into new format wars, and prefer to wait until prices drop dramatically (like DVDs did).

[LeftyMom]

25. My sister and I got one for our Dad.

Oh well, it'll still work just fine as an upscaling DVD player, and didn't cost too much more than a decent one of those.

[Glorfindel]

6. I learned my lesson with the Betamax

shelled out big bucks for one back in the day, and then couldn't find any tapes for it. So I figured this day was coming, and have held off buying either HD DVD or Blu-ray.

[LTR]

16. Ironically, beta was the higher quality format

But VHS had more backing, and Sony was notorious for years for backing loser media formats that were overall decent, but had no support. Beta did find success in the professional sector, and was used for many years in television production (i.e. news reporting).

Over the years, Sony stubbornly trotted out all kinds of unsuccessful proprietary formats that cluttered up the marketplace and gave consumers headaches, such as beta, DAT, minidisc, memory stick and others. They're still competing in the next-generation CD war with their SACD format, but the format is very obscure except for a small group of audiophiles.

Sony has long been notorious for trotting out competing formats, trying to make them the standard. Looks like they finally won a battle with the whole Blu-ray thing.

[freedomnorth]

23. What about HD?

Is it better format than blue ray?

[LTR]

29. Blu-ray discs have more storage capacity

That gives it an advantage. Both, however, have very good pictures, and many can't tell the difference.

HD DVD players are backward compatible, meaning that regular DVDs will work in many HD players (ensuring that they won't become paperweights as HD bites the dust). The HD format is also cheaper because of it is based heavily on DVD technology, enabling players to drop heavily in price. Blu-ray is still too expensive to be a big player in home media as of yet. I'm sure many will wait for the prices to come down, as they did with DVD.

[ldf]

36. i have one of both

the video quality is the same. disc storage has made no difference whatsover in what i see on the tv, which is a 1080i 60 inch sony projection. the picture is absolutely breathtaking. it has completely changed my tv watching habits.

but i have had a few dvds that had audio problems. they were all with the blu-ray.

the first one was spiderman 3. took it back and exchanged it, the second one did the same thing.

i finally figured out that i had to change the audio setting to uncompressed, which eleminates the dolby sound quality. bummer.

i have had no problems whatsoever with the hd dvd player.

hopefully i will be able to pick up some hd dvds for cheap, unless they turn collectable.

:shrug:

[Tesha]

39. Blu-Ray players are also backwards compatible.

Your reply may have left folks with the impression
that only HD-DVD players could play DVDs. Blu-Ray
players can also do this. They also play audio CDs
just fine.

Tesha

[BearSquirrel2]

24. Memory Stick still in use ...

Compact Flash was the last true "open standard" of the genre.

Memory Stick, SD, Xd ... and the mini or micro version of each, they're all proprietary. And since NONE of them are a distribution format ... it doesn't matter. You use what your Camera or cell phone uses.

BTW, the "MEMORY CARDS" used in election machines that you stick into the "master counter" are Compact Flash.

[LTR]

30. The whole flash memory thing confuses me

I dreaded buying a flash card for my camera, all the while wondering if I bought the right one.

I just wished that companies could just get together and make one or two standard formats. Hey, it worked for CD and DVD. All these competing formats give me headaches.

[BearSquirrel2]

43. I wish they would too ...

I also wish they would have made a successor to the Compact Flash standard. The thing you have to remember is that Compact Flash is actually a miniaturized PC card. In general the computer biz has been good about open standards because you have multiple vendors who want to sell to ALL people who buy computers. No vendor has ever been able to completely dominate the computer space.

The consumer electronics industry is a little different. A vendor with a really good concept can rapidly flood the market with their product (like Apple). If this happens and you own the rights to the an accessory category, you can really clean up on royalties. Why do you think there are so many different types of power adapters out there when they could ALL use the nearly ubiquitous mini-USB adapter.

It would be nice if vendors would have simply created a memory card standard around USB. The actual connector is just four pins. There are actually SD cards that have such connectors integrated so they can be directly read by any PC. Unfortunately, we got saddled with so many different memory formats.

[Cheap_Trick]

26. here's an article

from Dark Horizons
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news08/080219a.php

"At a press conference a few minutes ago, Toshiba officially announced that it will "no longer develop, manufacture and market" any HD-DVD players and recorders.

Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe.

The move effectively kills the format and finally brings to an end the several year long format war that has been running since both Blu-ray and HD-DVD were first announced.

HD-DVD was the first out of the gate in April 2006 with its players and discs. Despite lacking the support of three of the major six studios, the format's cheaper prices and other benefits (eg. no region coding) but equally good audio/video quality led it to prove a surprisingly tough competitor against the Sony-backed Blu-ray juggernaut which came out a few months later.

Through til mid-2007, it also looked like the war could very well go either way - reviews for most titles on major sites generally favored HD-DVD more in terms of picture quality and functionality, whilst owners were generally more satisfied with their format than the Blu-ray counterpart. Yet Blu-ray had a lot more marketing muscle and an equally excitable fan base.

One good thing that came out of the competition is that it got Sony off its ass and was forced to actually work hard to make their format succeed. Whereas HD-DVD came out from the get-go with the best the format could offer, Blu-ray launched with unfinished tech that had far more potential, and thus was able to make dramatic improvements in quality.

Disastrously bad early Blu-ray titles (such as the infamous first "The Fifth Element" printing) quickly improved, the studio dumping its crappy MPEG2 video codecs, lackluster audio tracks and inadequate single-layer 25Gb discs for dual-layer 50Gb discs and much higher quality transfers that equaled or exceeded their HD-DVD counterpart. Its interactive features only recently finally caught up with HD-DVD's nifty picture-in-picture capabilities amongst other things, but have offered better quality video for its supplements thanks to the format's extra space.

By late Summer last year, Blu began to overtake HD in terms of reviews and quality. Thanks to the PS3's footprint, sales of Blu always remained superior (about 2:1 in the US, higher in other countries) but never as overwhelming as the Sony marketing machine would have you think. Paramount's defection to HD-DVD in August for example, showed that the war was still very much in play.

The decisive move though was Warner Bros. defection to Blu-ray during the New Year. That originally dual-format supporting studio was easily the market leader in the high-definition realm and so with it firmly entrenched in the Blu-ray camp, other major dominoes began to fall. The mega-distribution trio of Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart all going Blu-ray last week hammered the final nails in HD-DVD's coffin.

The fallout will be settling for the next week or so. This will not please HD-DVD owners however and as of last month, over a million dedicated HD DVD players have been sold with several times that many discs as well. Studios have yet to announce any plans for a 'format swapping' program allowing disgruntled users to get Blu-ray equivalents of their libraries and its expected that they'll simply have to eat the costs.

HD-DVD exclusive studios Paramount and Universal are expected to have been freed from their commitments, in fact talk has it that Paramount has already been getting Blu-ray copies of its major 2007 performers like "Transformers," "Blades of Glory" and "Zodiac" ready for release quickly. Blu-ray versions of HD-DVD only titles like "Batman Begins," "The Mummy," and "Heroes: Season 1" are expected to all hit shelves later in the year.

So thinking of going out and buying a Blu-ray player right now? Hold it a moment. If you've already bought a stand-alone Blu-ray player other than a Playstation 3 then you'll be stuck with the HD-DVD people - ie. likely to throw out your player in the near future.

Only players capable of playing Blu-ray's 2.0 profile (aka. BD-Live) are truly future proof. At present, the only player capable of doing that is the PS3, though Panasonic and Sony are expected to release players soon that use the standard. We're also still a good year or so off from the holy grail - a region free Blu-ray and DVD player that can play either format disc from anywhere in the world.

For the full press release, http://www.pr-inside.com/toshiba-announces-discontinuation-of-r443917.htm."


I bought the HD-A2 last year when Wal Mart had them for $99 on one of their pre black Friday deals. Looks like I'll be waiting awhile before getting into Blew-ray, until the Profile 2.0 player is out. At least HD-DVD was complete from the get-go. That was one of the reasons other than price that I got into it instead. Paying $400-$500 for a player that still isn't complete? No thanks. The ONLY advantage over HD was the storage capacity. At least I can buy a bunch of HD-DVD titles at a discount soon:)

[Chovexani]

27. That's a bad analogy.

Comparing this format war to Beta vs. VHS is like apples and oranges. In Beta vs . VHS, the clearly inferior format won.

This time? The differences between HD DVD and Blu Ray are negligible. Both are good formats. I would give Blu Ray the edge though just in terms of storage capacity.

Now it's off to the home theater forums to watch the HD DVD fanboys cry. :P (Not that I had a dog in this fight--I've got both, I just think it's funny.)

[Xithras]

31. Damn.

Region encoding. Forced player upgrades. Permanently fixed higher costs. DRM slavery. Technical differences aside, HD-DVD was the better choice for consumers in the long run.

Lot's of people are going to be PISSED when they run out to buy a BlueRay movie for their $500 BlueRay player and discover that it won't run because Sony tweaked the Java code again, or upgraded the DRM, and their player no longer supports the new movies. My biggest objection to BlueRay has ALWAYS been that Sony designed the format to be an ongoing revenue source...i.e., they plan on tapping as much money out of BlueRay owners as possible for updates and replacement players every few years.

Me? I'll stick with my upconverting SDVD player for now. Sony is never going to let BlueRay get cheap, and I have no interest in dropping a couple hundred bucks every few years for a new player, so I'll skip on this and hold out for streaming HD over the Internet. Screw Sony.

[Warren DeMontague]

32. I could have told you that was going to happen. Simple math. Blu-Ray holds more data.

I know lots of people around here hate Sony, but I've been pretty happy with many of their products.

[Tektonik]

41. wow Sony finally wins a proprietary format battle

:P

Betamax, their mp3 formats, etc ,etc

[hunter]

44. Excepting Open Source software, I'm a very late adapter.

If everyone was like me, we'd still be using big heavy telephones with cords and mechanical dials. Television would still be black & white.

But thanks to everyone who pays a premium for the latest and greatest hardware, I can build my computers out of junk, install the latest versions of Linux, and I'm happy.

Maybe ten years from now I'll have an HDTV, but I wouldn't bet on it, unless I happen to find a repairable one in a dumpster somewhere.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

47. "unless I happen to find a repairable one in a dumpster somewhere."

Me too. I'm in Alexandria VA and not on cable or satellite. I get, more or less acceptably, all the DC TV stations using set-top rabbit ears. I can also get, less successfully, Baltimore stations. When digital comes along, I will not be able to get Baltimore any more, as it is over 35 miles away. Right now, the picture is noisy and not so great. If it's something I want to watch, such as the Saturday afternoon lacrosse games, I will put up with the noise. The lacrosse is on channel 2, which comes in markedly worse than channels 11 and 13. The "big three" network stations in Baltimore are channels 2, 11, and 13.

I have scavenged two rooftop TV antennas from the trash already this year. Maybe if I aim them just right, I can get Baltimore when the stations go digital next year.