This is a typical TV antenna which we can often see all around Japan. He looks bent with his age and actually his life has only three years left. By the summer of 2011, he is supposed to be scrapped -- not only he, but also all the antennas in the country. The government has decided to change the TV broadcasting waves fully from analog to digital within three years from now. Sure, the benefit of digital broadcasting is attractive; a lot of Hi-Vision programs and data can be delivered on a limited width of radio wave. However, I am skeptical whether it is worth while to abandon millions of analog antennas and even TV sets. It's really a great waste, but what I worry more is that the related technologies are still in a transition period; there are a lot of other possibilities which are better than the present digital protocols, we don't have clear images about the digital communication in the near future and the old-fashioned copyright laws need to be revised. I think the decision was unusually too early.
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