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Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV
Felix the Cat writes "After budgets cuts led to the layoff of engineers and scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a US Senate committee has approved a $3 billion dollar subsidy to assist Americans in their difficult transition to digital television in 2009. The old analog television spectrum will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The transition date was chosen to not interfere with college football bowl games or basketball playoffs." From the article: "The draft of a House bill would end analog transmissions on Dec. 31, 2008. It does not mention a subsidy for set-top converter boxes. So, lawmakers will likely have to work out differences between the two bills, though Stevens said he did not anticipate a big fight with the House over the deadline or the subsidy."
Don't kid yourselves that you will get anything. For every dollar of "subsidity" to get you to switch, the price of these set top converters and anything else subsidized will go up by at least a dollar, likely more! The only ones getting this money will be the Chinese and Japaneese making the things. You the tax payer get what you always get.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Since they are eliminating analog TV the analog TV transmitters are going to become available. Time to start my pirate TV station for all those analog TV's that will still be out there. I'll be broadcasting my entire DVD collection.
We are paying for this. The $3 billion is coming from the tax payers. The funny thing is, it's really the TV industry that forced us to pay for this ourselves, automatically via taxes.
A legitimate approach to governance is that you should give people what they want, and nothing else. From that perspective, this is cynical, but appropriate. Give people bread and circuses, and you can say you're doing your job as a politician... but how many politicians hold a valid claim to be doing their job as honorable human beings?
It would be nice if I could just wash my hands of politics, insist that the least governance would be the best, and just vote for those who would leave power in the hands of individuals more and more, in light of the constant incompitence of politicans... but I've also seen the affects of what "small goverment" can do over the past years. I've decided to vote Democrat in the next forseeable elections, because at least they seem to propose to, and have in the past few administrations, use public resources to do more than just celebrate their own personal interests. Perhaps then, at least, the Republicans will learn to compete again in terms of function, not just rhetoric. I'd hate to see this last batch of Republicans rewarded for their actions.
Ryan Fenton
For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:
Here's how it went:
Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV
FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV"
FCC says "What standards?"
Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you.
FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?"
Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!"
Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"
FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."
Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV??
Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!"
Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it."
Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built."
FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it."
Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?"
Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"
FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that"
Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!"
Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."
Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.
Have the relevant industries even settled on digital television standards yet? The most common reason I hear from most people for wanting HDTV but not buying a capable television is that they're afraid of having it obsoleted when a new or incompatible signal comes out on top.
What measures are in place to ensure the safe environmentally clean disposal of the tens of millions of soon to be useless analog TV's in your country?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Three billion dollars is only a drop in the bucket to what the campaign contributions will be. Despite anything that can be said about this program, its ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.
First, there is the money raised by auctioning RF spectrum licenses.
Second, there is the fact that all will be digital at that time, and someone has to get distribution pork.
Third, MS and others are already lining the politicians pockets to make everything come out on their side.
We (the USA), as a nation (if not a larger audience), have failed miserably to trace where the money will be going. This 'subsidy' of HDTV set top tuners is nothing more than the low hanging fruit on a very large and prolific tree. Currently, the rule of the land is that when this happens, cable companies will not have to share thier pipe to your house with anyone else. This is supposed to foster more competative and wireless services. Fiber, cable, DSL, and broadcast mediums will have to work hard to keep up with new broadband all-IP services. EVERYONE will have to have a new set-top tuner box... This 3 billion is for the people in mobile homes in deepest darkest Arkansas and such places, who will not pay for a new HDTV set to get three local channels and PBS.
What is at stake is a very big pie, and everyone wants one or more of the pieces: Digital movies on demand 24/7, digital music on demand 24/7, IP radio and television, mobile IPTV and radio, VoIP calling with both mobile and fixed, and the list literally goes on for hours.
As soon as there is a huge ubiquitous (I dislike that word) IP network, we can begin offering services like your fridge that keeps the shopping list up to date, emails it to you at the grocery store on your PDA, or automatically enters it to the local grocer and a high school kid shows up with the groceries at your door at 5:15 p.m. That is just one scenario, and there are thousands more.
The real issue is who will be selling you those services? If you have comcast cable, you can bet they will offer them, but so will your wireless carrier, and the WiMax network provider and the WiFi provider, and it will be worse than you can imagine for billing and value for services rendered. Can you imagine a refridgerator that is only compatible with Comcast? or worse, AOL?
What is happening in the news currently is only the tip of the iceburg, and I'm talking about one much larger than sank the Titanic!
I'm sorely hoping that F/OSS has a strong hand of guidance on how such services are offered and how they are compatible. All this DRM @!#$@$% is far more dangerous to your future health than you have yet thought of, because more than music and movies is involved. I am hoping that the F/OSS community has such things in the scope of where their development efforts are going. I know that MS and others already have this on their radar scopes.
--
Every so often in history, it appears that someone from the future has come back to tell us something. Did Linus return to fix the future?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Right now anyone can buy a handheld t.v. and watch television that way. Imagine a disaster happens and you're without power. Of course there's the option of using a radio, but what if you wanted to watch your local news? Will these handheld t.v.s being manufactured still work, or will they become obsolete?
Can the government somehow create censorship with this switch? With the way they will send t.v. programming out, is it possible to put certain restrictions (as opposed to options) on programming?
I'm already waaaay ahead of you, my friend. My idea is better...I got rid of my television outright.
Last year, I sold my NTSC television (36" Sony Trinitron) on eBay for $200 with pedestal. I figure I was out about $1000 over the 6 years I owned it.
Guess what I did next?
Wrong. I didn't replace it. My wife and I have no television. No ads. None of the soundbytes. No cable bill. No TiVo bill. No MythTV Mayhem. No equipment to keep thinking about upgrading. No worries about the broadcast flag. Nobody trying to push my buttons over the screen.
All that and more free space in my living room for the couch.
The funny thing is...we don't really miss TV and that gives us time to pursue other things. We'll catch a glimse of a show or a movie on the tube if we're out with friends or whatnot, but that's about it. Even then, most of the time we just turn the thing off.
We have survived our first year without a television in the house (as of 10/10!) and our lives have become much more enriched as a result.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Maybe the important question is: what will the 'net look like in 2009? What if downloading movies from the 'net goes legit? What if the production studios start shipping TV episodes out over the 'net? By four years from now people might be more likely to install a big LCD screen, a fast computer with a giant disk drive, and a broadband connection in their living room than a digital TV. I mean, there are already broad swathes of suburbia at least where I live (Southern California) where TV radio signals go for miles without being intercepted by so much as a single antenna, 'cause it all comes in by coax already.
Frankly, if you think about it, the idea of getting signals from one fixed location (the studio) to another (your home) over the air seems silly. That's a job for a wire. Save the airwaves for situations, like mobile communications, where you can't be dragging a wire around.
I got something to say:
This is some scary shit. Republicans always hid behind the "small government and uninhibitted trade" arguement, but for at least the past 20 years, it's been total bullshit. Now, we've found a way to do something that's effectively the opposite of communism: tax the people in order to pay the businesses. Yea, $3 billion from the government to the people! That money doesn't come out of thin air, the comes out of our taxes. So this redistribution is in such a way that will guarentee that people continue to buy televisions. So, in the ecconomic scheme, where does all that money end up? In the hands of big businesses like Phillips, Sony, Magnavox, etc. [Public -> Government -> Public (specifically to buy item) -> Phillips/Sony/Magnavox]; or to put it in short form: [Public -> Phillips/Sony/Magnavox] through government redistrobution. IE: money taken from lower, middle, and upper classes, and given to the upper classes, most of which will NOT trickle down. Any fool can see that the effect of this is a widening of the income gap and nothing else. The current income gap is the worst it's ever been in US history. We have a deficit that MY grandchildren (I'm 24) will still have even if we were to start paying it off now. BTW: most TV manufacturers are located in Japan, and probably very soon, China. Great, so lets just create more reasons to send all of our money out of our ecconomy, WOO HOO!
I remember hearing in a world history class about a state that started throwing money at people for luxuries like theatrical events, public executions, and other feel-good services, in order to take the common folks' attention away from the people who were dieing in the streets. Oh yeah, that was the Roman Empire just before its total collapse. The similarity is uncanny: Katrina destroys New Orlands, leaving a thousand dead, and hundreds of thousands homeless; public opinion of the government falls; government throws luxury items at the people to keep them quiet, fat and happy so they wont notice that their neighbors down at the local shelter are starving, and their children are coming home in body bags. This is truly history repeating itself.
Bush made this big speech about how we were going to do "what it takes" to stabilize the victims of Katrina. The question was asked, "where do we get that money from?" Since then we've increased military spending, cut funding to programs benefiting the very poor we're trying to help, expect to lower taxes, and have been unable to come up with any way of doing "what it takes", and now they want to put $3 billion into increasing TV reception! Ted Stevens, my [Alaska's] great senator who is the spokesman for this television bill, is the same guy who just yesterday, in a dramatic, teary-eyed sherade, threatened to quit if congress removed funding for two worthless multi-billion dollar bridges in the transportation bill. I'll tell ya, I live in Alaska, those bridges are a JOKE: one connects a 150 person village to an air strip (noble cause, sure, but the village itself didn't even ask for it or even care!), the other bridge lessons the commute time from Anchorage to an UNINHABITED region across the bay--guess whose friends own all the property in that area, expecting future developement? Go to hell, Ted Stevens!
Meanwhile, Don Young, our lone house representative, when explained that a majority of Alaskans were in favor of giving the bridges back, exclaimed, "They [Alaskans] can all kiss my ear!". This guy's been in for 20+ years, nothing will bring him down. If Young asks his voters to suck his cock, they all just get on their knees; I hate my state.Sorry this got off topic, I'm just incredibly jaded by this and all the events that have lead up to this.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
> Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV
Incorrect. Congress spends $3 billion to help preserve their jobs, just like the other two thousand seven hundred billion this year. See, there's still gonna be hell to pay as suddenly millions of retirees who don't give a rat's ass suddenly find their TVs not working.
And Congress wants to keep their jobs. Bad. Real bad.
So bad they'll gladly spend two seven zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero of [b]your[/b] dollars, trying to please you to get re-elected.
And you know what? [b]It works[/b].
The ol' Soviet Union, a one-party dictatorship, [b]had a greater turnover in their central committee "elections" than did or does the US Congress.[/b]
Or perhaps you'll understand the number better written out in scientific blotation: $2.7 x 10^^12
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why do you blow $50+/month on cable?
While one certainly is stuck with the dollar value/channel, there must be some nugget of a program that is justifying your $50+/month expenditure.
I don't pay $50+/month for shit. You are the biggest loser.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
You must have watched different debates than I did. I came away hating both candidates. Bush is a simple manager that leans heavily on his "experts", and can't think on the fly to save his life; Kerry is a carreer politician who will say anything to anyone to get elected. We need to take the caucus/primary power away from those notheastern small states. Dean could have solidly beat Bush, if he hadn't "scared" those poor farmers with his scream.
I voted for Kerry, but it was the most distateful vote I have ever cast.
It wasn't an obvious call by any means, and I'm not surprised that people were conflicted. Trying to pick between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum isn't fun.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Don't forget Nader. I dislike the guy on many levels, but he still should have been allowed to debate.
As long as he picks the appropriate experts and actually listens to their advice, one can be a very effective leader with this sort of setup, president or manager in some company.
The problem is that he did pick an appropriate expert, Colin Powell, then cut him out of the loop and ignored his good advice when it didn't fit with his (Bush's) preconceptions. Now, he has only neocons for advisors - not appropriate for the "uniter" he claims to be.