Billion Dollar Handout To Upgrade TVs

db32 writes "SFGate has the story of the cutoff date for those rabbit ear antennas that some of us grew up with (Feb. 19, 2009). Now while the story of analog vs. digital TV has been beaten to death, still I think there is something more here. 'The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration... said it is setting aside $990 million to pay for the boxes. Each home can request up to two $40 coupons for a digital-to-analog converter box, which consumer electronics makers such as RCA and LG plan to produce.' Beyond my disdain for most TV to begin with, I am blown away that with all of our current problems — homelessness and crime on the home front, war fighting and terrorism abroad — our government is seriously going to spend this much money on upgrading peoples' televisions."

Comments

Yeah, this is chump change...

[FatSean]

...compared to the money that was lost enroute to Iraq!

Seriously, the government knows that the incestuous US 'service' economy needs people to buy shit they don't need or it all collapses.

Makes perfect sense

[jmorris42]

Giving away the boxes makes perfect sense when one has all of the facts. The government wants to SELL the VHF spectrum and can't do that until they can move the current occupants out. I'd guess they will get more than a billion from selling off the spectrum so they are going to buy off the last holdouts.

Bread and Circuses

[Oh the Huge Manatee]

The more governments change, the more they stay the same:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses/

You don't understand at all..

[Junta]

Ok, with the exception of the broadcast flag which has been struck down and not successfully resurrected, there is nothing of noteworthy DRM interest with respect to broadcast digital TV in how it compares to broadcast analog TV. The only thing people with antennas get different in broadcast TV is a signal that is perfect or *obviously* distorted. Depending on the quality of the set, the signal will most likely look better even than best-case analog signal.

I use rabbit ears (well, hoop antenna) with my Mythbox and ATSC tuner card just freaking fine and record to my hearts content (it's technically easier/cheaper to implement a perfect ATSC capture card, than a decent analog capture card, a decent analog card needs some sort of on-the-fly encoding, ATSC card just need dump the MPEG2 stream out. I don't have any problem recording TV at all.

Broadcast DTV is not DRM-encumbered at all. Cable companies enjoy a bit more DRM that is harder to break than their analog channel scrambling, but that is a moot point for ending analog broadcast TV and helping people to have the new standard accessible.

Rabbit Ears aren't going anywhere

[paul248]

You can still use the old rabbit ear antennas with an ATSC DTV decoder box. The digital channels are in the regular UHF band, so there's no need to get a different "omg DIGITAL!!" antenna.

$8 to $10 billion the last time this came up

[Shawn Parr]

The last time I saw this oft repeating story come up on /. the FCC expected to get somewhere between 8 and 10 billion dollars when they auction that spectrum. They can't auction it until analog TV signals are completely shut down and the frequencies are no longer in use by the current licensees.

If I told you I would give you $10 for a $1 bill, would you take it?

Re:They may, but they won't have to...

[sr180]

DVB Tuner Boxes in the Australian Market are now available in the sub AU$50 price point. Theres little reason why they couldnt be at a similar price in the US. (Except the US standards are slightly more complex - but larger volumes should help this.)