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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."
people who don't relize the government does more then one thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...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.
Blar.
National budget is about 2 trillion dollars. There are many worse things that money is wasted on in there.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
$1 billion to the government is chump change. Not even 0.1% of the budget. Do you know how much more is spent on far more useless things?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
You have to understand what is important to people.
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.
Democrat delenda est
It should go without saying, but apparently it needs repeating.
I don't know why you are surprised.. TV is the opiate of the masses.
Tell them they are happy.
Medicate them.
Tell them that the Government is protecting them.
Medicate them.
Provide an conduit for masses to not _need_ to think about day-to-day life.
Encourage them to medicate themselves.
Result; they will think that they are happy.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Please, do tell. So people can get the 'news' or government warnings? Radio is cheaper, and more efficient for all involved.
Blar.
Oh, for the love of pete! Give it a rest!
If I had a nickel for every time some idiot said the government should cut program X and give the money to program Y, however benevolent that might seem, I'd have enough to lobby congress to give me one bajillionth the money spent on lobbying and bridges to nowhere.
You know what, if it matters that much, put your money where your talking out of, cancel your TV and internet subscriptions, and go help a food kitchen or homeless shelter. Do you know how much they could do with the price of your broadband and entertainment budgets?
(Now, if you think that it's a stupid idea to cut off your internet access and fun to help someone, since you already give things away, stick a sock in your hypocritical nonsense. On the other hand, run for congress and fix it yourself!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses/
How else is the government going to tell us what to believe if we don't have multiple televisions on in our households?
I am a shareholder in LG. Nothing like the government increasing my wealth via taxing you and giving me the proceeds for something a stupid as an converter box. I'll take it though.
Sales tax proceeds from all those $3K to $5K plasma and LCD screens over the years have probably already recouped the transition costs for analog to digital.
The weird thing is that the sales tax goes to the state not the feds, so it's nets out as a giant shift of funds from fed to the states.
... is the opiate of the masses. ;)
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
If spending $1B ensures that the majority of citizens can watch TV, especially news, it is money well spent. Where and how else would you be able to deliver your messages to the mass simultaneously?
Imagine the chaos when people have to access "news" from various/conflicting sources, and start coming up with their own minds.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
If they eliminate analog, then how are people supposed to know where to spend their money since they don't have digital?
"We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra."
- Tyler Durden
Haha just thought I'd throw that one in.
I wonder who put the money behind the lobbying to tell lawmakers this was a good idea? Any guesses?
...with all of our current problems -- homelessness and crime on the home front, war fighting and terrorism abroad...This argument can be used to make almost any expenditure look silly. I can't believe, with all of the homelessness, that our government is [sponsoring arts programs | paying for students to take field trips | building monuments to fallen soldiers | repaving roads |
Just because you have certain problems, doesn't mean that you do without anything else, until those problems are solved.
Then again, I can't believe that you bought yourself a television, when you could have donated your money to fight homelessness, etc...
Do we really need a government-subsidized television upgrade?
I stopped watching television two years ago and found that my life was better without it. Don't get me wrong. I still go to the movie theater and buy DVDs and I enjoy watching videos from Google Video, YouTube, and similar sites. I do not think that anything on television is compelling enough for me to put up with the commercials and other drivel that takes up more than two-thirds of the available content and bandwidth.
Why not spend the money on something more worthwhile? There are probably hundreds of other projects and programs that would benefit society more than upgrading television sets.
A short list of better programs:
- Math and science education
- Families of killed and wounded soldiers
- Hurricane Katrina areas and victims
- College student financial aid
42
They are the public airwaves, after all. And there are still lots of people who only have broadcast tv, no cable, no internet. Maybe a radio. We can't just up and revoke people's access to what might be their main source of mass media / news.
Anyway, what we are apparantly really paying for is better communications for public safety responders.
Because we all know war and poverty can be ended with just 990 million dollars.
It's good faith. If the goverment is going to force everyone to either get a new TV (especially when TV is actually useful as a warning system. How many of you turn on the TV when the weather starts getting bad?) or a converter box, then they should help people make the transition. Otherwise, they would spend much more trying to forever support people still using the old standard. As long as these companies make the boxes for like 20$, and not just 40$ each to capitalize on the vouchers.
Perhaps stores could even offer to sell you a box and home installation in exchange for the 40$ voucher, which would be very helpful to the elderly or the technophobes.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
The federal government is requiring that the analog channels be shut down, and consumers have invested billions of dollars in the technology that's going to become obsoleted at the flip of a switch.
So, because of their doing, they are taking a little responsibility and offering people a more painless way to make the switch. Whether or not $40 is going to be enough, remains to be seen (they might sell the boxes for $300, who knows.)
I don't think it's a waste of money. I think things like.. ohh, you know, going on this Iraq war was a ridiculous misuse of funds. And the numbers are absolutely staggering for that. This is a drop in the bucket.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm sure "TVs" are code-named "Urban Pacification Devices (UPD)".
Ancient Romans had government-subsidized gladiator matches. Americans have Fox-subsidized American Idol. Same difference.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Which is opposite of:
Demagoguery works both ways...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I can tell you the reason why the industry needs a subsidy:
No one wants to pay for DRM.
The market hasn't failed. Rather, the content companies have begun to realize that people don't want to pay more to get less.
I mean, why would I buy a tv with fewer features?
The content companies have begun to realize that they need to provide some kind of short-term incentive to get the customer to give up the rights to which they have become accustomed. Once the first generation grows up without the ability to record tv, they'll think it's normal. And the worst of it is that it isn't the content companies paying the bill, but the American taxpayer!
With DTV, the public domain goes away. DRM isn't there to prevent some content from being rebroadcast; it is there to keep all content away from the net. Even things legally in the public domain.
Call your Senator and tell him to oppose this bill. Tell him you don't want Congress wasting money...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Pax Americana. It pacifies and generates tax revenue, all in one easy-to-swallow pill.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
It was my sincere hope that with the change to digital a lot of people would just say F' it, I'm not going to pay for something i didn't see a need for. Was there some vote on this, yeah thanks politicians for serving my interests.
Heck people might actually start to think if they weren't watching TV all the time. Guess it is not going to happen and i was naive to think so.
Your thoughts form your reality.
I'm a small government, small federal budget kind of guy, and I rarely approve of federal spending, but this I agree with. If the government passes a law that makes my otherwise perfectly useful TV obsolete, they damn well better help me upgrade.
"Bread and Circuses". It's all you need to placate the populace. Getting things done might be productive, but cheap entertainment is so much easier.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's fucking TELEVISION. Those people had nearly a DECADE to deal with this cut-off. I have no sympathy.
Blar.
If you deny the peasants their bread and circuses, they might just up and start paying attention to the world around them, and realize that their government is whittling away their freedoms one by one.
By the way, the plan to allocate these funds was announced back when the FCC announced plans to force migration to digital -- years ago.
It's terrible terrible indeed, and I'll be signing up for my 2 vouchers as soon as I can.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
You can get an extra 3 days worth of occupation in Iraq for a billion dollars, lets get priorities straight here.
I'm too cool for a sig.
It should be pointed out from TFA that you are not eligible to recieve these vouchers if you are subscribing to a satellite or cable service.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
I'm obviously not as pessimistic at the world as you are because I think that's complete garbage, but assuming you're correct: If a person thinks they are happy, who cares? Are you going to try and prove to a happy person that are, in fact, just as angry and boring as you are? What's the point? Leave them in their happiness.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
It's a good idea to keep signals available to current TV owners.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
1. TV is important since it is tells people what's going on
2. Luxuries are important in modern society.
3. It would be unfair on poor families to suddenly take away their TV service rather than take measures to rectify the situation.
4. This only amounts to about $3.30 per US citizen.
5. The money spent on this is not being taken out of crime prevention, housing, the military or anti-terrorism efforts. If they did not do this, we'd only see a tiny tax break.
Seriously. It just doesn't work like that. The US is the richest nation in the world. If the government believed that the problems mentioned could be solved by throwing a couple of billion dollars at them then they would. Lack of television reception is a problem that can be solved by throwing a billion dollars at it.
I call it bloated government all around. Federal budget should be slashed slashed slashed. Enough for federal salaries, military spending, and a few other things. States can and should pick up the tab for almost everything else (and they should shrink also).
Yes I know I'm living in a dream world. The government, federal or otherwise, never shrinks and never will.
I wouldn't mind a $40 beer coupon from the government.
Sure the U.S. Federal government spends large amounts of money on some mind-boggling things, but this isn't one of them. They can make far far more than that selling the freed-up spectrum. At some point the foregone 'interest' (read debt avoidance) makes this buyout worth it, rather than just waiting for analog TV to die on it's own.
The crazy thing is that they could just end analog TV and force everyone to buy one of these boxes, but there would be a huge outcry, so instead they give everyone a check that came from their tax dollars anyway, adding inefficiency but avoiding (irrational) political backlash.
I'm sure LG had lobbyists pushing this.
As far as handouts go, this pales in comparison to the many billions of dollars given to the phone companies to provide fiber into every home in the country. Foolishly, the government gave them the money first - so the fiber part was never built out.
Having read the article I have to ask, how do you prove that you don't get satellite or cable? I can claim, state, attest, etc. that I don't get it, but how do I prove it? I hope that's an error in the article.
On another note, this is all is short sighted. We have analog tvs and we subscribe to satellite. Satellite goes out during heavy rain and storms - meaning we lose all the severe weather alerts and radar. The local station's analog broadcasts reach 30-40 miles beyond us, but only half the digital broadcasts reach us (our neighbors) at all. The digital converters won't cut the mustard for us and especially for those beyond us, because the signal isn't there.
I smurf everything and everything I smurf is perfect.
..The "subsidy" is not earmarked from the general budget, but from the money earned from the sale of the now free analog spectrum rights to the highest bidders. This sale is expected to raise many billions of dollars (if not more). Taking a small amount of that revenue and giving it back to the people is not only fair and just, it makes sense, since the airwaves are public property.
Thanks,
Mike
There are some who think that free television does more to reduce crime than any other thing.
First off, I do think this is an example of wasteful government largesse. But I really hate the given justification.
How about, "Innocent people continue to be raped and murdered on their way home at night. And yet, the government continues to spend money on post office boxes. Is your child's life worth less than a post office box?"
The notion that because something is very important that it therefore innately subsumes all lesser priorities is not consistent with any form of logical cost benefit analysis. Rarely if ever is there a linear relation to investment and payoff in terms of moneys allocated to resolving social issues, and the sort of qualitative analysis you mentally apply to "homelessness" vs. "television" is an irrational and inappropriate way to compare what is actually a quantitative analysis of "unit payoff per unit investment to resolve homeless" and the corresponding.
Anyway, I think a better question than "how can the government waste money on instead of ?" might be "why do I trust the government to be responsible for these monies in the first place?" It's pretty much a given that, whatever Uncle Sam does 'for our own good' with our own money, ninety percent of us are going to pissed about it.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I thought that "rabbit ear" antennas could still receive the new digital broadcasts (the 2009 requirement)? You'd need to upgrade to a TV that can decode ATSC, or get one of those boxes...
Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses
Doesn't this money come from the auction of the airspace freed by replacing the Analog TV service?
If so it's a bargain - a slight dribble from the great vat of money the government rakes in.
I wish *I* could make that many billions with only one billion of costs. Talk about Return On Investment...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As they say, there are two things you don't want to see being made. Law and sausage.
This proposal goes way, way back.
Part of Clinton's "balanced" budget (whatever "balanced" can be stretched to mean in the halls of gov't) was based on accelerating the switchover to digital and reaping the windfall from sale of the analog frequencies.
But, some lawcritters argued, this would be an undue burden on the TV-addicted public.
So they reached a compromise. Accelerate the sale but set aside some of the revenue to pay for converter boxes.
Of course the switchover date kept getting pushed back while the converter-box-bucks have remained.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Why? Unlike the problems you mentioned above, millions of Americans waking up one day to find that their televisions no longer work really could cause substantial civil unrest.
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.
Sell the box at $300 dollars that is. It basically requires a slightly souped up DVD player sans optical drive, with an ATSC tuner. Today a consumer can have an ATSC tuner for less than 100 bucks to go into a computer. A DVD with the capabilities of decoding such a stream and downsampling it NTSC for a traditional set probably could be implemented at the 50-60 dollar price point. So as a commercial product in 2009, I would be very surprised to see no option under $100 dollars.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Never underestimate the efficiency of TV as a country-wide birth control method.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
But how are we supposed to ignore our social problems without TV?
Television is used to control how people think and what they believe. So naturally, it's extremely important for those in power, as the most desirable thing for those in power is subordinate obedience... even moreso than "capital" or "money". More so than "money", usually because they are the source of it to begin with, they just want the pions to play accordingly.
That's the only real reason for Television, is to influence generalized social sentiments. It's not "mind-control" in a direct, precise and immediate effect... but it is influencial to a point of the involuntary connotation "control" has, and over a longer period of time, and broader subjects and not like "What am I thinking?". Mind control in a more broad and devastating sense (60 years ago, a sense of Nationalism and Patriotism was an admirable characteristic... today, in some countries it's illegal. Less than 20 years ago, Communism was openly, confidently and earnestly attacked and criticised... today... no one cares, it's just another governing/economic system. Less than 30 years, bell bottom pants were in style during the Disco 70s, and they are back now...) This isn't necessarily "cycles" that we are led to believe in... these are concrete directions that society as a whole has taken, and often, in 180 degree turns within 10 years of "exposure".
Virtually no one actually sits down and analyzes why they think . And this is especially true for the more controversial opinions like racism, abortion, animal rights etc etc. Because we fear the fact that we might realize that there is absolutely no founding reason for our beliefs, other than, familiarity. We've been told "x", my friends adhere to "x", I'll be alone if I don't.... Yeah, I believe in "x". Some people will think they have a logical explanation for their opinions or beliefs; but you really don't... and I can prove that too you...
Go to a public place, with a pen and paper (I used to do this all the time to show friends how stupid 'society' is.) Look up in the sky, point, look down, jot something down. Do this with confidence, like it's an official effort. The contrast of meaningless with "official" appeal will confuse people... finally, a small group will form and they too will start looking in the same direction. Then the claims of validaty will start forming, one will point and say something like "you see that?" and eventually someone else will agree that they infact saw "something" when they saw nothing at all.
Best part, they'll have no friggin idea why they are participating, and as far as their concerned, they wouldn't believe the truth (or the "cause") of their actions if it were enduldged, and it's garunteed they'll refuse to believe it, if enough people were there pointing at the same void spot in space.
So... It is easy to direct society into believing the dumbest things, and make them honestly believe in them, including having them claim they have a logical basis for their belief or some actual event that once happened that supports the belief.
As a result, the television/radio is extremely important to Government and Corporations alike. Because without, they don't have as much control over how you perceive the world around you....
Dear god, the fact some people need to watch "Reality TV" for 'real life situations' should be bloody apparant, but obviously it isn't as it seems to do well with viewers. What stupidity, all they have to do is pay attention to their own dysfunctional family, or go next door.
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?
Shawn's Tech Articles
At last look, the proceeds from selling those frequencies won't cover this program, though.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
We can, but it won't win votes.
http://outcampaign.org/
I'd tend to agree this is more of an "opium for the masses" move, but it does have one upside, and that's to delay people throwing out older TVs somewhat. I realize the boxes themselves would be waste, but the CRT is a huge mess, maybe this helps prevent a massive dumping of TVs in 2 years.
The media companies tell the lobbyists, who pay the congressmen and senators, to plug the "analog hole".
Then they see the writing on the wall that Joe Schmoe will be mad because his TV doesn't work any more.
"That's okay! We'll give him a voucher!" Everybody with money wins!
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
http://www.mobiletracker.net/archives/2005/01/12/f cc-spectrum-bidders
For a much smaller range of frequencies, 35 companies paid 325 million to just participate in spectrum auctions. I don't know how much money they made on the first set of auctions, but it was a ton.
For the frequencies used in analog tv, minus the much smaller range used for digital tv, the FCC will make a killing. These are some fat frequency ranges that are mostly wasted on old fashioned analog tv. I was pissed when they were going to end analog with no provision for legacy tv, but this is a good solution.
It will mean more fancy schmancy wireless data for us geeks as well.
Very succinctly, lets give the $990M to the hurricane affected people of New Orleans and other devistated areas, and give a book to the people who would spend time completing paperwork for a coupon for digital TV. Or, since it is the Commerce Dept., give the money to affected businesses. Unbelieveable.
Any ability to record, qualifies as a disqualifying 'feature'.r ers.pdf
Manufacturing Document http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/dtv/DTVmanufactu
I for one welcome our new coupon-bearing DRM overlords.
I am blown away that with all of our current problems...
So can I have your coupons?
...I'm not likely to use it any more than I use the analog TV now.
Living within the perimeter of I285 in Atlanta and the bad reception, actually getting worse I have moved to collecting used DVD's and VHS at bargan basment prices, and I mean good and popular stuff not bottom behind the rack b movies.
No commercials. and its not uncommon for me to already have what is new on over the air TV movies.
Other options include the internet for news and even some unique entertainment via site like youtube.
The real hit in all this is that the Government is a tax collector of your hard earned money. The bandwidth issue is probably real but on the other hand, where is my social security that I've paid into?
It's still the best way to placate people, and the government knows this. Just wait for TV's brought to you with pre-set channel selections... press a button and get CNN, another for Fox News, another for MSNBC, etc... let the programming begin!
brian botkiller "Condensing fact from the vapor of nuance" - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
It's worth doing for the simple reason that four digital standard definition channels fit into the spectrum space of a single analog channel. And that's with old MPEG2 encoding.
This is a no-brainer.
It's absolutely and completely in the government's interest to keep the masses watching TV. Of course they're gonna subsidize TV. If you don't have the general public watching TV, then what would they do...? Have their own thoughts? Read? Talk to each other? C'mon... if even a quarter of the TV viewing public did that (turned off the idiot box), we'd have a revolution. Keep 'em watching. Keep 'em stupid.
Subsidize TV and religion (no taxes on churches), and you have a nice, gullible consumer base to keep paying taxes, all the while not questioning authority.
I don't respond to AC's.
...why hasn't the government been giving us free TVs all along? And how about ponying up for my cable bill while you're at it? I'm sorry, but this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of by our government. Ooops, sorry, I forgot about the last few years. But aside from Iraq, Katrina, etc, this is pretty dumb.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The more money you print, the more worthless it becomes.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
I just don't believe that the revenue from spectrum sales is going towards this rebate. The rebate/coupons will be a new debt. Sigh.
Blar.
I'm not sure what is worse...
A. The blatant government wastefulness (let alone the $20B of democrat pork in the defense bill)
B. The big government apologists on slashdot basically spouting off that $1B isn't a lot of tax to waste.
Socialism has worked out really well for Europe, why don't you move?
I'm an Irish and American citizen, so flame away. I've seen both sides, thanks.
The analog TV / human eye combination is amazingly robust in the presence of weak signals. Even a snowy picture that looks like noise on an oscilloscope is recognizable (if not ideal) to a human, and there are many people in marginal reception areas that make do with what signal they can. Their TVs are still useful for news and so on, even if the picture is far from perfect. I've been on an island where that was the case, and I still watched the news every night through the background snow, although watching a movie or long program was too annoying and fatiguing. Cartoons, on the other hand, were fine. I don't really know, but I can't imagine digital TV would be this robust/flexible, or are its error-correction algorithms really that advanced? My guess is probably not, and large class of people in rural and outlying areas are going to be cut off.
For you and me, $900 milion might be a lot of money, most of us never earn that much their whole life.
... to get it: add $100 million to your sum, and you have $1 billion. The war on Iraq costed so far over 400 times as much as your sum is. Or in other words: you could spend each day of a year, for one year, $900 million and you would just be close to the war cost in Iraq.
However that is not much money.
The war on Iraq so far costed over $400 billion
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Entertainment is as real a need as any other and for many people in the US, TV is their big source of entertainment. I don't care if you think it should be or not, point is that it is. Now the government is forcing a change to that. They control the airwaves by fiat, they are saying "You can't broadcast analogue anymore on these frequencies." If they weren't TV broadcasters would continue to do so as there's still demand and they already have the equipment. Thus the government has some responsibility to help the people that they are going to affect with this change.
While it certainly isn't as important as many other things, as the GP pointed out, you don't ignore everything just because there is one thing. You can't pretend that entertainment is worthless, especially as you are spending time entertaining yourself posting on a website. People need to be entertained just as they need food or shelter. Granted, food is a more important need, but that doesn't mean entertainment isn't a legit one.
I have heard over-the-air high definition Television (HDTV) is not yet available where I live. Will they be turning off analog TV reception before bringing HDTV to where I live. I was told that it was not available here by several electronic salesmen at a couple of the local department stores. About a year earlier, I had entered my address into a web page about HDTV reception and it said that HDTV reception was not available where I live. I don't actually have an HDTV, I don't know for sure if that is correct. I live in a small city in the mountains of Northern Arizona. Are there some other smaller towns that have analog TV but don't yet have HDTV antenna reception? Am I wrong about the situation in my town?
I don't have cable where I live either, so perhaps I will need to either get a satellite dish or stop watching TV. At least, I could still rent or purchase DVDs of my favorite shows. However, television has never been very important to me, so I am not too concerned. I am perfectly happy with my 13 inch television set and the rabbit ears reception even though I could easily afford a larger TV and a small satellite dish. Up until the early 1980s, I had a black and white TV with 10 inch screen and was perfectly happy with that too.
At least high speed DSL Internet access finally became available here a few months ago and I am no longer using dial-up. Now I will soon need to figure out what to do to keep receiving some kind of television. I don't really care if it is high definition or not or how many channels there are, I just want to still be able to receive something.
Are you going to try and prove to a happy person that are, in fact, just as angry and boring as you are? What's the point?
How are you going to get any happier if you don't take happiness from others?
paintball
This is Circus.
Consider:
1. The FCC controls airwave licenses.
2. A significant number of people out there do not have the means, or rightfully refuse to upgrade to a television capable of decoding over the air digital signals.
3. A significant number of people out there do not have the mans, or rightfully refuse to purchase cable and/or satellite service, yet they continue to watch TV via over the air signals.
4. Eliminating analog over the air signals will open up gobs of frequencies for other uses; including 2-way communications, IP communications, and more digital channels, both TV and radio.
5. Finally, $990 million is _nothing_ compared to how much auctioning off the new spectrum will generate in revenue for the FCC. The last auction generated something like $40 billion; $990 million in order to generate good will among the populace, and ensure that the working class (working poor) does not get cut off from their TV, is a win-win.
If the government didn't have a plan like this, most likely the analog over-the-air signals would end up continuing. This is a *bad* thing, as that spectrum is very valuable, and being used inefficiently.
Is this government intervention? Yes, of course it is. Unfortunately, this is a situation that libertarian's like myself have to learn to handle delicately, because it involves an actual *public* good, that being frequency spectrum.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"SFGate has the story of the cutoff date for those rabbit ear antennas that some of us grew up with"
That's not true, you can use rabbit ear antennas with ATSC turners as well, so next time you at the store looking for a "HDTV antenna" just grab those old cheapo rabbit ears.
If they didn't help people upgrade, they'd lose their most effective propaganda outlet. Additionally, RCA and LG must be making $$$$$$ deals with them. Everything in the govt can be bought. It's capitalism at it's worst.
are the opiate of the pretentious.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I use a set to get three HDTV stations (four at night), although technically I use the small wire loop in front of the dipoles as the stations are all UHF. Antenna technology has nothing to do with tuner technology...
> ... 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."
Do us a favor and crawl out from under the rock you are living in.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
I thought the new Futurama episodes were going straight to DVD?
Well, what did you expect ?
Can't have Big Brother without the tube in your home...
Heck, they're spending more on trying to make us beleive that Biofuels
and Hydrogen are the future, burying deep the advances in fuel cell technology that
were apparent to all a few years ago, but now no longer in the spot light, you'll
see paid bloggers and unenlightened minds argue that battery power is a long way off...
I wonder how long Texaco will sit on the Tech that Exxon sold them ?
Ref: (see "who killed the electric car, or any Popular machanics of the time...)
Cheers
End of Line.
Since there are no (to my knowledge) set-top boxes being actually manufactured in the US anymore (they all say "Made in China"), this program will simply result in a $1bn gift to the Chinese electronics industry.
Chip H.
RCA and LG are foreign (French and S Korean, respectively) corporations with $BILLIONS in marketing budgets. Yet the US government wants to give a $BILLION of our tax money to them in direct subsidies for a new product, which will cost more than the coupon, so therefore even more profit for them.
Which will serve to keep even more Americans with analog TVs, instead of the digital ones that actually exploit the services for which our taxes already subsidize (for $BILLIONS more) TV broadcasters and content producers.
While our country is $TRILLIONS in unsupportable debt. Mostly because we watch too much TV.
--
make install -not war
In fact, we didn't even elect the man that started those wars, we elected Al Gore.
I'm fascinated that you still cling to this. It shows a willingness to believe in the face of opposing evidence that rivals the most fundamental of Christians.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Why is it the government's job to make sure people can still watch TV[?]
It's not their job but they want to tell you what to think.
Sure, they'll raise more than $1B money by auctioning off the spectrum.
Selling spectrum is a crime. It belongs to all of us but will be given to the highest bidders - those able to extract the money from all of us. This is a corporate tax and it's evil because it comes with very little accountability. A large portion of your cellphone bill goes towards paying for the spectrum which Bill Clinton auctioned off. Do you know what that money is spent on? Is that what you want when you buy into a cell phone plan. You are right when you say there are better uses for the money than providing the highest bidder with a larger customer base. Every dollar taken from the people by government needs to be justified and accounted for in advance. Taking money from one group and given to another is either Communism or robbery depending on the progressiveness of the tax and neither are good. Your continued support of unaccountable government depends on you not having decent news services, something which can only be provided by a continuation of the current broadcast monopolies. This wastes a precious public commodity and does so with the express intent to make it that public commodity worthless.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Surprised? The Government need control, and what else helps it to do than TV? So of course they are more than willing to spend money on it.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
How else do you think they're supposed to reach everybody with their propaganda that terrorists are bad, Iraq is bad, Iran is bad, Syria is bad, and North Korea is bad?
Question everything
Television is a mass broadcast medium which is often used for delivery of time-sensitive and important information. Much like the radio was (and still is). That is one reason it is important that it is made as simple and cheap as possible for the populace to continue receiving television broadcasts. People rely on both radio and television for information like storm/tornado/hurricane/flood/fire alerts, information about local and national politics, health threats like peanut butter recalls or SUV's that roll over or baby cribs that spontaneously combust. I think it's fairly important that citizens receive any state of the union addresses or declarations of "war", regardless of your political views or opinions on the value of television entertainment.
A telescreen in every home.
Here's another way to think about it - the government wants to auction the broadcasters' old analog TV spectrum. The government is composed of politicians. Politicians need large donations which come from owners and executives of large businesses as well as PACs/lobbyists who represent the interests of these same owners and executives but in collective form. The politicians use this money to buy TV ads (as well as assorted other activities) to get elected/re-elected. The people and PACs who gave the candidate money expect the candidate to support their political and business interests. The politicians want to keep their donors happy, they will need more money one day, but sometimes the donors' interests conflict. Even worse for the politicians, sometimes the interests of their constituency also conflict with those of their donors. Politicians hate this. Politicians have a pathological need to be liked, get deferential treatment, go on junkets, hang out at cocktail parties, and sleep with women (or sometimes men) other than their wives. Choosing between donors or choosing between donors and voters is invariably going to cost money or votes. So, what's a politician to do? Spend some government money and make everyone happy. They provide a subsidy so the voters can buy a tuner converter, which will also put some money into the hands of the electronic manufacturers and electronic stores. The broadcasters are happy because they don't have to worry about losing ratings and they can shut down their analog transmitters. The politicians are happy because they made everyone happy and they can point to the money made from reclaiming and auctioning off the old analog broadcasting spectrum. Any criticism about the vouchers will be answered with all the money made from the auction. Everyone's happy
They are the ones that are pushing the drive to digital TV, so that they can use the frequencies that have been allocated to TV for the last 50 years, so they should foot the bill for migrating people.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Actually, the digital channels are broadcast on the same frequencies, so the antenna (Rabbit Ears) will still work.
The US Govt hasn't been shopping around. The discount stores here sell brand new digital tuners (a.k.a set top boxes) for $48 AUS. That works out to be almost $38 US, in a country where the typical price of electronics is 50% higher than the US! For example, the Playstation 3 here will be $999 AUS, while the US is $599. And you think the PS3 is expensive in the US!
The price for digital tuners in the US should be much less than $40. Plus, once the analog frequency range becomes available, the US Govt will be able to sell it for much more than the cost of all these digital boxes. The article author has nothing to worry about. This will hardly send the US Govt into bankruptcy.
Don't you want yours, then?
I could use a couple more, you know...
Well, if one considers $89.00 affordable, you can buy one right now on www.newegg.com: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16882107049/
How do I know? I just bought one and it came yesterday. I was able to get 15 HDTV/DTV stations without issue (basically looked like a DVD on my analog set but still pretty good). When combined with the $40 coupon that the government proposes to issue, boxes like these will be quite affordable.
While researching what was out there I also came across these other digital-to-analog converters as well:
(Microtek ZAT-600HD $299) http://store.microtek.com/Product.aspx?ProductID=2 85/
(Michley Tivax $159 New on Ebay) http://www.tivax.com/product1.htm/
Cheap D-to-A converters are starting to show up on the market, and I predict that by the time 2008 comes around they will be much more plentiful. Especially since most major cities are already broadcasting local channels in HD. I just didn't feel like waiting around for the $40 coupon. :-)
The government cant lose control of the population.
If even 10% of the viewing audience was lost it would be 10's of millions of citizens that wouldnt get the daily propaganda. Too much of a risk.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
With all the problems going on in our society, and because of the US unpopular involvement in just about everything around the world, the US gov't probably sees better quality entertainment as a way of distracting the common folk.
Who cares about body counts when you can watch -insert favorite police drama/medical drama/sitcom here- in glittering high definition?
The converter boxes are for people who chose not to upgrade their TV's. I'd hate for Cleatus the slack jawed local to start shooting at the sky because his TV stops working.
And the government is going to make a boatload of money re-selling the VHF spectrum for analog TV after the switchover!
Everybody wins!(at least the ones who are paying attention because they aren't glued to the boob tube.)
I have a ATSC tuner in my TV and in my MythTV box, so can I use those credits to buy something useful?
Come to think of it, I'd pay for a channel that showed the carnage of war in 1080i. CNN HD, here I come!
They are NOT "spending" the money. It's more like "investing". Once they get everyone off of those analog channels they can sell the newly freed up RF spectrum for a LOT more than $1,000,000,000. So by investing this money on converter boxes they get to auction off the old channels years earlier.
A billion sound like a lot of money but in the US that amounts to less then four bucks per person.
this isn't "chump change," it's gross inefficiency.
The summary, which claimed "our government is seriously going to spend this much money on upgrading peoples' televisions." shows a serious lack of understanding. "The government" is us.
In simple terms, this just means that we, as taxpayers, will be giving ourselves $80 in coupons, and funding bureaucrats along the way. For the $80 we get, we'll probably spend that and an extra $40 to support those bureaucrats, given the inefficiencies of the federal government. Furthermore, this will likely be taken as a signal to RCA and LG that they can hold prices higher for a while, because it amounts to a mandated time payment plan (buy now, pay at taxtime), and hides the true cost. The net effect is that the taxpayer will be inefficiently funding bureaucrats and private industry.
Absolute best case, if you're a liberal, is that this is a minor means of income redistribution.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
It has nothing to do with entertainment, homeless or crime.
It has everything to do with long term contracts from TV stations who have control over certain airwaves that are more valuable then the companies using them. This is about money and only money. The government had to make provisions to the broadcast stations for them to give up their contract so the government could sell the channels for hundreds of time more then they make now from them. The trade off, the broadcast stations didn't want to give it up and lose all their viewers so thi helped them decide.
OK, lets review, Money, Money,Money. No it didn't stutter, IT is all about money.
I got a digital receiver box about a year ago to get the extra subchannels and HD shows in my area. I don't watch it enough to bother with an outdoor antenna or expensive indoor antenna, so I use the same rabbit ears that I used for analog TV when the cable screws up. It usually works, but sometimes, especially in wet weather, the signal drops out. With digital TV, that means a blank screen and no sound. (I keep wondering WTF the rocket scientists who designed this system didn't allocate 8KHz of the signal to an *analog* telephone-quality backup audio track so that at least you don't miss out on the story line when dropouts happen.)
Meanwhile, down in my basement I have a 30-year old analog TV with even crappier rabbit ears 5 feet below ground that is acceptably watchable, even if it's a bit snowy. Analog TV just has a lot more tolerance for poor signal conditions.
IMO, anybody in a marginal signal area that uses broadcast signals for more than casual viewing is going to need a top-notch antenna. My guess is that in a lot of cases, that upgrade will cost much more than the digital receiver box.
The govt may also be concerned about staving off a surge of TVs being disposed of. Even if affordable HDTVs become available, there will be people with TVs that can be used if they have a converter box. This is admittedly a secondary concern but one worth considering.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Unless your china and take you currency off the market and atificialy valuate it.
I would be suspectful of any kind of voucher system that ties my location and other personal information to my presumed consumption of digital television.
Of course this a data mining dream come true, but there is another factor. Granting licenses (FCC->Broadcaster) in Germany has the following outcome: There is a "company" known as the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale) that regulates Joe Public's consumption of the media (radio, television, computer with internet) and demands a monthly payment of fees from Joe Public. This money then trickles down to the media distributors. No, pay -> go to court. Pay fine, pay fee.
I would DEFINITELY read the fine print on any application for such a voucher...
If the government is forcing broadcaster to go all digital then its only fair for government to pay us to upgrade.
TVS HANDOUT YOU!
-insert a witty something-
It's like you said, the HD channels are "extra" right now. They're running at 1/2 or less power of the analog channel. It costs a lot of money to run 25,000 watts all day!! Once they turn analog off, they'll have funds to turn the HD signal to full strength and it will get better.
No Digital Video Interface (DVI)
No High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI)
No Computer video (VGA)
No USB IEEE-1394 (iLink or Firewire)
No Ethernet (IEEE-802.3)
No Wireless (IEEE0802.11)
I've never owned a VCR that could record S-video input, have you?
I mean, c'mon.... who ever heard of 'Roman Idol', right? Sheesh.
Well, if two 40 dollar coupons is enough to get just one of these boxes, then even someone like me who does not have tv (and has not had it for over 30 years) could benefit.
For one thing, it's free heat. Put it in the fireplace and light it.
Or better still, use it for art.
I just returned from a trip to a friend of mine who does art from scrap as a living;. He uses old pieces of wood, metal, plastic; whatever he can find.
You take one of the boxes apart, you can find some goodies to do this type of art.
I will have to mention this to him as he is not a Slashdot reader.
Hugs & Luv
Cleara
So we can watch news programs that report on billion dollar wastes of money like this silly coupon program.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
the prices are so high because in the early 80s when the first cell spectrum was sold off, it was sold for chump change.. nearly the same as equivalent TV spectrum.. but completely closed and private. The early buyers bought it almost as a "gag". It wasn't until about 10 years later technology caught up and that spectrum became worth 100x or more what was paid for it. The govt is just getting a better deal for the spectrum this time around... think of it like property tax in exchange for the govt guaranteeing their use during the contract.
If the government didn't upgrade all your televisions, how could you stay on top of the Terror Alert Status?
Really, it's for YOUR safety.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
GP's argument is still valid. Any of those features would make this minimal box superior to an antenna. Personally I don't think it would be so wrong for congress to subsidize my new TiVo, but some people out there get pissed off any time the government does anything to help "rich" people.
I don't see any ban on RF/coax output to channel 3.
Using residential rate of $0.075/kWh (which I seem to be paying these days) this amounts to whopping 45 dollars for a non-stop 24 hours broadcast. This expense is not even on the radar of a TV broadcaster; the coffee and water service costs more.
Last August I purchased the only stand-alone external terrestrial digital TV receiver I could identify on the market. It's a Samsung unit, and it cost US $200.
We don't have cable TV or satellite TV and we don't want it. I bought the Samsung unit to interface to a 32-inch Sony CRT television that is about twelve years old.
All the stations in my area, save one, are already broadcasting both analog and digital. With digital, I get dramatically better picture quality, though it's harder to use because you tend to have to re-tune the antenna (see below) when you change channels, particularly between UHF and VHF (those distinctions persist into the digital realm, too).
It takes some getting used to. When signals are weak, your TV displays weird freezing and pixellation, and the sound stutters. It's quite disconcerting at first.
Somebody awhile back wrote that with digital broadcast TV, you either get a perfect display of the channel on your screen, or you get no image or sound at all. That's just not true. You always have to deal with the freezing, stuttering, distorted audio and pixellation, although if you are persistent, you can learn how to tune in each station correctly and the breakup happens far less often.
And by the way, you still need the rabbit ears. Broadcast digital TV requires an antenna--the same kind of antenna required for broadcast analog TV.
The main reason that the US government is starting this program is two-fold. First, broadcast television is where most citizens (who don't have cable or satellite) still get their news, and being able to hear the news daily is considered a part of participating in democracy. Second, Congress mandated the cessation of analog broadcast TV at the end of 2009, so Congress is placing a burden on some (mostly poor) citizens who could become disenfranchised from the democracy through not being able to watch news broadcasts on their TV as a direct result of Congress' actions.
A lot of the comments here seem to miss one important point of free TV broadcasts: emergency broadcasts.
It's easy to forget this when we have instant access to CNN, Weather Underground, etc. online, but many rely upon TV for their weather forcasts and news (even if in dumbed-down form). During storms, many rely upon TV to get thunderstorm, tornado, and hurricane warnings and information. This is especially true of those with lower income. TV is a convenient, ubiquitous method of disseminating emergeny information.
If analog TV were elimated without providing this conversion assistance, millions of the most (economically) vulnerable Americans would lose a primary source of emergency information. It's a matter of public safey, and I think it's one of the major arguments in favor of providing assistance. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
Shhhhhh don't give them any ideas about the coaxial analog-hole exploit
Seriously though, I'm not disagreeing with the GP point that people shouldn't be allowed to make a choice on how to spend the 40 bucks that Congress, ahem Tax-Payers, is going to give back to themselves.
I was agreeing by providing supportive documentation, for the GGP point, that consumers aren't buying all this new confusing cripple-ware-DRM mess. And the only way to make people accept it, is to pay-off, ahem lobby polititians to submit bills that force the new bussiness model on everyone.
tverbeek: is a government subsidy to the electronics industry (among others)
Actually it's primarily intended as an expansion of the usefulness of the radio spectrum. Like it or not, it's the FCC's job to manage the radio spectrum and attempt to give the people the best benefit of it. For large chunks of the spectrum, it's assumed capitalism is the best method and the waves are sold. Some chunks are reserved for non-profit, educational use. Some are public and unlicensed, as long as the transmitting equipment follows certain rules (UNI bands, for example).
They can fit 6 digital stations of standard definition into the bandwidth taken up by 1 analoge one. This allows busy cities to have more broadcast channels, approaching analoge cable in capacity. Let's see, CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, public, education, spanish/chinese/indian/whatever plus all the local stations. Ability to broadcast dedicated news stations, even in markets large enough that 40 stations can broadcasting and still be profitable.
While expanding the possible number of stations broadcasting, you also free up spectrum that can possibly be used by emergency responders, wifi, cell phones, etc...
So the fact that that government is chipping in $40 on my behalf - restoring to me the basic broadcast television service they're taking away - seems appropriate to me.
I do agree with this.
I don't read AC A human right
At some point, probably back around when the Industrial Revolution got into full swing, the efficiency got high enough that humanity as a whole moved past the point where 100% of people's time was needed to work to cover just the basic needs. There are still localized regions without enough productivity, and regions with excess productivity. But as a whole, if we produced and manufactured only was what we needed, we would be spending more than half of our time sitting around doing nothing. That extra time goes into producing and consuming nonessentials, like television, amusement parks, video games, and, yes, posting on Slashdot.
Our production is efficient enough that we can produce (and use) these nonessentials without impacting the production of essentials. People are willing to spend the time to make, sell, and buy these items. And so our "free" time is spent doing just that. To argue that we should only be producing what we need is to argue that (A) we sit around most of the day doing nothing, or (B) we roll back our technological progress to the point where once again 100% of our time is spent producing essentials.
When the propaganda folks realize that most of the 20% of the people who buy their crap, don't have cable, the deadline will quietly disappear.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Imagine a person buys apples and some books instead of a TV decoder. He submits the receipts to the government and they reply, no you bought the wrong stuff. We deem your use of $40 to be less valuable to society than watching TV.
-Dave
If the government wants to take away our channels so they can sell the airspace and turn an insane profit on re-renting that "free" airspace ("free", apparently, in that it costs _them_ nothing), then the very LEAST they can do is give me a break on a decoder.
Some of us can't afford cable (or new, over-priced screens) and must rely on RF-broadcast television.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
The TV is a great tool for the government, which is why its on their top priorities.
This tool is called one-way communication also in other words propaganda.
Its more important for your government to keep its hold of information
control, than to feed the homeless, worry about climate change and anything else you want to throw on that list.
And last *I* checked, the people north of the USA are Canadians, the people south are Mexicans. Those in South American have their own country/place-names, none of which are typically labeled "America(n)". If you look at what citizens of the USA call themselves, it is Americans. That is also the way the rest of the globe typically labels us (I include myself, as I am an American). We aren't typically labeled United Statesians, or some other such nonsense.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
hmmm, i think i want in on that action. instead they can keep the $40, i will give them $60, and when its all said and done they can give me $1000... lol ;)
The government just wants to ensure that everyone gets their recommended daily dose of propoganda.
I, for one, welcome our high definition entertainment overlords. =)
It's not easy being green.
Yes
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
But I suppose there is the argument that it is a source of critical emergency information. Not to mention the mass uprising that would occur among those that can't afford cable/satellite, I really they got to get their Sally/Opra(?)/Judge Judy!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The local stations in my area broadcast digital TV at 700-1000 kW. 1000 kW * $0.075/kWh * 24 hours/day = $1800/day
|| It costs a lot of money to run 25,000 watts all day!!
| Using residential rate of $0.075/kWh (which I seem to be paying these days) this amounts to whopping 45 dollars for a non-stop 24 hours broadcast. This expense is not even on the radar of a TV broadcaster; the coffee and water service costs more.
That's the transmission power--the power needed by the transmitters to create that much radiation is considerably more. It's been a few years since I've looked at the figures (my friends and I were trying to open a radio station), but all large transmitters radiate quite a bit of heat, which is lost efficiency right off the bat. Not to mention, because of the heat and the nature of radio wave transmission of that magnitude, parts need to be replaced quite often; the power tubes alone are several hundred to several thousand dollars a piece, and parts for most solid state transmitters of comparable size are even more expensive. And these were just numbers for middling 1-10kW AM stations; TV is no doubt slightly different, especially at so many watts. Running at peak constantly costs quite a bit of money.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
But in any case the efficiency of a relatively narrowband PA can be about 20-30% easily, if not more, so the numbers hardly change. The heat is where the other 70-80% go, so it is accounted for. There are no tubes in modern PAs, unless you talk TWT in DVB sats, but that's not the subject here. I worked with 10 kW AM/SSB HF solid state transmitters, and they work great and I don't know who would even buy a tube-based low/medium power PA any more, let alone who would make one. If you need 1 MW - then we can discuss things. Anyhow, the primary power is not a concern, not even in the slightest. Your tech in charge, snoozing near the control panel, costs you far more - not even counting the *content* that you broadcast.
"How else do you think they're supposed to reach everybody with their propaganda that terrorists are bad"
Don't get carried away. Terrorists *are* bad, regardless of your political leanings.
See, if they gave cash they would spend $40 x the_number_of_households
With coupons they spend a fraction of it, since a lot of people lose them or simply do not go through the trouble of using them.
Here in the Netherlands, the analog cut-off already happened last year (december 2006).
The only money the government spent was on a publicity campaign to let everyone know beforehand that this was going to happen.
(of course, people ran to the shops only in the weekend analog was switched off, so there was a stock problem anyway)
Everyone had to buy his or her own digital box. The reasoning is that you bought your own TV, so why should the government be responsible to keep it uptodate with the advances of technology? You did not get a free color TV upgrade when color transmission started either...
Of course the analog transmitters had to be replaced by digital, but because of the lower power and multiple programs per carrier there was a running cost reduction.
And these days the investments in transmitters are made by independent operating companies that get paid per transmitted program per year.
The news, if it is indeed news (or rumor, if it is at least that), is surely amazing. With no real references to actual statements made by the powers-that-be, it is rather stupid to actually believe that a billion will be spent. And to argue for and against the FCC and DRM and Hollywood and so on... Can the author be so kind to point us to the source of his information ?
I'd rather the US government spent money on their people than fighting wars and the usual terrorism bullshit.
ONLY a billion dollars though. I want a $4000 coupon to get a new HDTV LCD.
This money would've been a nice down payment on a Mars expedition.
Revive the Constitution.
In Sweden, my home country, perhaps the most known of all Western countries for its Socialism, the move to the digital era has been done with 0 financial help from the government to the residents. The only thing that was done was a campaign telling people to get a digital box.
This is already in advanced stages - Some of Sweden has already moved to digital only service, the latest being "Greater Stockholm" area, where the analogue broadcasts were switched off Monday, March 12th.
And now in the US, the home of capitalism, the government will use tax-payer money to sponsor such an upgrade?
We live in a strange world.
After the digital switchover, whenever there's a storm or disaster that results in a blackout, how do they propose that we tune into emergency TV broadcasts? There are no standalone battery powered ATSC receivers that I know of, and paying well over $300 (combined average cost) for a pocket digital TV seems a bit steep, considering one can get a battery powered 5" b/w TV for less than $30 before tax.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
If you've been using rabbit ears then you have a very good signal and have never experienced the joy of having your ears ripped off by a massive audio glitch.
We have a large number of social-welfare problems, we cannot provide adequate care for our veterans, we have people living in the streets and we are thinking of handing out billions of dollars to help the HDTV revolution. This is an absolute obscenity. Few articles have made me angrier. I do not want my tax dollars going to fund someone else's entertainment. Everyday on the way to work, I have to pass a homeless man so underweight that he looks like my grandfather did after liberation from Dachau in WWII. His body looks so hollow you can see ribs through his shirt just as my grandfather was. Never mind that he may have alcohol or drug problems; no human being should ever, ever have to experience this. And everyday, I buy him some food as I do not know how to really help him and that, by proxy, makes me a small part of the problem. In America, we should not be seeing people like this. Finally, when I see fucked-up, lame-brained plans like god-damned HDTV incentives I just want to yell.
Television is opium for the masses. If people are happily watching TV, they're not going to spend as much time thinking about the world around them. Keep the masses happy, and the actions of the government will not be questioned. American Idol becomes far more important that the US supplying arms to a third world country. A great read pertaining to television and mass media is "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.
Not to mention the profit they'll make when they re-sell all that broadcast spectrum for billions of $$$.
No sig today...
Senior citizen: Senator, I cannot afford to get my prescriptions on my Social Security check.
Senator: Sorry, that's the breaks. Medicare only goes so far. Here, have a digital to analog television converter. That should make you feel better. Have a nice day!
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Consumption beyond need is what appears to drive the economy,
not the response to need. It cannot sustain unless it grows,
and it cannot grow unless it perpetually consumes more than it needs.
(John Townsend, Whole Earth Review, Summer 1991)
I'm sure this giveaway is seen by politicians as a way to cover their asses while finally finding the will to kill analog.
But think of the environmental impact of dozens of millions of TVs becoming landfill at once. If a lot of people are happy with a converter box, that could be a good thing. And if you aren't already used to HD, digital SD _is_ a lot better than analog TV so everybody's still happy.
I just sent an email to the NTIA and my congressman... i suggest other people who think this is ridiculous do the same.
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
first as someone else also pointed out, 990 million dollars isn't alot in gov'nt dollars.
second and more important is the source of this money, its essentially coming from fees from the ftc operating companies that is supposed to be used for ftc related stuff. Congress itself probably wastes alot more of non-earmarketed money on donuts and parking...
don't believe it
Is it more important to keep the mass media machine and keep everyone afraid or helping people in real need.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's not "just fucking television." It's a MASSIVE consumer market.
More than that, it's also the primary means for advertising candidates. If you want name-recognition at the polls, I can guarantee you that for a large majority of voters, everything they know of potential presidential or congressional candidates will be from television. To not specifically cater your funding and legislation to favor mass media would be political suicide.
Sorry, not buying it. Why can't grandma pony up 40 bucks, especially since she gets a fat social security check every month? Instead of your demagogic misdirection, how 'bout you face facts: The government is subsidizing mind control devices in order to ensure the passivity of the populace.
(As a person who hates TV and doesn't own one, it really pisses me off that my tax dollars are being spent on this boondoggle. Fortunately, the avarice of the convert-makers will ensure that the device costs far more than 40 dollars.)
You want demagoguery? How about this: The government should send a check for 40 dollars to every single cigarette smoker to account for increased prices (because of lawsuits & taxes). Or maybe the government should send 40 grand to Coca-cola for every soda/pop machine that is removed from our schools because of those uppity parents' groups.
Your demagogic judo misses a very salient point: TV is bad for you. It's bad for your mind, your body and your soul. Why is the government subsidizing something that, by almost all accounts, is detrimental to our health? Children spend 44.5 hours per week in front of screens -- as much time as I spend at my job -- and the government is not only unconcerned they're funding this? Don't you see something wrong here?
The posters who mentioned Bread & Circuses are right on. This is about pacifying the population. If we didn't have TV to numb our brains people might start to wake up to all the nefarious shit going on around us. Ideally, TV would be an excellent medium to tackle these social ills, but the mega-media-corps rarely seem to do so, especially when their own bottom line is at risk.
Instead, we will all continue working all day, going home to veg for a few hours and then waking up and doing it again... and with our softened brains we'll never have time to ponder why a highly-advanced country like ours works so much, yet has so little to show for it (besides bigscreen TVs). With American Idol on we'll never deduce that the rich are stealing from us through inflation, real-estate boom & busts, taxes and other financial trickery that make it possible for the middle classes' earning power to actually decline over the last 30 years despite the rich getting fantastically richer.
We are being FUCKED. But most people are too hypnotized to notice.
Electric Monkey Pants
Thanks for the info, I didn't know they made posts like that anymore.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
I am blown away that people are still naive enough to believe government exists for the benefit of the governed, especially after six years of the Current Occupant's administration. Governments exist to enrich their supporters. What is the first rule of politics? Get re-elected. Giving a billion-dollar handout to the people to adapt their analog television sets to receive digital broadcast signals ensures that at least 10 million TV-watching voters are going to think more kindly of the ruling party at the next election.
So, what do you do? You take responsibility for your community, for your culture, for your society, for your nation.
If homelessness is a problem in your area, volunteer at a homeless shelter, or start one if there isn't one.
Don't like crime? Join Neighborhood Watch and go armed.
Don't like the war? Make your voice heard. If your congressional rep voted for it, campaign for a new rep. If she voted against it, campaign to keep her in office.
Worried about terrorism? Study how the Brits dealt with the IRA last century, and how they dealt with the Boers the century before that. Study how Spain dealt with ETA, and support politicians who recognize that Bush's "war on terror" is a stupid waste of human life, and that there are proven strategies for dealing with terrorists. How the hell do you wage war against an abstraction?
Okay, soapbox mode off. The point is, don't wait for the government to solve your problems for you. To misquote Musashi, I respect governments, I do not rely on them. Take responsibility and do what you can with your own resources.
Thank you for more examples of demagoguery.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They will always subsidize TV, without it you have a population of bored, angry, ignorant people who have been trained from birth to believe that the government owes them entitlements and everything else. If they don't get their Bread and Circuses, there will be trouble.
This program is so that when they switch off the analog signals 20 million poor people suddenly won't have Television anymore.
THIS IS A GOOD THING.
The working poor (if the class even exists anymore due to the economic policies of the last few presidential terms) and the poor can't afford $1000 for a TV or even $400 for a TV. It's a horrible idea to even conceive taking away access to the PUBLIC airwaves from everyone in the lower income brackets because there aren't affordable Digital TV's or Tuners. But that is exactly what the people in this thread talking about watching too much TV or how it's a waste of taxpayer money. It's called looking down on the lower income among us.
This Program exists to allow those that can't afford the new tuners to be able to afford them. And above all, TV is probably the only form of entertainment the poor can afford both dollar wise and time wise on anything like a regular basis.
So take you elite ideas about the poor being a subclass that doesn't need help and shove them up your ass, either that or stop jumping to conclusions about why this program even exists.
Don't blow a gasket, man. The money comes from the profit from selling the spectrum freed up by the switch to digital. In other words, if they didn't sponsor the changeover, it wouldn't occur. The vouchers are just overhead for the switch. They aren't robbing the homeless or spending money that would have been used to fight crime.
Xesdeeni
The base reason for doing this is to conserve and rearrange our use of the airwave spectrum--analog TV is a very inefficient use of bandwidth. Once the conversion to DTV over the air is done, the freed spectrum will be redistributed via FCC auctions. The revenue from these auctions and licensing fees is likely to offset the cost of the TV tuner handout, probably several times over. Yes, we'll still be paying for it, but the cost will be distributed into the fees for new services, funding economic growth as they pass through the businesses providing the services. Overall this project is going to have a huge net positive effect on economic growth, more than offsetting the administrative cost of distributing the coupons.
Also a number of studies have shown that the federal government is in fact very efficient at delivering some services. The IRS is very efficient. Medicare operates with far lower administrative cost than any private insurance company. The Postal Service is far more efficient at bulk mail service than private shipping companies. Etc.
[rant]I'm sick to death of the over-hyped meme that the government is always inefficient. It's a marketing campaign by those who seek to supplant government services and profit off the greater inefficiencies. In fact for a private contractor to the government the incentive is to be as inefficient as they can get away with, because it increases their profit margins. Salaried and budgeted government workers do not have that option.[/rant]
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You TV folks will just have to wait your turn. I'm still waiting to be compensated for putting an engine in my stagecoach.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
No, thank you for effectively conceding all of my points.
Electric Monkey Pants
Is that the masses consider themselves better off than the unwashed kid living in his parent's basement, simmering with self-righteous fury while posting on /.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Here's my theory on teleivision. The US governemnt depends on it to be used as a pacifier. Imagine what we as people can
,or doing something else. 24 has gotten too predictable. Me and my
do if we didn't sit on the couch and watch tv all evening! So, the government doesn't want us to go without television, and
the sponsors want you to watch thier advertisments, so they cam up with this.
I watch less television now than ever before. Sure I watch House, Lost, and 24, but even those show are starting to bore me.
I'd rather be researching a project, working on the house
Wife and sons goof on whats gonna happen next. Admit it, you knew Logan was gonna get stabbed by his ex wife, and damn it's too easy to guess who's leaking the satellite data from CTU, it's the Middle Eastern chick, that who. There.. watch next monday I am correct. If I am I am not gonna watch it anymore.
So, challenge yourself to not watch tv this week! Life is too short!
Makes sense when you think about it for a minute... Most Americans spend all spare time in front of the tube digesting whatever is fed to them as fact.
Mommy. What's a karma whore?
Content providers want rid of analog, so make the rule ending analog transmissions contingent on "them" getting us converters (or new TVs or whatever it takes). I'm happy to keep my NTSC junk, since there's nothing on broadcast TV I care about seeing in HD anyhow. Higher rez videos of people dying in Iraq? High def footage of tornado victims? More pixels of sitcoms??? Nahhh.
Its sad that you feel like you need to post this as an AC, but this is slashdot, after all...
It doesnt matter, though. The people complaining that the government is running certain people's lives are the same people complaining that the government isnt running certain other people's lives.
And if you consider $1B to be a boondoggle, I have some bad news for you -- you may want to make sure you're sitting comfortably before you click this.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You have never had a VCR with S-Video, but your VCR *has* had any one of the Component, DVI, HDMI, VGA, iLink, Ethernet, or wireless recording capability?? Anyway, S-Video was *allowed*, but plain old RF and Composite connectors are *mandated* to be part of the device. 100% guarantee any VCR you may have owned could record that.
If the spec required Macrovision added to the output, yes, but they didn't. No mention of doing anything with any sort of broadcast, etc.
Short and simple, these devices will explicitly allow Broadcast DTV to be hooked up to old fashioned VCRs as it stands. Unless the broadcast flag/some other draconian thing makes it by then (which is useless with already widely available tuner cards that don't care), this does nothing but ensure current broadcast availibility is maintained for both viewing and recording.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The first time I posted it, it was automatically tagged as "Flamebait" (read it here) so I changed a few words and re-posted as AC in case it happened again. I didn't want the bad Karma.
The really sad part is that no one other than you will take the time to comprehend what I said. I love this country, it's just that sometimes it's like watching your favorite pet get hit by a car at a busy intersection and everyone is just blindly stepping over it instead of helping it.
If you know so much about them, what are your goals?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not siding with people who kill innocent people to make a point, but don't get all your information from companies that make money from media companies that are in it for the advertising buck.
Question everything
"If you know so much about them, what are your goals?"
What do my goals have to do with anything?
"don't get all your information from companies that make money from media companies" [incomprehensibly cryptic sentence snipped]
I see. And which companies might those be? You know, the ones I get all my information from.