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Many Analog TV Watchers Aren't Aware of Upcoming Switchover
A recent poll of TV watchers shows that many Americans aren't aware the end times are coming for analog broadcast signals. "The survey found that the group most affected by the analog cutoff -- those with no cable or satellite service -- are most in the dark about what will happen to their sets: Only one-third of them had heard that their TVs are set to stop receiving programs. Of course, there are solutions. Congress is subsidizing the purchase of digital television receivers. And the cable TV industry is hoping that this will spur the last holdouts to buy pay TV."
...to start the family exercising to help beat obesity?
If TV gets turned off on Americans, maybe it would be a good thing.
And don't flame me. TV is the major issue with American obesity, particularly in children.
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Rich: no worries about money, because you have plenty. Poor: no worries about money, because the government will provide for you. Keep watching TV.
As soon as TV stations themselves begin to worry about whether they will lose watchers, they will simply run commercials explaining to people how they can get *free* converter boxes from the government. TV is the one of the most effective communication mechanisms ever devised, after all. Problem solved.
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Money, or so some think.
What would be exquisitely funny is if they threw the whole upgrade party, and everyone just went on the internet instead.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I wish we'd done away with interlacing when the HD standards were being written.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's not like people need 14 months to save up for a digital TV. A 'good enough' off-brand 32" TV runs $700 now, and it'll probably be more like $500 later.
That's two or three months rent in many places -- with the matching lower pay.
The type of person that can spend $500 on a television set and doesn't have cable/satellite is probably not a big TV watcher.
And I just want to point out that if Congress has to subsidize receivers to force this change along, it's probably not a good idea in the first place. And let me also point out that F*@& Congress for spending tax money on paying for unnecessary digital upgrades. Next they'll be buying everyone blue ray and HD-DVD players to fund the HD war. It's frustratingly ridiculous.
[insert witty quote here]
I can honestly do without tv. I get most of my news & entertainment online. The only way I will "switch over" is if cable companies drop their increased pay for HD channels. And to what someone else said about a tv for $700, some people have bills to pay & a family to feed. We can't drop that kind of cash at one time. Maybe with an income tax return, but we'll see when the time comes.
So what exactly did all those people who couldn't afford TV's when they first came out do? Wow they must have suffered a great deal. :/
A dish with 2 LNBs is about 60 bucks.
To the mods: my comment was absolutely not meant as flamebait: there are enough alternatives if you still HAVE to watch TV. Tech has to go on, and analog TV (IMHO) just has to die.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
The government doesn't care if you buy a digital TV.
They want the spectrum, and frankly carrying dead weight for some dinosaur broadcast stations is a waste of time. If they don't have a strategy for switching to digital broadcasting, then away they go. Too bad, so sad, welcome to the business world.
Viewership declines because the content sucks compared to other sources (movies, cable, Internet, etc.). That's the long and the short of it. People who can't afford cable aren't going to have any measurable impact on that.
really?
I thought basic economics and government courses were requisites in public schools these days.
Of course, TANSTAAFL. The national government will be taking tax dollars from people, taking an administrative cut, then turning around and giving it back to pay exclusively for converter boxes. The net effect is the US national government is screwing with free markets and funding (mostly overseas) consumer electronics companies.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It totally sucks that the government regulates things! Air traffic control? Psh. Waste of money. A road system that ensures transcontinental travel is always possible? Where did they get THAT power? Long distance electric transmission lines? Let the flooded cities do without power! They can just rebuild their shit--without power!
Christ.
You act like designating sections of the spectrum for certain uses, which is in EVERYONE'S benefit, is some arbitrary intrusion into your bedroom. Digital cameras don't transmit high power EM energy across dozens of square miles.
That's because you think it is for the benefit of television viewers, or even broadcasters. It is not. They simply want the spectrum that these broadcasts are currently going out on back, with their relatively long wavelengths, for things like cellular service or long-range (municipal?) wireless networks.
With the way both of these services are growing, I happen to think it's a good idea for a relatively small cost.
I'm seeing alot of people throughing around high prices for TVs. First of all poor people can have TVs too, they may be 10 year old TVs but TVs none the less, TV sets are so commonplace there more or less free, if your not looking for anything fancy. Besides if all those media companies want there customers to keep watching why don't they just send them free converter boxes.
Picture quality improves... content degrades.
Who will be voted off the Island? As long as you keep watching, you are on the Island.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Why should you have to pay anything at all for television? How is it that we as a nation became convinced that we should pay for television? Something that was once totally free (except for the price of a tv), now has a charge attached to it. If you ask me, it's not the people in rural areas who watch analog tv that are the stupid ones. It's all of us who drank the kool-aid.
Of course, there's STILL nothing worth watching. Bah! Humbug!
Wasn't that something they had back in the late Twentieth Century? You know, before Bit Torrent and the Internet?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
You sadly are not wrong. I can't get PBS digitally while I can get it analoglly (is that a word?)...
Yes, do without TV. I thought this was an outrageous notion myself, until I did it.
For me there were numerous benefits:
1. I had more free time, that I never even realized I was spending. Sometimes *five or six hours*, or even more.
2. I quit smoking. Because I wasn't sitting idly, I stopped chain-smoking. Almost by accident.
3. ROOM! I needed room for a grand piano in my house, but never thought I had it. The space occupied by a TV screen, together with the line-of-sight and the seating, is a *huge* investment of real estate. Get rid of it and re-think your room arrangement. You might have ten square meters you never considered before.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Most "if they didn't want me to do this, then they should do this" fall apart when confronted with reality. For example; "if they didn't want me to recieve broadcasting then they would have encrypted the signal". Reality; "pirate satellite boxes". "If they didn't want me to enjoy content in my country then they should use CSS". Reality; "DeCSS". "If they didn't want me to pirate then they should use DRM". Reality"piratebay". Whatever happen to common sense* and self control were you didn't need a technological let alone legal solution to "tell you what not to do"? Plus if you read the post above yours there's someone trying to turn this into a "my rights" argument without a firm understanding of "rights" (and responsabilities) and "society".
*Common sense like an nderstanding of physics for starters.
Ah, but that's the beauty of the system. As was intended, LET THE STATES HANDLE IT. The Constitution only provided for matters dealing BETWEEN states. From welfare to education, et. al., the STATES should be deciding on what to do where the Constitution is silent.* The states would then compete in a free-market sort of way for residents and business. Then the best ways of doing things would be evident. Also, where necessary, some states may cater to certain things.
(* Or amend it.)
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I've tried to use OTA DTV for the past two years. Usually it's great, but the signal dies in even marginal weather (the so-called "digital cliff"). I live within 15 miles of the broadcast towers. I've tried powered, directional antennas and mapped out the best orientation for each signal. I've tried outside antennas in different places. Nothing has helped. From what I've read, the only solution is to erect an antenna taller than the nearby trees -- and that's still no guarantee.
Analog TV has always been the old reliable standby. Crouched in the basement with tornado sirens blaring, you could always get a fuzzy picture with reasonable audio even if you were 50 miles from a broadcast tower.
Who is looking out for the public interest? What about the 22 million people relying on analog OTA as their primary television reception? What about the 28 million digital satellite subscribers who use analog OTA as a backup when their satellite signals go down?
The biggest proponents of the digital OTA change seem to be...
- digerati who don't use or care about analog OTA and who are drooling over the prospects of spectrum reuse
- government who has already spent the revenue from the spectrum auction
- the cable companies, who see this as a windfall (buy cable stock if you can; 2009 will be their best year ever)
I find it ironic that the analog OTA retirement is snuggly wrapped in a blanket of post-9/11 patriotism since some of reclaimed spectrum will be used for emergency communications. In fact, analog OTA retirement will shutter the most successful and widely-used emergency broadcast mechanism history has ever seen.Maybe if every member of congress should be forced to switch to digital OTA....
What about radio? It seems like radio would have less power demands (no picture to decode and display); in fact you can get radios that are hand cranked so you can recharge the battery with no electricity. I haven't heard anything about plain old AM/FM analog radio going away anytime soon, though I have heard occasional mentions of "HD Radio".
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