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Official DTV Converter Box Coupons for Americans
Ant writes "The official Digital Television/DTV Converter Box Coupon Program is now online. Congress created it for households wishing to keep using their analog TV sets and use over-the-air antennae to get TV feeds. After February 17, 2009. The Program allows American households to obtain up to two coupons, each worth $40, that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes. A TV connected to cable, satellite, or other pay TV service does not require a TV converter box from this program."
Yeah, it's going almost as fast as free cheese :)
I'm glad that some steps are being taken - however bureaucratic & ineffective it may turn out to be, to address the turmoil that will be caused by the shutdown of analog broadcasting in 13 months.
My big concern is that the people this program is designed for are the ones least likely to know about it. Maybe the FCC should require public svc announcements on analog TV stations pushing the toll free number instead of the website. Actually, I hope the phone application doesn't require touchtones, since I suspect that even that low bar may exclude the ones who will be most affected by the analog shutdown.
I ordered two coupons, one for my receiver set and one for my VCR.
Can anyone explain how the VCR's box is gonna know "record channel 10 at 8pm, and channel 12 at 10pm, and channel 15 at 2am" ??? Am I going to have to program the second decoder with parallel multiple programs to the VCR? Or will these boxes have time-programs?
Or does this kill multiple timed recording completely?
Exactly my thought, but I don't think that'll be the real outcome. The price of these boxes is already $100+, which is too much IMHO for most consumers to purchase. With the forced shutoff of analog, demand increases and prices can reflect that. However, that also leaves lots of opportunity for someone to attempt to corner the market with a discount receiver. With or without the coupon, other manufacturers still need to compete with that guy.
What the coupon REALLY does is prevent the price from dropping below $40/unit.
Realistically, how many people don't already subscribe to satellite TV or already have digital cable?
If you're even asking that question, it shows that you are either unaware of or totally ignore an entire segment of the population.
Bread and circuses, just bread and circuses.
And a quick poll: How many of you think that the government issuing $40 coupons for converter boxes is going to raise the price of converter boxes by $40?
This is not my sandwich.
Bringing up farm subsidies and set-top TV boxes as a counterpoint to this, to highlight the politically-aligned selectivity of the objections is quite relevant. People who believe in small government believe in small government, and would object to this subsidy just as they would object to farm subsidies.
The problem is that many who claim to believe in small government don't really believe in small government. They just use the phrase to sloganeer against those programs they don't like, while being okey-dokey with government outlawing gay marriage and marijuana/prostitution, redefining torture, exempting the President from any and all laws, and and so on. Small government indeed.
I can agree there. I know of a lot of people who have no idea what the digital switch even is. When I try to break it down into the simplest terms "Your old TV is going to quit working without an extra box in 2009.", they generally just laugh it off as if I'd told them aliens were going to invade.
:).
Bad thing is, a lot of these people are pretty far from the digital transmitters anyways. I myself have a lot of trouble with it. A few days ago I had posted that I couldn't pickup anything using my digital tuner, and some people mentioned antenna quality (and I was admittedly using a pretty bad antenna). So, I went out and bought a $40 UHF antenna with a powered amplifier. Nice looking little thing. I was amazed that compared to the 0 my set was registering it now reported 9 channels. Unfortuneatly none of them come in strong enough to provide a good watchable picture. It'll be fine for 10 seconds or so and then the image will corrupt for 2-3 seconds. Rinse, repeat. Enough to say "Hey, this picture looks good when it works, and having all the program scheduling and info is nice too, but I can't really watch this as is." I don't think I'm going to get much better without going to something big mounted on the roof (which I'd strongly prefer to avoid).
I'll just stick with satellite for now which has been digital for a very long time
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It's how it worked in the 'college' market. "Well if the government is giving everyone 10k, we might as well still make parents pay." Tuition is at an all time high.
It's how it worked for health care. "Well most people have insurance anyway. No reason not to charge $150 for a pair of crutches". Health care is at an all time high.
It's not quite THAT silly. The government is going to make a lot of money auctioning off that freed-up spectrum. Surely compensating the people who will end up sacrificing to make way for that auction is not completely absurd? If the spectrum is worth $10 billion (which I think is a bit conservative), they would have to give away 250,000,000 $40 coupons before beginning to lose money on the swap. There are only 266 million TVs in the US, and I highly doubt that all of them will see a digital over-the-air box, especially since more than half of them are hooked up to cable.
And of course, there is the environmental impact of 100,000,000 TVs all hitting the landfill at the same time as people realize that it isn't cost effective to buy a box for their 5-10 year-old TV.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The problem is that retailers are still allowed to sell analog sets. Only sets over a certain size are now mandated, but you can still walk into a KMart and buy an analog set. Sales of analog "only" sets should have been banned 4 or 5 years ago, but FCC / congress bent to the whining of manufacturers. Disgraceful.
Yes, the government and the cable companies both SAY that analog will continue over cable. And if you look deeper you find that only LOCAL programming is required to stay on analog over cable. Over the last several months Comcast in California anyway has been removing some programming from analog and moving it to digital only. Now, we know they aren't required to do it and we know there are no technical reasons for it (as even if the feed they get is digital only they can convert at the head end and continue to deliver analog). They must believe they can get people to buy or rent converter boxes or even switch to digital which COSTS MORE.
In fact, they are succeeding in that. My mom now has TWO of their $7 a month converter boxes which do nothing but convert the digital signal from the cable to NTSC analog out on channel 3. The channels that have "digitalized only" so far have been ones like the TV Guide channel (in her area; my cable area 60 miles away lost one channel of it from analog but has one remaining - her area now has the guide only on digital), some news channels from neighboring areas, and a couple of others that she watches a lot (came to about 7 stations that she felt she "needed").
This type of business practice is unfortunately enabled by the mandated changeover - but at least with this coupon program she can get two retail converters cheaply and give Comcast back their overpriced ones. Anyone who has cable and an analog TV should consider getting the coupon just in case their cable company starts doing this to them in their market area.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You do without TV for a couple of days. Look out of the window, buy a newspaper, read a book, maybe even talk to people. It's survivable.
Amen to that. I was watching a pbs program on personal finance, and the discussion was about prioritizing bills and whatnot. The list went something like: rent, electricity, water, cable, food, etc... One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.
1.5 BILLION dollars of our tax money is going into upgrading peoples TV. Thats every cent of tax paid by about 210,000 middle class families this year. When TWO!? of your TVs get cut off and you can't live without them then get off your fat ass and earn the $80 yourself.
His point still remains that all corn farmers, family or otherwise, survive on government subsidies thanks to the prodding of agribusiness lobbyists, because corn is so massively overproduced you can't make money on it otherwise.
This keeps the price of corn syrup dirt cheap so Americans can super-size their cokes for 10 cents, and get 2 twinkies for a quarter. Also feed corn makes beef less healthy, but is used instead of wheat because it's cheaper.
If the market were allowed to crash, sugary and fatty foods would increase in price, but that may actually benefit the public if the subsidy money was used instead on healthy products so that low income families could still serve dinner.
In the end what matters is are we getting the most out of our tax investments.
aManFromMars??? (people reading theregister should know ;)
I disagree. A better solution would have been to mandate that analog-only sets start carrying a warning/explanation starting 4 or 5 years ago. (Actually 15 years in advance would be better; unless you buy crap TV's, it might easily have been over 10 years since you last bought one.) Or by some other means ensure that people know what they're buying -- you know, acually enforce the assumptions that make a free market work rather than telling the consumer what decisions he is or isn't allowed to make, thereby negating any kind of free market.
Don't get me wrong; there are cases where government standards and bans are called for -- such as when the cost of a consumer's decision are born by others instead of by the consumer himself, though often a tax is a suitable and less intrusive solution even then. This is not one of those cases.
Maybe I, as a consumer, want a cheap analog-only TV because I don't care about over-the-air broadcasts. Maybe I'll use it with my DVD collection (the player can still send an analog signal), or with a cable converter. Regardless, my decision affects nobody but me and there is no reason the government should impose a ban that keeps me from buying one.