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DTV Coupon Program Out of Money
Thelasko writes "It appears that the US Government's digital converter box program is running out of money. If you sign up after the program runs out of money, you will receive your voucher if the program receives more funding. Older analog televisions will no longer work without a converter box after February 17."
They probably spent half the money on that spiffy website anyway.
You only need a converter box if you get your television via over-the-air broadcast and don't have a digital tuner built in. If you get your television via cable (with a cable box or no), satellite, FiOS, U-Verse, etc., you don't need a dtv converter box. On Feb. 17, nothing will change for you. If you get OTA broadcasts, and you're unsure if your television needs a box, if you have the ability to type in a hyphen or decimal point in the channel number on your TV, you hava digital tuner. Fo example, in the Los Angeles area market, if you can type in 11.1 (11-1), you will get Fox in both digital and HD via OTA broadcast. Your best bet if your'e unsure, however, is to look up if your TV has a digital tuner online on the equipment manufacturer's website.
Why do I need a new TV if my current one works just fine? Seems wasteful to me.
This summer, Congress will conduct hearings on the massive waste and fraud in the program surrounding scores of bogus vendors each selling tens of thousands of fictitious boxes, all with "valid" coupons.
Ibid.
The converter boxes are $50 at most places that sell this stuff. *shrug*
It could be difficult for someone on a fixed income, but generally, I agree. The target, though, is senior citizens on a fixed income...they figured most everyone else would have cable or satellite and thus the converter boxes would be a non-issue.
I have cable and won't be getting rid of it anytime soon, so this is a total non-issue for me.
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Don't forget the approx 20,000,000,000 commercials.
Not like it matters. The program will get whatever extra money it needs. No way will the feds deprive Joe Bob of his basic right to free programming. Panem et circenses for the 21st century.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The government sold off the old channelspace and made billions. I believe the auction netted $19B and the coupon program is budgeted around $1.3B.
Someone living on $500 a month has bigger things to deal with than television.
The converter boxes aren't that expensive, about as much as a new game, sure it sucks to be forced to buy new equipment but there are other things one can do besides watch TV if they are so unwilling to suffer the cost of the boxes.
This is true, my grandmother bought one for $30. Not too expensive. However, when I came home for Christmas, she asked me to hook the box up. She needed the TV to record soap operas on her VCR while she was at work. That is all she used it for (we're talking technologically inept middle of nowhere country folk here). Ok, so I run the coaxial cable into the back of the converter, then put the RCA cables into the input on the back of the VCR (which then turned into a coaxial cable to the back of her TV as her TV is 20 years old and that's all it has). Everything is working fine but as a side result, she can't program different channels because the converter box determines the channels. Ok, not a big deal to her.
... I tried a few other VCRs at my parent's house and they all seem to do it.
But then we record something and I notice a very peculiar thing with the color. I seem to recall that if you had put a DVD signal through a VCR, the color would modulate so that people couldn't dupe videos (or maybe there is a technical restriction). Anyway, she said she would put up with it but after watching 10 minutes of TV I wanted to throw the damned thing through the window.
So tell me, how do you record on these things to a VCR with no color modulation
My work here is dung.
Tell that to someone living on $500 a month.
If you really *are* living on $500 a month and TV is your biggest concern, then you have a priority problem.
public void karmaWhore(String url){addSlashdotComment(fetchContent(url));}
Because the health of the economy is dependent on people watching TV and wanting to buy stuff. Didn't they teach you that in Economics 101?
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Man, I sure hate being denied my free money. Only an arrogant bureaucrat could be so mean.
New TVs are not that expensive.
New TVs are expensive. If you're living on less than $800 a month, that $100+ is going to be felt. Trust me. This is obvious to anyone who hasn't had money supplied to them by their parents for their entire lives...
Is someone living on $500 a month "entitled" to watch television for free? If so, why?
Because of this silly notion that "the people" own the airwaves...
Actually, it will work just fine...you just can't watch a digital signal without a converter. DVD's, VHS tapes, game consoles will all work just as before. The TV itself is fine...it's just YOU that's shit outta luck.
Collect some cans along the road and turn them in to buy your converter.
WTF? Over?
So the FCC made around 20 billion dollars auctioning off the spectrum, but only allocated 1.3 billion for the coupon program? At $40 /coupon, that's around 32 million coupons. I'm guessing there's more non-cable televisions than that. Something seems quite a bit wrong with the amount allocated.
AccountKiller
Not really a surprise. Voting against TV would be, politically, about as sensible as voting for the "Islamopedophile encouragement and anti-jesus act of 2009".
New TVs are not that expensive
WTF are you talking about? I paid a thousand dollars for mine! And not only that, throwing away a perfectly good TV is immorally wasteful, even if it's only a nineteen incher you paid a hundred bucks for.
The government is paying to fix a problem that THEY caused. You and your wife's $60k incomes togather may make a thousand bucks "chicken feed" but my forty grand and no wife can't afford to replace an otherwise perfectly good television.
Ask Gumby whose employer is being subsidized by the government by its giving Gumby a LINK card (making it possible to pay Gumby less; food stamps are a handout to the poor's employers) if he can easily afford that forty dollar converter box.
Its amazing how ignorant the upper middle class can be.
Free Martian Whores!
So...is there a way I can *return* my voucher? I ordered one, thinking I was going to use it for my old tv, but then I went out and actually bought a nice new tv for which I don't need the converter box. I'm sure only a precious few people would actually bother to return the voucher once they discover they aren't going to use it, but it seems there ought to be a mechanism in place. I don't want to tie up this money indefinitely, even if it is just a drop in the bucket.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
New TVs are not that expensive. Even pensioners could buy a new one. I don't think the government should be paying for any of this.
The Government, along with the major media conglomerates, would very much like to continue their effective propaganda campaign against US citizens. An easy way to do this is to is to continue providing lazy Americans with free TV in their house, ensuring that the message delivery system that is piped directly into homes stays intact.
It's quite brilliant, really. I am not a tinfoil hatter (don't even get me started on those "contrails kill!!" idiots) but I believe this.
New TVs are not that expensive. Even pensioners could buy a new one. I don't think the government should be paying for any of this.
It's very simple. Go back to the reasons for the "digital only" conversion. First, strike out the myth that it's to give HD. Digital HD. Second, remember that the market was not demanding digital TV.
So what's left? Two things. First, the government wanted to sell off the bandwidth that normal TV uses. Second, the *AA lobbies loved the idea of digital because they could put their "broadcast flag" in it and implement DRM.
Neither of these two reasons are in the public interest, and again, the market did not demand the conversion to digital TV. The Bush admin controlled FCC knew that they would have a lot of pissed off people if they forced people to buy new TV's so they came up with this converter box to pay for their hidden agendas.
No it won't. Because of something the government did.
If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
This is the entertainment equivalent of that. Everybody's old TVs that work fine are being obsoleted, not by the market, but by the government saying, essentially, "Your old TV is now illegal."
Certain things you can get away with doing that, if it doesn't affect a majority of people. You can restrict handgun calibers to 0.30 and lower, and most people will say "Well, what do those gun freaks need all those .38 and .44 guns for, anyway?" and the government gets away with it.
Try to do it with TV or cars, and the 90+ percent of the population that's affected will be rather annoyed, to say the least.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I'd love to compare the current U.S. to the faltering Roman empire but there's a football game on. Has anyone seen my welfare check?
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
No way will the feds deprive Joe Bob of his basic right to free programming.
I'm not really a big defender of pork in general, but I will defend this program. The government made a lot of money selling that bandwidth, and I don't really see why it end up coming out of the pockets of people with old TVs. That just would amount to a tax.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It probably has something to do with the massive amount of lead and various other environmentally hazardous material found in televisions: the gov't doesn't want it all in landfills. Especially, for that matter, right away: when TVs all stop working at once, everyone is going to dispose of their old ones immediately (not leave them laying around). Such a thing could overwhelm sanitation services (due to the weight of the things) temporarily.
Also, there are a LOT of people out there who don't like throwing things out. So there are still quite a few 30+ year old TVs out there with the analog 19 channel dials.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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2. Read newsletter
3. ????
4. Profit!
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I doubt very much that STNG's alternate universe is that accurate. Yes, if you have a holodeck, your holodeck is an interactive 3D TV. And note that Kirk's Enterprise had no holodeck.
Note also that Picard's crew staged plays. You don't think that the plays would be recorded, and that even more elaborate plays with special effects, professional actors, etc would be recorded (a TV show)?
Data's data were faulty.
Another thing - McCoy coudn't fix Kirk's age related presbyopia (farsightedness), but my surgeoun, Dr. Yeh, cured mine with a focusable implant (accomodating IOL). Star trek was entertaining fiction, but it was hardly prescient.
Free Martian Whores!
or people will start to read books.
If the converter box coupons help keep perfectly good CRT TVs out of the wastestream it sounds like money well spent.
(Relevent report on that from 60 Minutes)
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The bad part about digital TV is the method of transmission they used is inferior in some ways to analog TV. It requires a very strong signal to get any video at all, and it's very suspectible to multipath interference. Analog TV would degrade gracefully, so that if you didn't get a strong signal you could at least hear it, and see black and white video. Digital TV is all-or-none. Also, portable TV antennas no longer work (at least, not while you're moving), so you can't stick one in your car or your Sony Watchman. Digital broadcast TV is a pain at this point...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
So, an elderly person who, when they were working, saved up and got a perfectly good working television, now on a fixed income of $500 is told, "well, on top of the fact that you barely have enough money to feed yourself and your mobility problems keep you from hiking up the mountain or visiting the outdoors, we're now going to take your sole source of companionship, Your TV. Tough luck that you don't have the money to buy the latest and greatest television. Too bad your children are too busy commenting on Slashdot to actually visit you so you wouldn't need that television. I think you have a priority problem and you should get back to work, you lazy slob."
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Collect some cans along the road and turn them in to buy your converter.
I'd rather collect some TVs along the road and turn them into a sculpture of a triceratops.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I wonder if this has anything to do with it?
Scammers Exploit DTV Coupon Program
If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
No, it doesn't. You don't need to convert your car (or add any converters to the car) in order to drive in the left lane, as evidenced by multi-lane one-way streets and passing lanes not requiring on-demand reconfiguration of the car.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
So, paying for another mode of reception doesn't insulate you from the DTV switch.
If you know of a place where I can buy a 60" LCD HDTV for only a thousand dollars, could you share a link?
No it won't. Because of something the government did.
Be happy. If pure market forces decided you'd have likely had to replace your TV's 4x as often.
If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
I fail to see why changing which side of the road you drive on has anything to do with converting cars. The side that the steering wheel is one doesn't really matter (and plenty of people already drive cars with the steering wheel on the other side anyways - most postal carriers do as a matter of practicality, but people driving some imports do too).
This is the entertainment equivalent of that. Everybody's old TVs that work fine are being obsoleted, not by the market, but by the government saying, essentially, "Your old TV is now illegal."
"Illegal" is a stretch and you know it. They're not taking your TV or doing anything to it. It's just that it won't receive over the air signals after that date. Tough luck. Keep using it how it is or buy a new one.
Certain things you can get away with doing that, if it doesn't affect a majority of people. You can restrict handgun calibers to 0.30 and lower, and most people will say "Well, what do those gun freaks need all those .38 and .44 guns for, anyway?" and the government gets away with it.
Do you live in Australia? Because that's the only place I know of with a restriction on handgun calibers like that. Anyways I fail to see the connection at all. The government is banning nothing here. You can still keep your old TV just fine. To carry your gun analogy a little farther: amongst my collection of rifles I have a Winchester 670. It's chambered in the somewhat rare .225 Winchester round. It fell out of popular favor back in the 60's to the fairly similar .22-250 Remington round. Winchester makes very little ammo to fit my gun anymore and is quite likely to cease production completely at any time. At that point except for hand produced ammunition that gun will be useless. Should the government buy me another gun instead? Or should they replace all the HD-DVD players that people bought? Of course not. Thing become obsolete over time. It's the nature of a device.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Walmart? No, thanks. I'd rather eat red-hot nails than shop at an establishment that's destroying America.
This is where you're confused. The citizens of this country shouldn't have had to pay *ANYTHING* to buy a converter. The spectrum was sold for BILLIONS of DOLLARS to third parties and being that the citizens OWN the spectrum and the government does not, the money gained by this sale should have gone directly to us. I promise you that the $80 in coupons (which I didn't even get and they won't replace even though they didn't send it in any trackable manner) won't cover what we should have been given.
It's sad that people don't understand the simple fact that we got fucked on this deal all around.
Besides, it's too late to be having this argument. When they reclaimed the spectrum, part of the deal was that people would still be able to watch broadcast TV without laying out for a new TV or bearing the full cost of a converter box. That was the deal. You can't just tell people something to get their consent to make changes, and then not follow through on your end of the bargain.
You forgot one important justification for the DTV changeover: ending a massively wasteful use of spectrum.
A single analog TV channel uses a 6 Mhz of spectrum. And most channels sit vacant to avoid interference. Just four channels--24hz--is enough bandwidth to run a full-fledged mobile 3G network. You tell me what's a smarter way to use that chunk of spectrum.
Besides, relatively few people even get television from an antenna anymore. Technological advances have always caused some to lag behind--why should TV be any different? I don't get why people just assume that it's in the public's interest for broadcasters to control massive quantities of spectrum when pretty much every engineer and economist has demonstrated that broadcasting analog television signals is a complete waste of spectrum.
I see why you might think that market didn't "demand" a conversion to digital broadcasting, that's only because the people who benefited from the analog era had no incentive to move on.
Command-and-control spectrum allocation is on the way out. Letting politically powerful lobbies like the National Association of Broadcasters dictate how the public airwaves are used is unacceptable. We need to figure out a way to use spectrum intelligently, and the DTV conversion is a good step in that direction.
The truth of DTV is that it's an excuse to force most of the population to cough up $500-$900 in a short period of time. It creates an artificial demand spike so that a select few corporations can profit from mass-exploitation. The fact that the vouchers are running out just confirms that people don't care about the Great New Wonderful High Definition Quality Orgasmic Display Technology Of Much Goodness BUY IT NOW. And why did it run out of money? Because they told the FCC that everyone wanted new TVs... I mean, who'd want to be saddled with last year's technology, right? Well, that would be us poor mother frackers who don't care to spend that much money for some passive display tech when we could just as easily go and buy a laptop and watch videos on THAT instead. And, big surprise, what's the major advertising point right now on a lot of laptops? Multimedia and a DVD drive. Go. Figure.
I hope television dies right here and now and consumers start downloading massive quantities of video online, choking the crap out of our ISPs and prompting a digital crisis as the commercial infrastructure of the internet burns. Those same corporate interests then will be scrambling to explain to congressional oversight committees why everything went to hell. And the beautiful part is that by strangling the internet, it'll force companies to compete for a limited resource -- they won't be able to ally themselves against consumer interest anymore.
The digital transition means less for television than it does for the future of the internet. Interesting, isn't it? Maybe they'll make a song about it -- "Internet Killed the TV Star?"
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Nobody owns the airwaves though, so you're not entitled to anything. As a society we decided to allow government to divy up the airwaves. You can use portions yourself you know, provided you follow the rules. CB radio, ham radio, 800mhz and 1.4ghz are all mostly unregulated.
I really could care less if you don't want to spend to money to buy a converter; it's not a right to watch TV anyway. Of course, converters would likely be much cheaper if this stupid program has never gotten through, but don't let that stop your outrage.
I disagree 100%. Over the past 70 years, the NTSC standard has evolved from a mono sound, black & white picture to include color, stereo sound, second audio program and closed captions. These non-trivial changes were done without breaking backward compatibility with the original standard, not because of government protection, but because of market forces. No reasonable business wants to tick of a large installed base of users, even if starting fresh with a new standard would have been cleaner and easier. That's why Microsoft and Apple try to maintain backward compatibility with each new OS version, even if it means creating an emulation layer. They aren't mandated by the government to do it, they do it because of market forces.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Excellent point. The FCC took-away the People's channels 52 to 69, and sold those channels for several billion. The least the FCC could do is share some of that wealth with the poor & elderly to help them upgrade their analog sets for DTV reception.
Hence Congress passed a law requiring exactly that.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's not a question of who needs spectrum, but rather how we should allocate the airwaves in a way that gives the most utility to the greatest number of people. The key is getting as much value for society as possible from a resource that only can go so far.
Television broadcasts aren't the only possible use of spectrum. What about wireless broadband? Or digital terrestrial radio? Or mobile phone service? Every chunk of spectrum occupied by an analog TV channel is one less piece that can be used for something else. With the remarkable technologies that now exist--WiMax, EVDO, and soon LTE--policymakers must realize that spectrum has a whole lot of potential and none of it involves analog anything. Compare the number of people who rely on TV broadcasts to the number of people who subscribe to mobile phone service, and it's quite clear which type of spectrum use is more popular among consumers.
I used to chuckle at such ideas, but I'm getting there myself. I watched Jericho seasons 1 and 2 over the past couple months thanks to Netflix streaming. Just about everything is released on DVD these days, even short lived series (Firefly and Wonderfalls had nice boxed sets). Even silly Adult Swim stuff. I have enjoyed the first two seasons of Dexter on DVD without ever paying Showtime a monthly fee.
The trick is to get past the "gotta see it now!" feeling from decades of living with live TV. There's also the idea of only paying for what I am watching instead of supporting 50 billion channels I never watch.
question
"Nobody owns the airwaves"
"As a society we decided to allow government to divy up the airwaves"
if nobody owns them then nobody has the right to decied on who gets to rule them.
last i checked no one owned Air it's self.. lets hope we don't decied to let the government divy it up.
my outrage is that a body of government that was put inplace to "regulate" has restorted to being basicly a distributer
orginaly they where in place to prevent people from just pumping more power in to over power others.. now it doesn't mater if you where there first or what your using it for.. if the guy next to you is willing to give the more $ they you will lose it. That is basicly what is happening here.. cause i assure you that if all the normal brodcast stations had gotten together to outbid for the c block that the FCC would have awarded it to them apon the check being cashed. and they could have kept right on brodcasting how they where...
now i also agree in progress in socity.. it makes sence to use them digitaly instead of analog.. BUT i also don't think that a the FCC has any biz being a fore profit intity.. if as you say as a socity we agreed to let them regulate it.. then as a socity they still belong to us.. so then why is this regulating body making money while forcing socity to spend money .. all so some company can use it for what ever they want with no benifit to socity other than another pay for x service?
sorry but if the government wants to build a road accross my land (has happened) they will pay me for it as they should. every penny spend on buying the spectrum should go driectly to the tax payers.. and as we all know that isn't going to happen ever.. the least they can do is pay for my grandmother who is on a fixed income to get a converter box.
once the cost of the convert box program meets or exceeds the money made by the FCC from the auction.. then we can argue aobut this.. but for now even being over budget it is still far less than what they are making.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
there are ways to adjust the head lights on cars. They have been there for years. Some newer cars have head lights that change direction a little when you turn. For the most part, cars with fixed (not auto turning) head lights are supposed to light up the road straight ahead (a little but to the sides but nothing more). If your head lights are lighting up more of one side of the road, they are out of adjustment.
Your road sign reasoning is wrong. On the roads around here signs are to the left, right, and overhead. Which would mean that head lights should shine on things over your car, to the left, and to the right at the same time.
You forgot one important justification for the DTV changeover: ending a massively wasteful use of spectrum.
I'm all for efficient use of spectrum. Now you tell me what better use that spectrum is going for. As far as I can tell, if you're not a Verizon customer, you get jack.
Just four channels--24hz--is enough bandwidth to run a full-fledged mobile 3G network. You tell me what's a smarter way to use that chunk of spectrum.
By all means, run a 3G network on it. Just don't sell the public spectrum to Verizon, keep the money, and then force the public to pay Verizon for the use of the spectrum you just sold to them.
Besides, relatively few people even get television from an antenna anymore
Very few people named pin0chet read slashdot, so I guess it's ok if we kill them all.
See, the fact that you're *only* fucking over a few people doesn't make it ok. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if you are one of those people.
I don't get why people just assume that it's in the public's interest for broadcasters to control massive quantities of spectrum when pretty much every engineer and economist has demonstrated that broadcasting analog television signals is a complete waste of spectrum.
Efficient use of spectrum is good. I don't see why increasing the efficiency of spectrum use should cost me anything. As a member of the public that is MY spectrum they are selling. If they sell MY spectrum, I should see some profit. As it is, I'm out $40 for two converter boxes, and I have fewer channels on digital than I do analog. This is what we call a scam.
Letting politically powerful lobbies like the National Association of Broadcasters dictate how the public airwaves are used is unacceptable
Because selling it all to corporations who have no reason to promote the public interest is better?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Also..what are the better brands/models to get?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
this has nothing to do with the adjustment and everything to do with the way the reflectors inside the head light are designed.
Beam patterns are like this
LHD = ___/```````
RHD = ```````\____
Both lights have the same pattern, so even if one headlight was out it would project this pattern. It doesn't matter where the signs are where you live... all headlights are designed this way.
Go import some replacement headlights for your car off of a similar Japanese Domestic model... no amount of adjusting will correct this and I doubt the other motorists (or law enforcement) would be very happy about the change.
Collector's Edition
I'll call shenanigans on that comment. There are a lot of younger folks that are neither "poor" nor "elderly" that just aren't seeing the benefit anymore to having 500+ television stations filled mostly with reruns of television shows that were popular 30 years ago, B movies, and enough advertisements to make your head spin. We've realized that a good amount of TV content is now available online, with less ads, and on-demand. The DTV converters allow us to get a couple of the local stations for some of the live events that are aired there (mainly, local sports), and then get the rest of it online,... The "poor" can't afford the internet, and the "elderly" don't know how to watch TV online and don't care to, either.
ok, i admit. it's not for weather. it's so that when dancing with the stars goes out with the storm I ... I mean my wife ... can switch to OTA and not miss the witty commentary. No radio help there.
Seconded, I am 24 years old and don't have pay-to-watch television. For entertainment I have a DTV box and a 30mbs FiOS connection. Am neither poor nor elderly, but I don't see the point of the current pay-to-watch television system when I can get most anything I want to watch streamed to me on demand from the internet.
Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
With a $40 government subsidy, the cost of converter boxes was guaranteed NOT to drop below $40. If you make the boxes, why leave that sweet government money on the table?
Now that the program money has dried up, maybe we'll actually see $10 or $20 boxes.
We may actually see converter boxes with more features as well. To qualify for the coupon, the boxes had to fall within a minimum/maximum spec set by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. If you made a box with too many features, then your box was not eligible for the coupon.
-ted
Are you insane?
Let me break it down. TVs have four sides. Triceratops have three horns. NOW do you see the problem?!?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You know, I've noticed that a lot of things in my town are more expensive at Wal*Mart (produce, canned goods, meat). Especially when you are considering the quality of what you are paying for (local vs international farmers, 70% vs. 90% lean beef, etc.) The 2 VHS players I bought there broke within 2 weeks of purchase, and the $10 food processor tried to kill me! (The blade flew off and nearly broke through the lid.) I know it's anecodtal and not everyone has those experiences with the electronics, but I haven't been back since. Especially, when food is cheaper elsewhere... I would be interested to know if others have had similar experiences...
While I understand your larger point, the parent is clearly talking about the elderly, who TV or not would still be in poverty. I have no clue what the isolation of one's twilight is like, but if all of my friends were dead, I was immobile, couldn't use a computer, and was rarely visited by family, I might think my TV really was my best friend. I would certainly be willing to save $10 a month for a while, but when the govmt changes the terms of the deal, that just BS.