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Obama Recommends Delay In Digital TV Switch
gregg writes "Six weeks before the nation's television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, the Obama administration is asking Congress to consider a delay. In the most significant sign to date of concern about the impending digital TV transition, the Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are 'woefully inadequate' and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be 'reconsidered and extended.'"
In other words, the TV in the Oval Office isn't digital ready, and Obama doesn't want to miss American Idol.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Fact is a lot of people aren't affected by the switch (me included) but I think it's only fair for those who can't get the help transitioning, to be able to have extra time to switch over.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I personally know one person who only uses their antenna, and they mostly watch DVDs anyway. I know some people are pretty bad off, but if you are that concerned about television you should be able to drop $40 on a converter box and not have the government pay for it.
Given the state of broadcast television, I can't say blacking some people out wouldn't do them a favor. Okay, you need to get a convertor box and you may have to wait to get one, but if we encourage people in the meantime to read a book, go to the library, use the computer there and read the news and so on, that's bad? Really?
I mean, I'm scared that people think that TV is that much of a requirement. Local news is nice and all, sure, but you can make do.
He just want's to change everything the previous administration did!
It was a reality the second the first coupon was given away. Those smart enough to get in on in the last year are fine, now those who didn't are starting to whine. I don't even need my two, but picked them up anyways.
What about all the people that have already bought equipment and are waiting for the stations to go full power with DV? What about all of the stations who have spent tons of money and time gearing up for the switch? In my city (Denver) we have a large new tower built for broadcasting HD, and part of the promise to the residents of the area was that after the switch happened the old towers (and associated problems with them broadcasting) would go away. If you let this linger another year or two they are kind of screwed.
It's going to have to happen sometime, it might as well be now. Yes it sucks that the coupon program is underfunded (the web site you use to get coupons says they are out of money, so no more coupons are to be had), so make it a priority to get coupons out to those in rural areas much less likely to have cable or satellite already.
You just can't decide at the last moment to pull the rug out from under what is a useful technical move forward. There has to be some continuity between what government says will happen and what actually happens, or all dissolves to chaos as government promises are further devalued.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe its just me not being poor or actually liking cable, but is OTA TV really that pervasive these days?
Yeah. I've been using OTA television for years. I'm not going to pay for crap I don't want.
PBS is great and should continue to be able to deliver their service free of charge. Especially for the underprivileged.
Don't get me wrong though, I think the change is a good one, but I think the converter boxes should be cheaper.
What if radio changed and you had to purchase converters for every radio you own or they would be useless?
There will be riots on street, if millions of low income homes are out of TV.
No, seriously.
Why is the government pushing digital. It is not for the clearer image. It is because it takes less airspace, and you can free and resell a lot of the airspace.
However that said. Delaying this isn't really going to help anything. Most Americans either don't watch TV (perhaps playing movies) or have cable or satellite hooked up. The largest group effected is the Sr. Citizens. Who are not much effected by the economy (minus the ones with good 401k) but for the most part the pain going digital will be the same today as it will be next year.
Besides there is no important information that you can get on TV that you cant get via the Radio. You may actually get it faster via the radio.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Noooooo. Let's let things actually finish. We're SO CLOSE.
Fun the coupon program better with an executive order. Let analog stay on at night for a while in "nightlight mode" as has been discussed (just shows a "you need a converter box" screen).
But please, we're so close. The trial in November went very well, and the nightlight thing was shown to be very helpful.
But please don't delay things. "Enough people" will never be ready. This needs to happen, it's not like it's news. We've known about this for 2+ years.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
for goodness sake, if people aren't ready by now, they never will be. even my luddite sister in law has a converter box. delays would probably screw up all the stations that have busted ass to get ready.
There are several shows that are in HD and are not compressed. My dad is a digital cable subscriber but still switches to OTA when the show is available because cable has so many compression artifacts. I use OTA only but I am a hold-out. I just hate paying for programming that contains ads. I mean, isn't that what the ads are for?
"Long time listener, first time caller."
According to this web site (http://dtvfacts.com/latest/530/how-many-americans-watch-tv-over-the-air/) approximately 15.5 million U.S. households watch TV over the air exclusively - presumably receiving analog (NTSC) signals. So a significant number of households will be affected. But they've already delayed the digital TV switch over once. I would recommend that they free up the necessary funds to provide the coupons for the folks who need them.
"When in doubt, use brute force."
The switch was already supposed to happen years ago, but they delayed things back then for the same reason. Should we delay forever and waste a huge amount of spectrum on an ancient broadcasting mechanism?
I think the program is out of money because a lot of people who don't even need coupons are getting them - my guess is that probably half of the people at least do not understand that if they have cable they don't need a different box.
There's still more than a month til the switch, time enough to sort out who really needs help and help them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After all, the spectrum that TV uses have already being partly sold. Wouldn't Verizon, et. al. be rather annoyed about this development?
For my children it is. They only really watch PBS and we get super shitty reception on that as it is so I'm guessing in the digital tv world of 1's and 0's, they'd be watching a bunch of zeros.
You obviously live some place where you have more than 4 network stations; not so here or most other places in the U.S. for that matter. And the closest one causes the most interference for the other channels.
Can't wait till the reception goes to shit for some community out in Kansas and tornadoes hit. The lawsuits will flood the courts and even if I'd typically consider them as frivolous, they have just as much a right to the public broadcasting services as anyone else, especially in the event of an emergency.
A system of interconnected network of wireless radio employing dish antennas would be as revolutionary as the internet.
News crews use ground microwaves. No more to the Golf channel,Bet,Mtv and QVC! Yeah!
I know many people don't buy TV programming, and for any number of reasons. My reason is that it's a terribly expensive waste of my life and money. I use OTA TV basically just for the occasional news, weather, or PBS show.
I also have a fundamental problem with paying for TV with commercials. Either give me commercial-free TV for my subscription free or pay for my free TV with commercials. Not both. Come up with a new business model. (Preferably w/o commercials - annoying, incessant ads are what drove me away from TV in the first place.)
While satellite TV has solved most problems of reception in remote areas, no TV or OTA is often just fine for those folks.
It often boggles my mind the people who go to food banks because they can't afford to feed themselves, yet pay $100/month for deluxe cable, etc.
I would bet money that in six months, the converter boxes will be cheaper. Why sell your box for $25 when you can tack on an extra $25 and expect people to use a coupon?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I had a promo deal for cable for six months. The service was so terrible from Comcast that I canceled. It was most definitely not worth $50 a month. Except for that, since 1995 I have been OTA only.
PBS is great and should continue to be able to deliver their service free of charge
But we can't do it without your help. PBS relies on your donations to keep on the air, and if you aren't donating, that's the same as stealing! If you watch even one second of PBS and don't contribute, you're a thief. A common thief!
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
I'd rather do it and suffer consequences.
Because asking somebody to fix something with a movable timeline means it NEVER gets fixed.
If they keep the timeline, you can guarantee there will be people up nights and weekends to get it done on time. Just like the year 2000, where almost nothing happened because of the massive amount of work behind the scenes. Not like they could move that date either.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Why should the government still be obligated to assist everyone at this stage in the game? The coupon program dried up; tough noogies, you've only had nearly a year to apply for one. If you needed the discount that badly, then you should have taken 2 minutes to apply earlier. And if you can't muster up the cash to rub two 20's together, your ability to watch television should not be anywhere on your radar at the moment.
Beh
Elmo knows where you live!
I seem to remember that it was a parody of "The Shining".
The US has enough problems right now. They don't need a bunch of TV-starved psychos running around, killing their families, as well.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
In a down economy?
Expect a lot more people to be ditching cable and satellite.
US Population - Cable Subscribers - Satellite subscribers means
households watch TV over the air exclusively.
How many of those people live in area which do not get a good signal.
How many of these people just don't watch TV.
How many of these people don't have TV or a Working TV.
How many already have the converter.
How many have a TV that doesn't need a convert.
How many will get one later this month.
Numbers don't lie. But they are quite vague.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Something doesn't add up here. The article says:
7.8 million households, representing 6.8 percent of homes with television, have not upgraded any of their television sets for the transition. Those homes would be unable to receive any TV signals after the switch.
and
Subscribers to cable or satellite television will not be affected by the transition.
which would suggest 100 million (ish) households with terrestrial TV and the tiny remainder (I'm guessing) on cable.
Wikipedia links to some numbers from 2006 that suggest 60% of "homes" subscribe to basic cable and an effective 100% cable coverage ratio.
The number of homes seems low (I'd have expected ~160 million and the cable coverage way too high (the numbers actually suggest > 100%, which must mean that apples and oranges are being compared somewhere).
So what are the real numbers?
Okay, okay, I'll write you a check later, when the banks open.
In Utah at least, there are two areas where the analog signals have already been turned off. Granted they are areas that are served via translator stations, but AFIK, the analog signals were turned off (one in December, one earlier).
All stations should be broadcasting in digital already. Most Utah stations have been broadcasting in digital for a while. They turned on the digital broadcast tower in 1999 (see here) for which most local stations use. The only reason for the delay would be to give the consumer with old televisions more time to get a converter box if they need one. The infrastructure on the broadcaster side has to all be in place and ready to go by now, otherwise they'd probably miss the deadline.
He also supports keeping the space shuttle on life support (@ $3B/yr).
Oh, hell no. I am so tired of all the PSA, and businesses running ads, about how I can be ready for The Big Switch, I could scream. Leave it alone, and let it happen.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
I just hate paying for programming that contains ads. I mean, isn't that what the ads are for?
Yes, the ads are paying for the programming. But not for the access. That's what your cable bill is for -- to pay for the wiring and access to the programming.
Or to put it another way, are you surprised that have to pay a bill to your ISP -and- you see ads on cnn.com?
I really don't know why people find the cable-TV concept so confusing.
[and yes, I realize cable is a bit more complicated, in that there are arrangements where cable kicks up some money to a channel for carrying the channel, but that isn't enough to pay for most programming. The point still stands.]
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I am OTA and have been the last decade. HD OTA is even better. I supplement my OTA TV with Netflix Instant.
Figure if I save $50/month, that has saved me at least $6000 over the past decade.
Heh, I'm opposite, but with you. I've always had cable, from AT&T cable(yes, they had it!) to Comcast to Dish w/ DVR. Once I moved, I decided no more, and I've been OTA for a long time. The caveat is I'm on a Mac Mini w/ EyeTV so I get digital already, and have been for a few years now.
There are several shows that are in HD and are not compressed.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
*Everything* broadcast in HD is compressed.
My dad is a digital cable subscriber but still switches to OTA when the show is available because cable has so many compression artifacts.
That doesn't mean that the OTA stuff isn't compressed, just that it's not *overcomressed*.
I watch tv because I enjoy drama serials. I haven't watched a commercial in 3 years thanks to my comcast tivo clone.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Seriously, how many YEARS of warning have we all had now? Just do it already.
I hope there will be cheap radios that can pickup digital TV sound like there is now for analog.
During the recent long power outage in New Hampshire, we found it very useful to have a little radio that picked up TV sound. The coverage of the emergency seemed to be better on TV than radio.
Radios like that will soon be less useful.
Publicity-starved WZMY Derry-Boston (MyTV affil) shut down their analog signal on 50 on Dec. 1 to what seems to be no ill effects. They ran their station in "nightlight mode" (Lowering power with a loop saying to effect "This used to be the analog signal of WZMY Derry... we've moved to digital." WFXT Boston met a little less happier fate. Their analog transmitter had been malfuctioning, and in Mid-December they gave up on it. With two months then to redeploy, the bean counters just wouldn't go with a project to revive the analog signal, so they're all-digital ready or not. Some stations are set to receive upgrades when the analog services go away. For example, WHDH-DT is off in UHF neverland, but once the analog WHDH 7 goes away, WHDH-DT gets the 7 slot not just on the logical dial, but also the physical frequency space.
Gilligan?
At least have someone (Morgan Freeman?) read out the ATSC spec for a few days prior to the switch so the professor can whip up a coconut converter box!
(Yes, I know they were rescued.)
(Yes, I know they went back.)
People will be up nights and weekends to get their converter boxes?
It's not the networks and stations that need extra time, they're ready already.
I can't speak for everywhere obviously, but here in Los Angeles pulling the plug on the analog transmissions is a big big deal. Not just because of Southern California's population but because of it's LATINO population.
I work in this industry for a Low Power Analog TV station (one that broadcasts on 4 different stations locally and a bunch more across the country). And the transition represents about 80% of my workload lately (I do broadcast engineering and IT).
But back on point, a LOT and I mean like hundreds of thousands of Latino families in the area rely on OTA transmissions. When you pull their plug, you might say "great, now they can go outside, read a book, etc" but in reality they're not tuned in. So that means advertising revenue dries up for the station (as it has for ours and almost every other that caters to the Latino community as well as mainstream tv programming). That means more layoffs and so on down the line.
Speaking for my company and other smaller players this delay is a good thing. Eventually the analog stations will go away and that's fine and eventually the low power guys like myself will have a concrete deadline too, and that's fine as well. Just remember though, millions have cable, direcTV, Dish, etc but there are still MORE than a few out there that really rely on plain vanilla over the air TV broadcast.
Yes, the ads are paying for the programming. But not for the access. That's what your cable bill is for -- to pay for the wiring and access to the programming.
But before cable TV access was free (in the U.S.) with a decent antenna (still is). We still had ads. You could then get cable and pay for a more reliable signal, and pay a little bit more for a channel with no ads (like HBO).
I believe the ad revenue was distributed not just to the programming but to the access points (antenna operation, broadcast stations, etc). I imagine that's still the case, only we're paying some pretty hefty fees for basic cable and heftier fees for a premium channel or two.
You made a nice analogy, but that doesn't mean someone isn't making bank off of us. I'm glad there's some competition now for TV access, but they seem to have standardized on $100/month for lots of HD stations and not many (if any) premium channels, so "competition" isn't really there unless you're a new subscriber.
As for "the government paying for it," it's a small fraction of what they sold the reclaimed rf spectrum for.
Aren't you saving $40 a month anyway by not having cable?
I agree with your concerns. Culture matters tremendously precisely for its ability to bring people together, which is a precondition for everything from politics to basic human happiness.
However, the evidence suggests that you have your causes backwards. Research shows a strong causal connection between the advent of TV and a sharp decline in community life. Robert Putnam talks about this in his book Bowling Alone. The DVD version of The Naked City features an interview with James Sanders, who describes the impact of TV on city life in New York. Here's an excerpt:
As for the effect Internet, a number of studies have found that people who socialize more online also socialize more offline. Cyberspace is very rarely the '80s vision of this other world where we take on other identities and socialize with strangers (the old dog on the Internet). For the most part it's a medium we use to reinforce the relationships we have with people we know in the real world. Now that may be a step down from the street life Sanders describes - the pre-broadcast world in which we made our entertainment (playing sports, singing songs, and so on instead of waiting for someone else to provide them to us), but it's light years ahead of the private CBS & me experience of watching TV alone in the dark.
I do over the air. Time Warner won't service my area and the two Sat guys pissed me off when I was looking at getting satellite cable. I guess if the you have had satellite before, you don't get the free install but an hourly visit to see if the old install is viable. Anyways, long story short, the guy from one site cut the lines from the other company right in front of me and acted like I shouldn't care so I said to hell with it about 4 years ago. Those are my three options where I live. There's about three channels I really cared about and I can get one of them over the air. I haven't really missed anything.
I disagree with your defintion of Rural. If you get cable or OTA at all I think you're pretty close to the city. Which gives you more of a right to bitch, actually.
Rural you don't get cable, or OTA, or cell(unless you are near a highway).
I promise the shared cultural experience is there, most rural houses I've seen with TV have satellite, you'll even see the big ol' C-band(right term?) out there every now and then, but mostly you find dish/directv.
As for my qualifications, I'm from Ezzell, TX, 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 hrs outside of Houston. We have to drive about 25 mins to the highway to get cell service. No FM/AM without booster, and zero TV signal. No cable, and for the longest time, Party Line telephone was cheaper than individual lines, that changes in 2001 I believe. Brenham and New Ulm are the same, except Brenham has a cable co, although you won't get it far outside of town. But Brenham is not rural, it's just a small town out in the country. (Lovely too if you have a chance to visit, stop by Blue Bell for samples and tour).
Maybe Obama can consider a deadline for conversion to IPv6 instead?
That's something that actually matters. TV is something from the last millennium.
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2008/07/dtvpal-converte.html
Why is it people believe just because somebody doesn't receive weather information over the TV that their lives are at risk and that the government is going to be sued. If anybody is truly serious about staying on top of weather information they would have a weather radio and listen to the National Weather Service at critical times operated by NOAA. There are even radios that can be bought cheaply that automatically turn on whenever severe weather is going on in your county or area.
In my experience of NOAA weather radios they are far more reliable because with all weather radios I've seen so far operate off of batteries which will allow the radio to continue to operate with or without power to the home compared to that of TVs where well: no power, no TV, no weather information.
I have read a few articles that give the impression that once analog broadcasts are turned off then the digital broadcasts will be allowed to boost their power output, but by how much I have no idea. Hopefully this is true because some stations broadcasting in the same county as on the receiving end is just terribly difficult to pickup. The worst so far is WTVF (CBS) here in Nashville, Tennessee that I have noticed.
This space is not for rent.
I love you.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Elmo knows where you live!
Arrrr. Elmo h8s p1r4t35!
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
but if you are that concerned about television you should be able to drop $40 on a converter box and not have the government pay for it.
Got that right. Let's face it. It is typically less than a monthly high speed internet connection. Do some real good and see if you can get $10/mo off my internet bill.
The truth shall set you free!
And allow us to not be in such an all-fired rush.
I just learned that the Comcast HDTV delivery to my home in ultra-wired Fremont is only 1080i, which is barely better than 720p, so if waiting means I can save $500 on the price of a TV set I can't afford, cool.
Besides, all these purchases are for foreign-manufactured HDTV and game consoles to play the content (like Sony), so delay may be a very very good thing.
I'd rather spend it on a US-made computer anyway.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think that 15 million number is slightly misleading. For one thing, many households have multiple televisions, and don't necessarily have cable running to each. Those extra televisions are now worthless. I have a small portable battery-powered television, for camping; it's garbage as soon as the transition kicks in. It wouldn't surprise me if a hundred million televisions are rendered worthless/obsolete because of the transition.
Plus, this means that anybody who currently has cable will now effectively have a $50 fee in order to stop their subscription.
Aww man that last paragraph cracked me up. What kind of healthy cultural foundation has TV given us over the last 50-60 years? If your social interaction with people revolved around your mutual addition to the same TV show, you weren't (aren't) any better off than those who bask in the warm glow of the internet's radiant love.
Now I gotta go check up and see if gamespy has published any new articles in the past 15 minutes...
I know some people are pretty bad off, but if you are that concerned about television you should be able to drop $40 on a converter box and not have the government pay for it.
Even if it was a governmental policy that caused your old TV tuner to cease being functional? The government made billions of dollars auctioning off the public airwaves to Verizon and AT&T. We aren't even going to get a third pipe out of the deal because for better or worse they sold them to the highest bidder instead of selling them for the public good (as the airwaves used to be licensed).
I'm not known as a big fan of Governmental hand-outs/interference in the marketplace but this seems like a problem that was created by a Governmental policy. There are other problems to this policy too beyond the cost of the converter boxes -- the digital signal just doesn't perform as well in many situations.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
because (preemptive "Get Off My Lawn," back in the day when we first got cable, there were no commercials. none. as in, not any.
so all us old OTA (or no tv) holdin' out geezers think that if you pay for TV, you shouldn't have to watch ads. charge more or something. ads suck.
That's my experience. The picture quality is incredible when it works, but the signal quality is terrible, so it is more pleasant to watch analog. Ghosting and a little static is much better than a frozen screen of blocks and stuttering audio.
I have heard that after the cut-over, signal strength will increase. That's nice it it's true, but I'm not convinced it is.
Another one here. After finding cable signals are worse than OTA, I downgraded cable package (I get discounted rate for bundling with Internet service any way). OTA digital has many interesting channels not on cable.
Yeah - those evil people at the FCC might force poor people to have to choose between food and TV! Perish the thought!
Lots of people still use an antenna to get sports broadcasts that aren't always available via satellite or cable.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I second that. OTA digital is amazingly good picture quality.
Just pick up a cheap amplified loop antenna. You don't need anything fancy.
I find being offended by me offensive.
I would love to go just an antenna and get rid of my cable bill. But, without sports, I cannot do it. Unfortunately NESN (Boston Red Sox & Bruins) is cable-only. Same with Comcast Sports New England (Boston Celtics).
I refuse to go without sports. So that forces me to pay for cable. Just no choice on that unfortunately.
I would much prefer a la carte, but that doesn't seem like it will happen anytime soon despite the FCC Commissioner being a big fan.
Too bad I just can't pay for say a 15 channel package of the channels I want to watch.
It's a beautiful day neighbor, to kick your ass!
D'oh! Why did I sign up for insta-trace!
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Why did he do the horns hand sign, just like Bush?
I know, it's off-topic. But perhaps it's relevant, in the sense that Obama belongs to the same 'clan' as Bush, secretly following the same policies.
Plus, everyone who has a converter box and buys a new TV will try and dump their converter box for $5 at the next garage sale.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
So you can only be rural if you live out west?
My house is sitting in the middle of corn fields and cow pastures in Ohio. I admit freely that there's a difference between here (five minutes from a small town, 30 from a medium sized one) and as far out of the way as Texas, but you still definitely can't get cable or high speed out here. Most people would probably call it rural.
It's also why our current healthcare system sucks. Regardless of whether people are paying a copay to the government or to the insurance company, they are still shielded from the actual cost of service and have no incentive to shop around.
Which, by the way, is a succinct explanation of why socialized medicine sucks.
That's the theory. Kind of strange that it's the US's supposedly free-market healthcare system that has the reputation of being horrendously expensive, poor value for money and for tying people to jobs with large corporations- via their health plans- if they want anything like decent insurance at acceptable prices. (Either that or take the risk of bankrupting themselves if they get ill.)
(I suppose you're going to blame medicare for dragging down a system that would otherwise be free-market sweetness and perfection?)
Socialised healthcare is far from perfect, and undoubtedly has some problems. I'm also sure that the US system has some better corner cases, and saves you a bit on your taxes. Even so, I'm pretty certain which one I'd rather take my chances with overall.
Disclaimer: I don't live in the US, and haven't got any plans to, so I'm quite happy for you to have whatever healthcare system you want. It just doesn't look like much of a poster boy to me right now.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
just that it's not *overcomressed*.
It's recompression that's usually the problem. Cable would have to have no compression whatsoever, just to equal the quality of OTA digital:
1. Cable company receives compressed digital channel from OTA, satellite, whatever. ....
2. Cable company decodes and remodulates to their own channel lineup.
3. Cable company recompresses signal onto their own network, thereby increasing compression artifacts.
4.
5. Profit!!!
(Just couldn't do a point list on /. without adding those last two....)
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Not true:
According to research firm SNL Kagan, Viacom's MTV receives about 32 cents per subscriber per month from cable operators, while Nickelodeon receives an average of 45 cents a month. Operators pay 86 cents a month per subscriber for the Disney Channel, which commands a higher fee because it runs commercial-free.
If it takes a Porsche to motivate you through med school, then I don't want you as a doctor anyway. Much smarter people work for a lot less in non-medical fields.
How will consumers be brainwashed into buying the latest shiny new piece of plastic crap?
Large sections of the population will either find themselves truly free and happy for the first time or they will enter a state of mass depression as they realize that nothing they buy can rescue them from their pathetic miserable lives.
I watch netflix for entertainment. TV is dead to me. I plan on having a party on the day the tube goes dead.
We have the best government that money can buy.
Ummm... This could be a very, very, slow and deliberate 4 years until the next election.
Gently reply
There's a lot of warning for the upcoming switch. It's not like OTA is being pulled, it's being shifted.
If you let people slide another few years, people will simply not be ready the NEXT time the switch comes along. People will never be ready, so you have to actually be ready to make the switch against some resistance and then people will be motivated to actually switch.
People are highly motivated to get TV, and so I don't think the switch will have as much power over even the poor as you think it will. When people are motivated, they figure out a way - coupon or no.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just like the insurance-companies do now? What's the difference?
-rozzin.
There's no reason if you used to be able to get OTA broadcasts before, you shouldn't be able to get them after the switch. You may need to change your antenna a bit though, there are some pretty nice HD antennas now that are pretty optimized.
I actually think OTA HD could bring a resurgence in OTA use compared to cable. There's a lot of freedom with what you can do with OTA broadcasts that you don't get with cable - I can record OTA shows and automatically transcode for an iPod for example, or transfer recordings to other people, or burn them to DVD.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The thing I like about the video switch, is that you have far more freedom with broadcast digital than you do with digital signals from cable boxes, or even a TIVO.
I can record a broadcast and automatically transcode into any format, for instance conversion for an iPod. Or I can burn the video to DVD, or I can transfer a show to someone else. It's all just MPEG2 after all.
If people start taking advantage of the freedoms they have with OTA HD, then they may start demanding those same freedoms for other digital video as well. OTA could be a gateway to a much more open video model all the way around.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which, by the way, is a succinct explanation of why socialized medicine sucks.
Which, by the way, applies equally well to a free market system of private insurers.
That's 1/2 of the theory, the moral hazard half. The evidence suggests that insurance will increase consumption, primarily outpatient services. However, the people that love to point this out usually leave out another issue, adverse selection. Essentially sick people will tend to purchase better coverage, which will drive the cost of that coverage up until it's unaffordable. These leads to two issues: 1. Sick people will be unable to afford insurance, and 2. Insurance companies will spend a lot of money screening customers for "prior conditions". Does this sound familiar?
/rant
The jury's still out on exactly why the US healthcare sector is so much more expensive (as % of GDP) than everyone else, but the increased administrative costs created by the US' unique insurance market (other countries have private insurers, but place rules on turning people away, etc...) is a likely suspect of a significant part of the difference.
The free market is a tool not an ideology. Remember, a free market is not a market free of government intervention, but one free from barriers. Moral hazard and adverse selection are two of many barriers present in the health insurance market and the government didn't put them there, so blindly keeping the government out of insurance will not magically make the health insurance market free.
7.8 M households, representing 6.8% of homes with television = 114.7 million households have TV
Wikipedia ... suggests 60% = the 40% of households remaining are OTA only = 46 million
7.8 M out of 46 M = 1 in 6 OTA-only households has not bought a converter box yet
whether this is a problem depends on how old the "7.8 million" number is and how many unredeemed coupons are still out there waiting to be used.
There are lots of people who don't need any more from their TV than PBS and weather.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why sell your box for $25 when you can tack on an extra $25 and expect people to use a coupon?
Because if you won't, your competitor will.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Well, to be more accurate, ALL HD that you see is compressed. Pure, uncompressed HD directly from the camera is nearly 1.5 Gbit. For OTA, the ATSC spec uses MPEG-2 compression, and full bandwidth is considered ~19 Mbit, which is the entire bandwidth that the FCC allocates to a single channel. Even with the aging MPEG-2 codec, 19 Mbit makes for some pretty good looking 1080i. Unfortunately, though, it's almost impossible to get a full 19 Mbit feed in any form these days. Even OTA, most stations milk their bandwidth for all the money they can get by hosting subchannels, and cramming their main HD feed into lower bit rates, which means higher compression. Some stations have been known to host 3 additional subchannels, reducing the HD feed to 13 Mbit or lower, which is completely unacceptable for 1080i under MPEG-2. Our local NBC station lost one of their subchannels a while back when the network went under (TheTube), and instead of allocating that bandwidth back to the main channel they've wasted 2 Mbit for over a year sending null packets along with a static screen letting you know that the channel is gone.
Cable has it's own set of problems relating to limited bandwidth and rising demand for more HD content. So most cable providers these days seriously bit-starve their HD channels by re-compressing even further the feed that they get from the stations, which is why OTA generally looks much better than their counterparts on cable or satellite. Comcast has been cramming 3 HD channels into one ~39 Mbit QAM channel for over a year now, and producing some pretty bad-looking HD as a result. Unfortunately, cable and satellite are locked in a war which emphasizes quantity over quality. I think Verizon FiOS is the only provider that doesn't re-compress HD in some form these days.
I hear you, but this deadline was set in 1996 (or actually, extended twice from a 2006 transition). Is the best outcome for broadasters to continue to hog BOTH digital AND analog bandwidth (the grace period they were given in 1996)? Or do you think the date is important to the community you describe? By the way, I own a company that takes the analog USA TVs and inspects them and sends the better ones to NTSC Peru, Mexico, and Venezuala, so I got a stake in this too.
Gently reply
AFAIK, there are lots and lots of people who would very much like to go to med school, but aren't admitted because the medical industry wants to maintain the artificial shortage of doctors so they can keep gouging us. I don't think there'd ever be a shortage for lack of interest.
How about rather than delaying the switch to digital broadcasts we do the switch on time and if you don't have a converter box already, and didn't get a coupon yet, just make the people who procrastinated send in a mail in rebate rather than receiving a coupon. Perhaps that's an oversimplification but I'd rather the government spend a few extra dollars processing rebates than have the digital broadcast deadline extended yet again.
People paid good money for their TVs. Why should the government get to fuck them up?
What I don't understand is how Americans can afford to buy a $30,000 SUV every five years (totaling ~$300,000 spent over a lifetime), and yet for some reason they lack the money to pay a $6000 medical bill.* It appears they have their priorities messed up, because they are wasting their cash on foolish car purchases instead of saving it for health.
If you can afford to waste thousands on cars and other purchases, then you can also afford the occasional medical bill.
*
* How much my niece spent for a recent kidney operation.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dump the insurance and just pay cash. It's cheaper in the long-run, and takes advantage of the fact that nearly-all people don't get a serious illness until after age 60.
It's silly to waste thousands on insurance when you're still young and healthy & more likely to get hit with an asteroid than fall victim to a mortal illness. (Okay I exaggerated a bit, but you get my point.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
One of my best friends depends on their rabbit ears, and they're poor enough that the cost of a converter box is kind of a big deal. And before some asshat who knows nothing of poverty opens their yap about how he shouldn't be watching TV, he busts his ass then comes home and would like to relax in the evening, okay? He and plenty of other people are in this position, and they never wanted to have to drop $40 just so the government could raise $20bil.
The enemies of Democracy are
Nah, they'll just cap what Doctors and Hospitals can charge for their services
Just like the insurance-companies do now? What's the difference?
Not commenting on the advantages or disadvantages of socialized medicine,
Now people without insurance have to pay full price (at least that is the bill that they are presented with) - the price of which represents the shortfall resulting from other's bills being capped.
I don't have cable. And if I did, I might be in the same situation as my brother, who can't get Fox in HD for some reason even though the rest of the channels work. Or I might be like my BFF whose DirectTV gets channels 4.1, 5.1, and 19.1 but won't get 4.2, 5.2, 19.2 and the rest of the subchannels. All three of us would benefit from airwaves either due to lack of services or inept service providers. And since I know you're all dying to know, 4 is Fox, 5 is CBS, and 19 is PBS in Kansas City.
I'm from Michigan originally. My GF is from Iowa. Every time I take her to MI for Christmas, she can't stop commenting about how dense it is. "It's funny that you call this rural.", she says.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm gonna hug you and squeeze you and care for you and pet you and feed you and bathe you and love you to death!
(That was a reference to Tiny Toons.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
From my POV here in Rhode Island, it looks like most 'poor' people have satellite, the middle class have cable and fios. I attribute this to the sat. companies not doing a credit check, which the cable companies seem to do.
The upper-middle class are the only folks I see with 'regular' TVs anymore. They listen to NPR and tune in to PBS or watch the news, but that's pretty much it.
And the rich folks... I wouldn't know. They never invite me over. :-) I would assume they keep high-end HDTV setups, but rarely watch.
I do think that there is an inversely proportional relationship to how much TV you watch and how much money you make though. I don't really ever spot my well-to-do friends watching TV. I haven't figured out if it's because
more disposable income -> better things to do than TV
or
educated and motivated -> more disposable income
The funny thing was, I went over to my parents a few days ago, and they think they're all set because they have cable, which is true in the TV room; but then they flipped on their little black-and-white 4" TV in the kitchen for the news. I pointed out that they'll have to drop about two hundred bucks to replace -that-, to which my dad replied, "Screw it, I'll throw it away."
Come to think of it, I haven't seen -one- actual, installed DTV converter, and I was in a -lot- of houses in the last month. I also don't know anyone who consumes OTA digital TV.
I'll bet there are a -ton- of elderly folks in those huge apartment towers I see all over town that have bunny ears though... They're going to be pissed, and they vote.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Except that it isn't a free-market health care system -- at least not 50% of it. About half the money spent in health care is Federal/State money.
And that's what drives up prices. You have the private sector competing with the public sector for finite health care resources.
That's not change! That's more of the same!
That DTVpal is a piece of junk. I have one and it only gets HALF as many channels as my Zenith or Channl Master boxes.
Furthermore the clock is broken. One minute it will say 7:35, and then you change channels and the clock thinks it's 9:15, even though in reality it's 8:00. That makes it impossible to program the thing to tape 24 this Sunday night, because the clock is completely random and unreliable.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"government funds to support the change are 'woefully inadequate' " Give me a freakin' bvreak! Of course. Government funds are ALWAYS inadequate. And since when is it the taxpayer's responsibility to pay for people's TV tuners. And, look at the price! If you can't afford the box, how is it you can afford TV! You should be getting off your ass and get a job. I can't believe what a nation of whiners this country has become. Suck it up and buy the box, a new TV, or read a freakin' book and get your damn hands out of my wallet!!!
Dump the insurance and just pay cash. It's cheaper in the long-run, and takes advantage of the fact that nearly-all people don't get a serious illness until after age 60.
Small comfort to those who suffer a stroke or heart attack or cancer at younger ages.
It's silly to waste thousands on insurance when you're still young and healthy & more likely to get hit with an asteroid than fall victim to a mortal illness. (Okay I exaggerated a bit, but you get my point.)
You'd think with odds like that a competitive free market insurance industry would be falling over themselves to insure young healthy people for low annual premiums... care to speculate on the fact that they don't?
My theory is that you are simply mistaken.
"Breaking" everyone's analog TV is going to be controversial enough. But to time it to happen right after a new president is inaugurated? Forget that this changeover has been in the works forever, who is Joe Blow going to blame? I don't blame the Obama administration for wanting to postpone it a bit.
we've got a pres-elect that, at a time when we're at war, the economy is in meltdown and the US is in the process of giving up the idea of democracy all together, has time to worry about poor people getting enough TV time with their TV. Yeah, that's what they need. More TV.....
So you seriously believe that the fact the government was handing out coupons to anyone had zero impact on how these units were priced? Amazing how every single price I have seen when I looked 6 months ago was $10-$25 more than the government coupon.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It's not the $6,000 or even $30,000 hospital bill. It's the $500,000 NICU care for a premature infant, $150,000 for a week in ICU, or $100,000 heart surgery. Only the super-rich could take the risk of self insurance.
truer words never spoken - once people start replacing old worn out TV's with digital ready ones all those silly converters are going to end up in the landfill anyway - press on with digital now !!
But neither the government nor the insurance company is shielded from the cost, and they do have an incentive to control costs, either by shopping around as to which providers they will contract with, imposing reimbursement caps, or both.
And every real government or private healthcare plan uses one or both of those means to control costs.
There are plenty of problems with our current healthcare system, but the one you point to isn't really a significant one.
When you're poor there are not many options for entertainment and TV is fairly cheap and always there. Lots of pensioners who can't get out need something to pass the time besides cooking for themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
and this is fucking me over.
It was fairly painless - I got my two converter boxes (and used them, thank you very much) and it looks amazing.
Except, it doesn't. The signal strength (especially on the local PBS affiliate) is crap because the physical channel is in the sixties. When the switch is over, they'll be back on good ol' 13 where it works fine.
I have no sympathy for those who don't have the necessary equipment - how do you miss the notices? They're on every other break!
Just get it over with. There will be problems at any point, all from the same people. So stop pissing off the people who get it.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Obama should be familiar with the following turn of phrase. "Oh Hell no!" Seriously, this is a bad idea. Throw the switch already.
I've help my friend out all the time. This is something where le gov, who made $20bil off this largely unpopular move, was supposed to step in and help the people out. If it comes to it, I can get him a converter box. Doesn't change the fact this is bullshit.
The enemies of Democracy are
I think the program is out of money because a lot of people who don't even need coupons are getting them - my guess is that probably half of the people at least do not understand that if they have cable they don't need a different box.
And the recent "Media Blitz" campaigns often just confuse the average user more than inform them. I've had to explain to a few people already that they don't need a converter box...including a friend with an HDTV and OTA Antenna, but didn't know that he could tune into HD channels with it (ie: 5-1 instead of 5). He saw the color bars during a recent test and was about to go out and buy one before he asked me. Sad, but likely more common than people suspect...
Well, it's not like this analog signal shutdown is a surprise or anything. Your friend has probably known about it for months and months already. That's ample time to scrape together $40. If he had put aside only $5 a month since last June, he'd have the money.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Also, digital is pretty much line-of-sight. There are literally millions of people in the U.S., especially in more rural areas that have no ability to get TV at all.
If you go to antennaweb.org and put in your zip code, you can see how the reality is that digital signals only are good for roughly 40-50 mils and then that's it. NADA. zilch. Get Dish or Cable TV, thankyouverymuch.
Take Santa Rosa, CA. 150,000 people. With a large antenna and a rotor to point it, you can get 2 local stations and 13 San Fransisco stations, which are 43 miles away.
With digital, You get... One local station. And one that's iffy at best. The entirety of Sonoma County has about 460,000 people in it and 50% of them will be forced to switch to cable TV to get any signal at all.(about half have, talking to friends, about half still have antennas)
Now, if you're in some place like Illinois, well, you're out of luck, no matter how flat the land is. 50 miles or so out and you're without a strong enough signal. Either it works great or not at all. That's just wrong, IMO.
When FM Stereo came out, did the AM stations have to shut down? If a local television station has the revenue to continue broadcasting analog (& maybe get additional revenue from the analog), I say let them do it. All (?) the bigger stations do both right now, & there doesn't seem to be any interference or technical reason that would seem to contraindicate their continuing to do so. Eventually the old sets will simply wear out.
... I thought we were almost done with those annoying commercials telling us that the switch is coming!
Some people don't follow the news, but incidentally, the bill requiring the changeover was passed in late 2005. If $1.50/month were saved to buy a converter box from the day that the bill was passed, he'd already have one by now.
The real problem here is that VHF is not UHF. VHF frequencies are better at following the lay of the land. They bend better over hills, and tend to travel more consistently over longer distances. The low band of TV, channels 2-6, follow hills well. Channel 4,5 and 6 are by far the best for a ground wave. Channel 2 is a bit too long in wavelength-acts more like HF. VHF high, channels 7-13, follows hills well, but not as well as the low VHF channels. Moving up to the UHF region, we are more like cell phones in that the radio waves become strictly line of sight, less to no bending over the earth, and become harder to catch. Most folks don't understand that moving a UHF antenna a few feet up, down or sideways can make all the difference. A VHF TV antenna is pretty much just pointed in the right direction, but UHF can be tricky. You might get pixellation at the front of the roof but 90% on the back of the roof. Sadly, those with the least ability to figure this out will have the most problems getting the UHF DTV. If you understand that you may need to move the antenna about a bit you will have much more success snagging uncompressed and free Digital TV. I view from a spot 50 or so miles out from a UHF station(WNJN-PBS) which is both analog and digital. It also slightly off axis from my NYC-pointed antenna. I get reception for most of the year, but it gives me a real world view on varying signal strengths based upon tree attenuation. Digital does work better-up to about 75% of the distance. 51 is the digital feed, 50 the analog. In the winter, where all the trees are clean, both 50 and 51 look really good. You have to look hard to see the digital difference with SD signals on both channels. As the trees fill in, the analog station begins to fade. There is some dot crawl, then static, then unstable picture on the analog station until it becomes a weak fuzzy signal. The digital station stays perfect until the analog picture gets decidely static-Y. You can watch the analog signal beyond the point the digital one is gone but it is not great, probably bottom 30%, at that time. When summer comes, and the trees fill in fully, you can't get a lock on the digital or a watchable signal from the analog. I pull the channels out until fall. So for 75% of the time, the digital signal wins, as it is always perfect if it works. That does not do much for you if you are beyond. I do want to subscribe to whichever system takes over channels 4-6 and puts broadband on it. This is the prime radio territory for a ground wave based system.
But, in an emergency...like within hurricane effected areas...TV can be lifesaving. Yes, radio helps, but, you can't get the big picture where on radar things are...where the storm may hit (you usually don't know till 24 hours prior or less).
Even if you do have cable...when it gets knocked won by falling trees, etc...you need that OTA as a backup, especially in the weeks after when that and power is out (many houses have generators, we kept going for weeks on one).
So, it isn't just being poor that requires you to have OTA...it is quite usefil and effective during emergencies...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
All HD you see is compressed. Even OTA. OTA is compressed with MPEG-2. And frankly, it's overcompressed. It looks good most of the time, but watch a BluRay some time. BluRay has 3-4x the bandwidth and a better codec and the difference on moving scenes is night and day.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
That's why I'm wanting to find out if there are any neat hacking projects you can do with these converter boxes. I don't need one..but, figured I'd get a couple subsidized ones to play with...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My local PBS asked me to donate $100 to obtain Red Dwarf 8 for airing. Instead I bought the DVDs for $25. So in my opinion PBS is not worth supporting; I'd rather spend my money on DVDs
This is true, if you only consider yourself. Hopefully there are enough other people in your local area who are prepared to pay a little bit extra so that others can see Red Dwarf, even though they haven't paid for it.
When will people figure out that the "what a waste, any money I spend beyond helping [myself] is pointless" attitude is slowly killing society?
Be an adult and see beyond yourself.
Here's a thought, library books! Instead of wasting our money making sure every bumpkin has a boob tube, we should be investing a fraction of that money into ensuring accessible and abundant libraries.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Hasn't the FCC already sold off the spectrum that is going to be reclaimed by the move from NTSC to ATSC for our broadcast TV?
If so, would the new spectrum owners get paid to wait to use it?
I think that delaying is not going to help fix the problem. It's sort of like worrying about the y2k stuff. There's only so much you can do, and then you have to flip the switch and find out what's fallen through the cracks.
I think this is point is not being emphasized enough. What digital you can get OTA even today is not representative of what you will get after Feb 17. Many stations are not running their digital at full power and others have translators that are not switching until the transition. In my area, geography (i.e. foothills) makes translators essential even for analog, so stations who haven't switched their translators are really hard to get.
Yeah, but, I wouldn't want one of them cutting me open and messing around with my internals...or drilling my teeth to fix them.
Yeah...Dr's make a good living these days, but not nearly what they did generations past...bean counters and insurance are the culprits these days. Not to mention, a Dr. is schooled a long time....racks up a TON of loan debt, etc....so, say your a surgeon. YOu start working..it is years before you pay loans off and really start to make serious money that is yours. And, your working career is limitsd...once you start getting older and all....well, shaky hands and bad eyesight don't help you, so you gotta make a lot of money in a short period of time. It isn't all sunshine and kittens. Lots of call...odd and long hours, and time away from families...
Sewing Timmy up after a fall isn't just a 9 to 5 job you know...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I live in Southwest Missouri, OTA TV is very popular here. Unfortunately, because of the terrain, people who can receive analog broadcasts are often unable to receive digital broadcasts.
My parents, who really aren't excited about the switch, can receive 5 channels via analog. Hook up a converter box and they still get 5 channels, only problem is 3 of those are PBS. I would really like to see more thought put into issues like this before the switch is made.
As for the popularity, we live in an area that frequently sees power outages due to thunderstorm/tornadic weather. I have an excellent little 3" battery powered TV that I have relied on for information during severe weather. After Feb 17, I'm out of luck.
Actually, I have found just the opposite to be true.
As an indie contractor...I buy my own insurance, high deductible for catatrophic needs ($1200 deductible). With this, I qualify for a Health Savings Account, that this year, I can load up with $2900 pre-tax dollars to use for my health needs. It is not a use or lose thing...and it earns money too.
I use that for medical visits, services. When I tell them I'm paying on my own, I get at least a 15% discount pretty much everywhere I got. I had an MRI done last year, and they charged me significantly less then they would have if I'd done insurance.
Heck, if you're paying your own way medically...shop around. Ask about discounts with non-insurance, etc.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This discussion of transition to digital TV makes me think of a question I have been meaning to ask. Perhaps it is more appropriate for Ask Slashdot, but it is related to the topic under discussion, and I am sure I'm not the only one in this situation.
I have a friend on a fixed income (and yes, it really is a friend--I have cable), who has a roof antenna and gets her programming off the air on an analog TV. She understands about the transition to digital and is perfectly willing to buy a converter box.
She works during the day and is a fan of soaps. She has an analog VCR which she programs to record her shows. They are on multiple channels at different times, eg. 12:00 to 12:30 on channel 7, 1:00 to 2:00 on channel 5, 3:00 to 3:30 on channel 9, etc.
She has been asking me about her VCR. As I understand, if she hooks up the converter box to her VCR, she will be able to record only one channel since the tuning is done in the converter box. So she realizes she will have to buy some sort of DVR, and I have been enlisted to help her shop. (She incorrectly assumes that since I'm a computer geek, I must also be an A/V geek) The problem is I know nothing about DVRs, but I'd really like to help.
I suggested a Tivo, but a friend told me it works only if you have cable, not for off-the-air. Is that true? And what other options are available? I also have been told that you need to pay a monthly fee to operate a DVR. Is that true? She doesn't need program guides as she is perfectly willing to program the start/stop times and channels manually, just as she now does with her VCR. I also understand that some units use a hard drive, some others burn the programs to DVD and some do both. As she is more interested in time shifting than archiving, it seems a HDD solution is probably best. Her budget isn't huge, about $300 max for this device. I've been doing some research, both online and at local stores, and haven't yet found something exactly suitable. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. Any Slashdoters out there who have been looking for something similar? What do people recommend? She's not a computer person, and her computer is very old, so I don't think a PC based solution is right for her.
(And please don't suggest that she get a life and quit watching soaps. While I don't disagree with that sentiment, I'm really looking for a more technical solution here.)
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
If it takes a Porsche to motivate you through med school, then I don't want you as a doctor anyway. Much smarter people work for a lot less in non-medical fields.
It's got nothing to do with wanting a Porsche and I'm rather disappointed that the herd gave you a +5 for that remark. Do you have any idea of the amount of student loan debt that the typical med student has by the time they finish with medical school? Do you have any idea how much malpractice insurance costs?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I saved $70/month! Actually that wasn't even a full cancellation - it was downgrading their default package - 6mps Internet + analog TV (about $107 / mo) to 768 kbps Internet + basic basic cable (about $45/mo). The cheapest cable tV hardly has any more channels than broadcast, and they don't look as good - but it's cheaper to get Internet with than without (go figure).
With this, I qualify for a Health Savings Account, that this year, I can load up with $2900 pre-tax dollars to use for my health needs. It is not a use or lose thing...and it earns money too.
I'd like to know that the rationale was for restricting HSAs to those with high-deductible plans. I'd much rather take part in an HSA for my own medical expenses rather than the "flexible" spending account that's anything but.
I love how they get to call something "flexible" when it comes with a "use it or lose it" provision and you can only adjust your election once a year.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
2 things
first $6000 for an operation? hah! not in the usa. I had a friend pay $2500 for a 10-minute cat scan that just happened to not be covered by his insurance. Operations are *always* in the tens of thousands of dollars, even the simple ones.
second, you are talking about two different segments of american society. People who buy $30,000 suvs tend to also have health insurance. We're talking about the lower middle class who buy reasonable mid-size cars and for whom paying $10,000+ per year in just insurance is tough. (that's the norm, including employer contribution) And as the other poster mentions, this is really bankruptcy protection in case that operation is a little more complicated than expected.
Or the government can use some of the $20 bil they made from the deal to both help the poor people who can't afford one, and use it as an incentive so that I'll keep my 20" CRT bedroom TV instead of throwing it into a landfill and replacing it with an HD LCD with a digital tuner.
But yet, keep snarking, it's really productive.
What I never understood about this situation, is why does the government have such an all-or-nothing attitude about this? How about ONE channel, say ch. 3, that is still on in analog that informs people about the digital switch. They seriously can't spare ONE channel?
There, problem solved!
Like most card carrying nerds, I get my TV from the ATSC broadcast OTA today on mostly the UHF band. If the switch happens what do *I* need to do?
The FCC is selling a big chunk of the 700MHz UHF spectrum, right? So will some of my channels move?
The only information that I can find about "THE SWITCH" assumes that I have an NTSC tuner (and that I'm really slow.)
AHA! Answering my own question...
Any channel mapped higher than 52 will go away:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_broadcast_television_frequencies#UHF_band
Which for me means there are a few channels that will move.
And they show which ones will move here:
http://www.antennaweb.org/
Interestingly - there are ATSC channels being moved even though they aren't in the sold spectrum!
Here in Finland the switch was made in Sep. 2007 for terrestrial broadcasting and cable television Feb. 2008. The rest of the EU member states are expected to stop analogue television transmissions by 2012. Wasn't such a big deal... many people actually are still refusing to buy the convertor box after being able to notice a dramatic improvement in their quality of life.
I live in Las Vegas and can definitively say that OTA TV is of much higher quality than cable (Cox). I was going to get cable when I recently bought a new 1080p LCD, but when I hooked up my old rabbit ears and saw how much better the picture was compared to my friends with cable I decided to stick with the antenna. Every channel has excellent reception and every major show including local news is in 16:9 1080i. On top of that, a few of the local channels run dedicated weather and traffic stations 24/7 on their subchannels which aren't available via cable.
On Slashdot everyone is already well aware that the changeover is for over the air broadcasts and not cable but outside the tech crowd nobody understands this. TV's are being sold cheaply because they have analog cable tuners, and even a number of comcast cable guys I've talked to were under the impression that the changeover meant analog cable was going and they didn't know what the company was going to do when it did.
Isn't that why you loot your local mall during a disaster? So that you can use a 54" plasma TV to get the latest flood advisories?
My mother still has broadcast TV. No cable. She's not the only one I know. There are a lot of lower income people that can't afford the high monthly prices of subscription TV. Don't look at just your own peer group to decide whether or not something is ubiquitous.
The snag though is that the Digital TV signal isn't that great where she is, and she's going to lose one of her favorite channels that comes in quite well over analog.
Well, they sort of are doing something like that.
Ars ran a story last week, FCC okays DTV "analog nightlight" rules. Unfortunately, it's only for 30 days - seems like it should be 90 or 180 days. Also, apparently, this doesn't apply to all markets, so I think the FCC is kind of messing up there.
Partly, though, I'm confused about how anyone could possibly not know about the digital TV transition and not be prepared for it at this point? Every time I try to watch OTA broadcasts using my digital converter box, I'm constantly being annoyed by text overlays obscuring the programming I'm watching, with messages about the digital transition. I've seen one possible explanation.
Still, I do agree with the parent - why not *permanently* leave one analog channel for information about the fact that TV has switched to digital transmissions, and also use it for emergency programming (like evacuation and health-related notices, severe weather coverage, disaster-related instructions and info, etc)?
Obama is not even in office and he had made changes, changed his mind. You wanted change and you got it. If he was all about change (hopefully for the better), we would not be talking about this.
It is an old standard, better technology now exists. Sorry, it is not backwards compatible. I have seen people get completely enraged about this change. People look at it like, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." The change is a good thing, but people get defensive about the government breaking their stuff (vs. preparing for the future). Since when has watching TV been a RIGHT, not a PRIVILEGE?
PS: I don't care how I get modded. I am happy just because you used/wasted your mod points on me.
More likely the opposite to a small extent. With the coupons, I got two from TigerDirect for $14 ($.01 and $6.99 S&H each), so I'm not anticipating a giant price drop outside of Goodwill and surplus stores. Work -- crappy downgrade to analog as expected. The wife never watches TV on her desktop anyway but with my old WinTV card she _could_. I figured the other one was a way to sell the 19" for $10. Been using MyThTV with an HD card for a couple years now anyway.
The date's been set for years, the broadcasters have been forced to buy new transmitters and antennas and pay for powering both systems until Feb, it's time to just do it.
I know one station that is digital only. Their analog transmitter blew up and they decided not to spend the money on repairing what they knew they would just be turning off in a few months anyway. So yeah, let's move the date off by another year so people can delay for another year.
Maybe phase out analog TV by time slot. Leave analog up from 1800 to 2200 hours for a few extra months; the rest of the time broadcast "Convert to digital" messages at reduced power. That will get the message across to the holdouts without causing withdrawal symptoms.
Hello, I don't live in the USA so I'm wondering what sort of education campaign the FCC has run about this.
I would have thought that there would be ads every hour or two saying "This station is going away soon - Do something!", but it seems that is not the case.
Can someone provide some details?
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Yep, it's true, there are some selfish greedy two-bit entrepreneurs who are getting two coupons, buying two boxes, keeping one (or none) and selling the other on eBay or Craiglist. I've seen the listings for them. Unless they're using the identities of dead people to get a truckload of them, though, I doubt if the few people who are doing this amount to much more than a drop in the bucket.
Yes, the ads are paying for the programming. But not for the access. That's what your cable bill is for -- to pay for the wiring and access to the programming.
Or to put it another way, are you surprised that have to pay a bill to your ISP -and- you see ads on cnn.com?
That's a really bad analogy. I pay for the line and access, and I get everything on the Internet.
Cable is like my ISP saying "$20/month for the basic package. Oh, you want Google also? You'll need the 'Digital Start' then, for $40/month. You want the news sites, also? Have to upgrade to the 'Digital Standard' for $60/month. Sports? 'Digital Advanced', $80/month. YouTube? That's a 'Premium Site', $10/month just for it on top of your package price."
I'm sure that a portion of the bill is wiring and access, but it's not the exorbitant amount that cable charges.
I do know how much medical school costs; it's outrageous and there's no doubt it turns off qualified people. You might say that the most passionate should be undeterred, but I don't think that's realistic.
I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of debt accumulated in professional programs selects for the type who are fixated on the pot of gold at the end.
You're SO entitled!
So you say hurray for me, and fsck you!
It's not your fault, it's fault.
*sarcasm*
You support, enable, and contribute to the problem while actively hindering the cure.
Stupid git!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
No, but it IS fun when you know it is then 'open season' on those assholes, and take a little target practice at them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Maybe all the umm-dumbs out there will start reading when their TV's don't work anymore, and drastically improve education levels in this country.
Even better. There should be a second wave of more capable converter boxes that don't have the stupid limitations that were imposed on the current ones such as no digital audio outputs, no HD component outs, etc.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Libraries are good and definitely should have funding. Unluckily not everyone is a book reader.
My wife for example does not enjoy reading and uses the TV for entertainment. When the power goes out she gets quite stressed out whereas I just light a candle and grab a book.
She is not going to be happy when we lose a third of our TV stations when America switches over to digital.
Unluckily we are one of the households who have no choice about over the air signals, no cable and a mountain to the south so no satellite. Also reception is bad enough with analog that I can't imagine getting any reception with digital.
Also though I just about never watch regular TV, I just found myself doing so due to all the flooding happening around here. The radio just does not have enough info compared to the TV news.
While the switch here in Canada was supposed to be not mandated, being left to the market, the Conservatives gained power and mandated switch over for Aug 31, 2011
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
One of the causes of poverty, so I'm told, is that many poor people never really learned the trick of squirreling away money; if they've got $20 left over after they get paid, then they have a powerful need to spend that money on something.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That must have been a long time back. I remember watching cable TV in the mid-'80s and there were ads then.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
How is being poor supposed to be an excuse? I have nothing but sympathy for the working poor, but this has been coming for a long time, and people have known about it; you can't turn on a TV now without being blasted with the "transition" messages. If TV is that important to your friend, he should have been squirreling away his nickels and dimes for the last couple of years. If he starts right now, he only needs to save a dollar a day and he can buy a converter the day the transition occurs. If he can't do that, then he really has no business watching TV anyway, because it obviously isn't that important to him. And if you want to make the claim that he is so poor that he can't save a dollar a day, then remember that he could have been saving up for much longer than that. It's not like he didn't know.
What good would another delay do anyone? In another year, people will still be making the same argument and the same excuses. The same will happen a year after that, and a year after that, ad nauseum.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
I use my terrestrial antenna every day for HDTV it looks and sounds great! No blasted cable or satellite reaching into my wallet in my house. -- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Because it is not the same. It is not like you buy cable, then you buy programming, you but one package. It is similar to the AOL internet, where they provided the connection, and the content.
Yeah, and for people who get OK reception with an inside antenna on analog, aren't permitted to put up an outdoor one, and can't get a reliable signal at all after trying four or five antennas? Oh, too bad. I just went through this helping someone else with it. If you live in an area that is or could be designated a historical district, they can prevent you from putting up an antenna, as long as they shaft everyone in the area equally.
There are densely populated areas in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York that are in the 20-40 mile band that work pretty well with analog that have a lot of problems with digital. Even if someone has a roof antenna, you often need a much more directional antenna with digital. So you either need a rotating antenna or you need to pick which subset of stations you're going to get.
In terms of the government paying for it? It's the public's airwaves. And the government was going to pull in cash auctioning off the spectrum, and forcing a TV change that a lot of consumers didn't give a damn about. So part of that money would be put towards converter boxes? Seems fine to me.
The government's been running that whole "get a converter box and it'll just work" campaign. Bull. The reception / antenna problem is NOT well documented from "official" sources. I have yet to see a Public Service Announcement that says "Hey, get a free box and drop $500+ on a roof antenna with installation".
I agree...this options should be open to everyone. I have to guess somehow maybe the insurance co's are against this? Or...maybe the govt. doesn't want it easy for the general public to spend their pre-tax dollars as they see fit on medical needs?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My Insignia box explained that it gets its time from the station currently tuned and that time often varied as you've seen with your box.
Except that it isn't a free-market health care system -- at least not 50% of it. About half the money spent in health care is Federal/State money.
Not even the other half is, because almost everybody gets coverage through their employer. This is a *terrible* system because nobody has any real incentive to control costs, and it means if you lose your job you're doubly screwed. Either an actual free market or single-payer would be better than what we have now.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Emergencies, how will my existing radios that pick broadcast television work after analog is gone? As far as a I understand, they will not, unless I come up with some wiring magic from one my converters. Not really a complaint, just something to note.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
They were paid for with the money raised auctioning off the soon to be available bandwidth.
The government made billions of dollars on the deal even after you subtract the value of the coupons.
I ordered a coupon even though we have cable because we may decide to drop cable in the future. The only reason we have it now is because it's $8 a month as part of the HOA fees.
I also have an old WinTV PCI card that is far from digital ready so we may not need it now there is a definite potential for use.
Work Safe Porn
I recently went to the doctor to do a full workup to figure out why I have high blood pressure. As of now, I'm diagnosed with "essential hypertension," meaning "we don't know what's causing it yet."
The cost of a full workup? "A million dollars."
I'm a grad student. I guess I'll continue treating the symptoms rather than the causes. *sigh*
Oh I too "don't have cable." ;)
A "progressive" against progress? Shocking!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I wish I hadn't commented in this thread already, or I'd mod you up. As a Christian, it sickens me to see the Religious Right affiliate themselves with those who oppose loving their neighbors.
I'm sure the entire structure of Heaven is socialistic, the pearly gates are red, and the choir of angels sing "Shehuizhuyi Hao" to YHWH. It's just too bad that humans can be so selfish.
Or so I say as I sit in my parents house using the internet as opposed to volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.
When the government condemns your house so they can build a road over the property, you deserve to be compensated. The government condemned the analog spectrum so they could auction it off. The digital television conversion is a "taking", and the people forced out deserve some compensation for their costs. That compensation is not being paid with tax dollars, but through a portion of revenues from selling off that spectrum.
Shopping around works when:
In many cases of health care purchases, these two conditions are not met.
It's also possible that the insurance industry has realized that many young people make a decision about whether to get insurance or not based on their health -- people who think they're likely to have health problems are VASTLY more likely to find a way to get health insurance. I was a bike racer throughout my 20's and early 30's, in great health, and never had health insurance because I knew I was in good shape. (In the US, you're covered while you're racing, so that wasn't an issue.) I had many, many friends doing the same thing: they were fit and healthy and didn't have health insurance. My friend with diabetes? had health insurance. So did my friend with endometriosis.
So it's possible the rates for young people are high because primarily a select, high-pay-out population gets insurance.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
How long has this been going on for? 10 years? 5 years? Enough with the hand-holding!
Just make the damn switch. I am guessing that people will work out a way to get DTV pretty quick. Since they won't be watching TV, they will have (an average of) 4 extra hours a day to work out a solution.
So if you have to re-point your antenna on your root because the transmitter has moved, your saying that February is the best time to do so? There is no way my mother is going to go up on her roof, in Minnesota, with snow to experiment on the direction to point it. Who thought the middle of winter was a good time to do this?
If only. My family paid for Disney back when it didn't come on standard cable. It was show, show, show, show, show, with no commercials except between shows. The commercials were "at 8 tomorrow see Little Red Riding Hood" or whatever.
Once Disney became a regular channel on cable instead of a premium, they started showing commercials every 10 minutes for shows on Disney. For all intents and purposes, Disney is no longer commercial-free.
Then what an earth did people do before TV? If people are that obsessed with watching braindead sitcoms for six hours each evening then they can put aside $1 for 40 weeks to afford a fucking digibox. I don't see why technology should be held back by a few Luddites.
BGiving birth to a premie is about as unlikely to happen to the average person as getting hit by a bus. It's not that common. And I'm not sure where you got the $100,000 pricetag for heart surgery and ICU? My father had a pacemaker installed and it cost around $10,000. My grandfather spent time in ICU, and it was about $300 a day.
People like yourself tend to exaggerate the health costs. They are expensive, but they are certainly not in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Almost all health costs are less than the cost of buying an SUV.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Oh puleeze. My dad had a full blood woorkup recently and it most definitely did not cost a million dollars. Why do people post these lies about healthcare? In most cases it's no more expensive than a visit to the dentist for a filling or crown.
Anyway his bill was $600. That's about how much the average American spends on cable TV, or annual cellphone service for God's sake. If they can afford to throw-away that much money on trivial BS like TV and cellphones, surely they can afford it for something important like a blood workup.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yes, which is why in the UK with socialised medicine and half the health-care spending per head as the US we have a shortage of doctors entering the field, and a shortage of applicants to medical school.
Oh wait, medical school is still massively oversubscribed, and doctors still get paid huge salaries. Must be that American exceptionalism striking again.
>>>first $6000 for an operation? hah! not in the usa.
Oh well then I guess I just imagined that "$6000" pricetag printed in black ink across white paper (aka the bill) that my niece showed me. Jackass. I don't enjoy people accusing me of being a liar.
As for the lower incomes, I fully support a safety net for health, same as we have housing assistance and food stamps for the poor. I do NOT support giving assistance to middle or upper incomes that can afford to pay their own health, housing, and food bills. It's supposed to be a safety net; those that don't fall off the "highwire" of life don't need the net and can pay their own bills.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That may be a good argument for public services, vital health care, education etc. But not Red Dwarf. Especially series 8. I mean seriously, not being able to watch a tv show for free is killing society?
>>>Small comfort to those who suffer a stroke or heart attack or cancer at younger ages.
That's why we have the government safety net - to catch people who, due to unfortunate circumstances, need help paying their health, housing, or food bills.
The thing about a safety net is that 99% of the population doesn't need it. They either don't get sick (like my aunt who never spent a day in the hospital), or they do get sick but have enough money to cover the cost themselves. The government should only provide assistance for the small 1% who fall off the "highwire" of life and need a net.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What system do you have? The DVB-T Mpeg II system used here in Sweden suck balls and I think we closed the analog network 2 or maybe 3 years ago. I thought it was retarded already back then to not make sure all boxes had Mpeg IV support and eventually sell boxes capable of HDTV to.
As it's now with satellite you get more HD channels and better picture quality and some channels over air looks like shit.
Telia-Sonera offers TV over the telephone network though and afaik quite many have bought it already so that may be one solution to. Atleast it offered many of the better channels for a low price.
>>>insurance industry would be falling over themselves to insure young healthy people for low annual premiums... care to speculate on the fact that they don't?
I don't what alternate reality you live in, but almost every week I get a piece of mail trying to sell me health insurance. It's almost as bad as those damn credit card mailings. The U.S. insurance industry IS falling over themselves trying to drum-up business, because they know that with people aged 60 or less, they earn FAR more money than they payout.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What I find amazing is that those DTV boxes used to cost $200-300 in 2006 (I know; I bought one), and now the newer 2008 units only cost $60-70.
The electronics companies should be congratulated for so effectively reducing the cost in such a short timespan, not denigrated.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>This is true, if you only consider yourself. Hopefully there are enough other people in your local area who are prepared to pay a little bit extra so that others can see Red Dwarf, even though they haven't paid for it.
Why can't they laydown the $25 and buy the Red Dwarf 8 DVDs themselves?
It's not my job to give other people free entertainment.
Let them buy the DVDs with their own labor, not mine.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Nearly all religions support charity to the poor, but they think such charity should be *voluntary* not compulsory, otherwise it is meaningless.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yep. Now contrast that with the Zinwell box which has a manual clock. I can set it to 8:00 and thereby ensure I have a reliable reference when I want to program it to tape 24, or CSI, or whatever.
Don't buy the DTVpal. Buy the Zinwell instead if you need timers. And if you don't need timers, then buy a Channel Master which has the most-sensitive receiver of all the boxes (it gets 21 stations in my area).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There IS interference. My Harrisburg station is broadcasting digital on channel 10. Meanwhile a Philadelphia station is sending analog also on channel 10. This creates problems because the DT10 is not visible even though it's only 30 miles away, and the Analog10 has digital noise overlapping the image.
This dual analog-digital transmission is not really working. It's okay for a temporary basis, but in the longterm there's not enough room in channels 2-51 to support simulcasting both.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It could be interesting to turn them into cheap TV tuners. Take them apart, solder an adapter to the relevant parts of the board, connect that to the COM port, and then feed the signal into your computer (I've yet to see a non-onboard video card still retailing without VIVO). Alternatives: replace the COM solder/controller with an IR stick, LIRC and feed the STB as if you were using a remote (capture from the included remote) - no dismantling required (a little boring)! Or, seeing if you can somehow get the video into the system through something like ethernet or USB (I'm wondering if you could do an unbelievably complex hack by using a hard disk caddy, a hard disk chipset and having the stream fed into the HDD chipset itself, as if it were from a hard drive. I don't know enough about the interface between hard disk and it's chipset, but I'd imagine you'd have to treat the stream somehow - as unlikely as it seems, it would be exciting if you could get the stream through this interface intact). Once you've got it as an OS-recognisable computer stream, it is ludicrously easy to translate that into networked video (VLC is your friend) or anything else useful.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
For old people, they usually lived with extended family and had useful household jobs to do.
For younger people, worked 12+ hours a day so were to tired to do much after work.
Also of course there is the question whether this is an advancement. While going digital in small countries is a no brainer it is more questionable in large countries with spread out populations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's what radio is for. If you live in Kansas, you listen to the radio for weather info, you don't watch the TV. Especially since TV's require lots of electricity to run, which is one of the first things to go out in a major storm.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Those people should be shot, because they're taking food from people who really need it. Fucking entitlement attitude here in America...
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Obama fixed my grandma's analog TV!
OMG the picture you paint of your domestic life is both frightening, twee and well frightening. Where in Canada do you live? It sounds like you live close to the 49th but then maybe not closer than the Yukon....
There are several shows that are in HD and are not compressed. My dad is a digital cable subscriber but still switches to OTA when the show is available because cable has so many compression artifacts. I use OTA only but I am a hold-out. I just hate paying for programming that contains ads. I mean, isn't that what the ads are for?
Vote with your wallet; cancel your cable subscription if your cable company is re-compressing the stream.
Here in SoCal, Cox promised to never recompress the raw signal they get from the networks, so whatever we see is the network's fault, not theirs.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Your dad had a full blood workup. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about a full workup to discover why I have hypertension. That involves CAT scans, MRIs of my kidneys, MRAs of my neck, etc.
And the heart doctor literally used the words "it's a million dollar workup."
For reference, I'm in Texas.
Tell that to the starving person.
We dropped $10 on a converter box and promptly lost half our channels.
They are. They've been running commercials for two years talking about the switch and how to get a break on a box. One of the OTA channels I watch has a bar going across the top of the channel ever y five minutes talking about the switch. The only people that don't knoww about this switch probably don't watch TV.
I'm about 40 miles by road east of Vancouver and maybe 15 miles north of the border. Just that it is fairly mountainous terrain.
The flooding comes from a couple of feet of snow then warming up and 4 to 6+ inches of rain. No one remembers anything like it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
> The FCC is selling a big chunk of the 700MHz UHF spectrum,
> right? So will some of my channels move?
See http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/markets/ and select your city for a list of channels and coverage maps.
Americans living near the Canadian border might be interested in http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/vwapj/DTV_PLAN_Dec08-e.pdf/$file/DTV_PLAN_Dec08-e.pdf (PDF document). It lists Canadian Analog/Transitional/Final frequencies. The Canadian analogue shutdown is scheduled for August 31, 2011
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
...is because he's afraid people won't be able to watch his infomercials during the 2012 election campaign.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I don't think you'd have to re-point, unless they changed the location of the antennas. It's just that other antenna designs work better for HD programming than traditional antennas, but existing ones may do.
You could also look at powered indoor antennas which can help a lot.
It is kind of funny though they decided long ago to do this in winter, like you say not a lot of thought put in there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well here in the EU we are almost done with the switch. I am not sure if there are any regions anymore which are still analog.
It worked out pretty much without flaws.
People on cable basically didnt have to switch, a load of people have satellite receivers those did not have to switch either and many of them already were digital only anyway. That left out around 20% of the population with antennas. Those could get a 30$ refund on the converter boxes. And since the cheaper boxes were around that price it was basically getting such a box for free if you opted for the lowest possible option!
There were almost no complaints in the switch and there was a load of advertisement on TV on how to switch, so the rollout was more or less flawless!
I decided to dump the cable company, and the television/DVR for that matter, and get a EyeTV and a decent antenna for my MacBook. I basically just watch PBS and news anyway, and download movies and TV shows from iTunes. It's not cheap, but I also spend a lot of time out of the country, so for me it makes sense. I'm in a semi-urban area of Philadelphia, so I figured the reception when I'm back in town should be good.
The digital picture looks fantastic, when it works, but it doesn't degrade well at all. Once the signal quality drops below a certain threshold the content becomes rapidly unwatchable. In my experience, even on strong stations I'd inevitably get dropouts, on average every 5 or 10 minutes, where I'd just lose all picture and audio for a second or more. This could be environmental changes, interference, or whatever. Frankly, I don't think digital switch-overs are going to go well anywhere because of this.
With analog TV, you would just tolerate snow or ghosts, but with digital TV if you don't meet some threshold signal level and the tuner loses the key frames, you're hosed. A complete dropout of picture and sound is a horrible user experience. And I'm in a semi-urban area. What about rural viewers?
So to those supporting a fast switch to digital, good luck...
Some digital broadcasts aren't up to full power yet and so DTV signals aren't very good from them. That should be corrected at the changeover.
Our local Fox is still running low power digital, and the NBC station can't keep theirs running. CBS and PBS are further away but we bring in good signals.
Does anyone think they are worried about the poor unready masses? ... REALLY?
NO People .. ..
This is just another example of you not being told the truth.
This is about viewership, ratings, and losses in advertising dollars. This will cause a flux in the base audience size and rates will have to drop
due to that reduction.
They should just tell us the truth, we can deal with it. Don't spin it and take the fabricated
High road.
A good friend of mine is 28 and just got diagnosed with MS. Another good friend got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when he was 25 (3 years ago). The latter guy's meds cost at least $1000 a month. No thanks, I'll stick with insurance.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
First off, I'm not saying this to be an asshat; I am completely serious in suggesting this:
Why not pick up a converter box yourself, and present it to your friend as a gift? It would be a fantastic practical gesture.
www.wavefront-av.com
Hello Moryath,
It sounds like you know what you are doing but here are some idea's on how to resolve your DTV reception issues.
Sounds like you are close in.
Get rid of the antenna preamp. Most have a horrible S/N ratio and just add to the problem with receiver front-end overloading.
Switch to a more onmi directional antenna. This would help with the multi path issue.
Forget the sales hype. DTV is in the same band space as conventional TV. The same antenna's work. The lowest channels frequencies are lower than conventional FM broadcasts. (Ch2-6 55.25-83.25Mhz)
Twin lead has considerably less loss than coax, use it for your down feed, twisting it every so often. Put a balun (4:1 300 to 75ohm) at the bottom.
That's what my salesman said when I bought my Lexus, "This is a million dollar car," but I wasn't naive enough to believe him. It's called marketing and exaggeration, and doctors are no different from salesmen in that respect.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
HMOs were created to control costs, and they do a really good job of it too, but they've developed a bad reputation because of it. I think people just need to learn to accept the blunt fact:
- You're going to a die.
Sure you can go out and spend a million dollars buying yourself a new or artificial heart, or lungs, of whatever else you need, but eventually you *will* succumb. IMHO it's better to accept your fate and save your money to pass to your children, rather than to spend a couple million trying to achieve the impossible (immortality). If my doctor came to me and said, "I can save your life but it will cost $100,000," I'd tell him forget it and prepare myself for the end. I'd rather pass that $100,000 to my children than waste it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Meanwhile you have around 1000 other friends/acquaintances in their 20s who are perfectly healthy.
For them, buying insurance would be like burning $3000 every year. That's why running an insurance company is so profitable; they collect far more money than they pay out. You're being scammed to make some fatcat richer.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
GOD sees the heart. He knows that a man who gives voluntarily is giving from his heart. A man who gives because he's being threatened with jailtime is acting for selfish reasons (to save himself). That's why voluntary giving is superior.
As for myself, I have no problems providing a safety net.
I do Not believe in providing government help to everyone.
Bill Gates for example shouldn't be getting handouts. (Or me for that matter.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I only have an antenna, but I rarely watch TV and I'm perfectly fine with just watching TV on the internet. I think that the rebates more than a little silly (why can't I get a rebate to buy DVDs, or put towards my DSL bill? Maybe because the government doesn't normally buy people everything?). I think that the argument is that people might need TV for updates and information in an emergency, but the government didn't by them the TV in the first place (and doesn't care about people who don't have TVs), we still have radio, and if anyone really cared about TV available for emergencies then we'd keep one analog station open just for that purpose, but we're not. The convertor boxes are just going to be used for entertainment, and it's annoying that the government feels the need to buy people that.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Or...maybe the govt. doesn't want it easy for the general public to spend their pre-tax dollars as they see fit on medical needs?
That doesn't make sense either though. You can get a tax deduction on medical expenses when you file your income taxes if you are so inclined. The big advantage to an HSA or Flex account is that it makes that deduction automatic and also includes your social security/medicare taxes.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Some people are willing to give $100 to support free views of Red Dwarf 8 on PBS. However the money they want to give is OTHER people's money. It's funny how easily people can spend other people's money w/o guilt. To that I respond, "Stop stealing money from my wallet." I feel like I'm being shaken-down by the local mafia.
I'm not giving to PBS. If you like Red Dwarf and want to see Season 8, go spend your OWN damn money to buy the DVDs.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It is not just a question of money I can't get cable or sat at any price. I live in an area "serviced" by comcast but I can't get cable. When they came out to set up the cable and internet they said the signal at the house and at the pole was too low. They left never to be seen again. We gave up and got DSL. My next door neighbor has comcast but he says it works so poorly he has written letters to regional managers etc to no avail. The fact is cable tv is not considered a public utility so they have no requirement to sell their service to you or meet minimum quality standards. In the case of me and my neighbor comcast knows that it is not worth them spending the money to maintain / repair their stuff. Who cares if they loose 2 customers ... it is not like we have any other choice anyway. No fios, and too many trees and on the wrong side of the hill for sat.
Hasn't someone already bought rights to that spectrum? It doesn't belong to the TV stations. Is the government going to keep the money but not give the buyer the spectrum?
That's why I'm wanting to find out if there are any neat hacking projects you can do with these converter boxes.
I wouldn't bother TBH, I don't think there's anything you could do with one.
In the UK we call them "digiboxes", but a bit of Googling doesn't find anything interesting anyone's done with them (except hack the encryption on the boxes for receiving encrypted channels, be that satellite, cable or terrestial).
Yeah, but, don't your health expenditures for a year have to cross some 'threshold' before you can start claiming them? If you're healthy a year...you get no break, but, with a HSA...you can sock that money away pre-tax, and let it grow.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But... Obama said there would be change!
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
Dump the insurance and just pay cash.
I wouldn't go that far, but I would seriously look into a high-deductible plan - mostly you'd act as if you had no insurance, but if something bad happened you'd be out of pocket 5 or 10 grand max. You can also get a combination high deductible/medical savings plan, where you can set aside pre tax money for health costs & any unused money rolls over to an IRA type account at 59 1/2 years old. So if you don't need it, you're saving for retirement, but if you do it's there.
Also, the FSA and the tax return medical deductions aren't the same thing. When you file your taxes, you can only deduct the portion of medical expenses that are in excess of 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. With the FSA, you can deduct every dollar of expenses if you estimate right. As long as your FSA deduction is under your actual expenses, and by less than 7.5% of your AGI, then the FSA is the better bet. In fact, if you are under by more than 7.5%, I beleive you can still take the deduction for the portion over the 7.5% that wasn't covered by the FSA. So really, the FSA is always the same or better deal as long as you don't overestimate by too much.
Two scams here: 1. Gummint allocates fortune for boxes for the "poor". Gummint cronies corner market on boxes that cost $5 bucks to make, sellim to chumps with coupons for $40 bucks and change. 2. Digital signals are 30 to 40% weaker than analog. Millions who get good enough analog broadcast TV now, will get zilch after the switch forcing them to get cable. Comcast wins.
I ditched cable almost ten years ago when the cable company raised rates, dropped some channel or other that I watched (don't remember) and replaced it with the Golf channel and five shopping channels. WTF? Who in their right mind would watch, let alone pay for, a channel that is nothing but commercials?
The Discovery Channel had turned into "trick my truck" with only one or two good shows otherwise, and I was mostly watching tapes, DVDs, and local channels anyway.
The new cable company hooked me up last month, maybe by mistake -- I'd thought my roommate had ordered it but she said she didn't. Now she's watching movies on cable, and UGH, I hate them. They have the damned logo polluting part of the screen real estate, often with distracting animations. They excise all profanity, obscenity, and humor. I hate watching a comedy on the comedy channel, as they invariably censor out all the comedy. I guess humor is equal to pornography in the puritan's mind.
I have the coupons, I'll be buying a converter because there's ust nothing on cable that appeals to me. I absolutely hate the TV version of movies. I still watch the local news, My Name Is Earl, DVDs and tapes and little else.
Free Martian Whores!
That doesn't make any sense. This doctor said, "This is a million dollar workup, so don't have it done." Also, if a doctor lies to you, that's malpractice, and he can be sued for tons of money.
If it takes a Porsche to motivate you through med school, then I don't want you as a doctor anyway.
I drive an Oldsmobile and my wife drives a minivan. We have mortgage-sized student loans. The myth of making huge incomes right out of residency is thoroughly busted outside a few specialties.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Come on, now. Do you use roads? Would you call 911 if you had to? Would you send your kids to a state school?
"I do not believe in providing government help to everyone" is code for "I do not believe in providing certain government programs, and I'm going to arbitrarily pick which ones."
Where do I get all these magical digital freedoms? You make it sound like the Broadcast Flag and DMCA magically vanish with over the air transmission, and the content providers are going to sing Kumbaya with us as we rip their content in the ways we want to.
I have my doubts.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Operations are *always* in the tens of thousands of dollars, even the simple ones.
If that were true, I'd be driving something other than a 1998 Oldsmobile. Frankly, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You should never look at insurance as a potential profit center. It never will be. Insurance is for security. If something should happen to you or your property, you (or your heirs) have some hope of recovery. Now you should be prudent about what type of insurance to get. Term Life is good enough for the young and very cheap.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'll give a concrete real world example of that. I had eye surgery last April. I had four different kinds of eyedrops to take, and needed a prescription to refill one.
I called around to every drug store within twenty miles, and the price of the drops (an antibiotic) varied from $62 to $87. The drug store nearest my house, Walgreens, was the most expensive.
But the co-pay was $24 no matter where I bought the drug, so I could drive twenty miles at four dollars a gallon for gasoline and save my insurance company, who gouges me monthly for premiums, twenty bucks, or I could save my own money and pay the same $24 at the Walgreens as the store 20 miles away.
I got them at Walgreens.
Canadians only pay $22USD for the same drug I had a $24 copay on.
Our system of paying for health care is insane, for every one but the insurance companies.
Free Martian Whores!
Or for that matter he could have simply requested the converter credit anytime in the last year before they ran out of cash and cost him nothing.
I live in Canada and with all the notices on almost every American station there was no way I could avoid knowing about the switch last year. The way they've been beating it into people I almost ordered a converter box.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Yeah, but most of those people don't face the possability of financial ruin everytime they simply talk to a 'client'.
Miss something on a diagnosis = lawsuit
Catch something on a diagnosis = lawsuit
Person dies during risky surgery = lawsuit
You may be the nicest person in the world who only wants to help others but the financial risks of being a doctor as well as the pressure of making life and death decisions, often in very short timelines, on a daily basis can add a lot of stress to a persons life, and for most people financial compensation is what they look at to balance that stress.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
If I'd used the standard implant rather than the one Wikipedia doesn't want you to know about when I had my cataract surgery, the outpatient procedure would have cost $6,000.
It involved the surgeon sticking a needle in my eye, shooting ultrasound down the needle to turn the lens to mush, sucking it out through the needle, and replacing it with an artificial lens.
I paid an extra $1,000 for the newer implant, a variable focus IOL which is on struts and allows natural focus as if I were in my twenties again. I suspect the manufacturer's competetion, who only offer single focus and multifocal lenses (similar to bifocal or trifocal eyeglasses), edit out mention of the one I have.
Free Martian Whores!
When I first had cable in Florida in the early 80s it was great. You paid $10 per month for all the local channels plus HBO, Discovery (which didn't yet suck), AMC, TBS, CNN, Disney, ESPN, and several more. There were no stupid logos polluting the screen, and the shows were uncut, uncensored, and commercial-free.
Now you have the same channels, except there are five CNNs (including equivalents), five shopping channels, Golf (I hate golf), so many sports channels that they have pool and poker as "sports", HBO cost extra, empty-v no longer shows music videos, all obscenity, vulgarity, and humor is censored out, and there are invasive logos (often annoyingly and distractingly animated), and more commercials than over the air used to have.
Like the Springsteen song says, 57 channels and there's nothing on.
Free Martian Whores!
Scam? I think you have a misunderstanding of what the point of insurance is. Whether it is good value is another matter entirely.
My first TV (as a personal posession) was a hand-me-down and was a 12" BW unit.
The first TV I was able to buy for myself was a used 19" CRT TV. I bought it
from paper route money. It was pretty old then when I got it. It was the first
color TV in my household.
You have 0.0 clue what you're bitching and moaning about.
Plenty of people are bad enough off that paying to clean
up the results of some government mandate are very low
on their list of priorities.
Someone else mentioned a little thing like FOOD and electricity.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, so the Porche comment was totally assinine.
First Doctors have to get past the hurdle of their student loans and malpractice insurance that COSTS MORE THAN YOU MAKE.
Compared to that, a Porche is actually pretty trivial.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
the tiny toons reference was a reference to looney toons, which was a reference to Of Mice and Men. Now queue the star and in 3 2 1
"The more you know"
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
100K for a "broken leg".
It sounds like someone saw you people coming and decided to milk you for all you were worth.
ER care and whatnot is expensively priced but 100K is slightly rediculous.
A sleazy PI lawyer would be hard pressed to work that up into a 100K injury. ...and for the record: care for automobile related injuries are best handled ...another case of people being to fend for themselves if only they bother to.
with riders on your car/motorcyle policy. They tend to be cheap, state mandated
and zero to no bullshit. So you can see the practicioner(s) of your choice
without needing 3 pre-authorizations in blood before getting treated.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
HMO's are assinine. They encourage people to make claims for "small things"
and to treat everything as "free". They drive up usage unecessarily while
incurring transaction processing costs equal the the cost of treatment.
They completely insulate people from cost or consequences.
Nevermind how much HMO doctors suck...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
These sorts of plans also get you the insurance company prices.
Even if you do pay out of your own pocket you pay a lower price.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Umm... The gov did help out the poor and such by offering the free converter box coupons. They have been available for at least a year now. All you had to do was all a 1-800 number or use a website IIRC. If you were watching TV at all during that time you got bombarded with commercials and other notices telling you about it. I didn't get any because I don't need them. I only have 1 TV that lacks a digital tuner, and I don't use it for OTA, so I left them for people that really did need them.
> To be clear, there are many good programs on PBS. The good programs would easily survive on our "pay by advertising" TV and radio.
Let's see... on one side we've got PBS. On the other side we've got the likes of CNN and FoxNews.
Do you seriously believe that crap you're saying?
We need PBS/NPR around just so that there's something that's not
"pandering" to whatever demographic they happen to think they're
selling ads to.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
bingo, if they pull this back they are really bending over backwards for people that really can't be helped by anyone. seriously, the efforts made have been more than reasonable, anyone who watches tv knows about this program already. even my elderly neighbors figured it out.
but comcast and other cable subscribers are currently giving "free cable" for a year or something if people sign up for phone or internet service. I just got a thing in the mail saying you can buy their lowest tier broadband for like $25. for those people who don't want to buy that converter box, that's an option. basic cable itself is something like $8 a month and still gives you more than OTA.
;)
when I moved to my apartment, I got the $45 HSI [fios is still not here yet, grr], and they gave me that same full year of basic cable. outside of that it's like $11 a month or something, but I only really watch a few shows and sports and that's about it. I use the 'net more.
I know the argument comes up that cable is compressed, etc etc. but I agree with the others; you got a chance to get a box/antenna for practically cheap or zero, and you didn't go for it even though it's been announced for well around a year or so. now you're angry that you're not prepared? how's that "shame on you" thing go from president bush again?
for the person who was saying that the converter box doesn't help with the weak signal, if that program is THAT IMPORTANT to you, then just get cable. I'm all for free use and all, but I'm not for people complaining about stuff and not willing to do anything about it.
Actually, they need the government converter box to be able to use the television looted in the last riot.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
I don't what alternate reality you live in, but almost every week I get a piece of mail trying to sell me health insurance. It's almost as bad as those damn credit card mailings.
True, but they are either trying to sell you inexpensive insurance that doesn't actually cover anything, or expensive insurance that does.
If they thought the odds of you ever needing it were actually practically nil, you'd be getting lots offers of inexpensive insurance that provided good coverage.
Meanwhile you have around 1000 other friends/acquaintances in their 20s who are perfectly healthy.
If that were true it should be possible to run a VERY profitable insurance company, charging 20 year olds $10/mo. They'd take in $10,000/mo in premiums, and pay out less than $2000.
Perhaps you should start an insurance company for people in their twenties. $10/mo for good coverage? I'd sign up in a heartbeat. Well... I'd sign up if I didn't think you'd immediately go bankrupt.
Sorry, your math just doesn't work. Insurance companies are generally profitable, but their is no way they'd be insanely profitable at $10/mo per 20 year old.
Except that it isn't a free-market health care system -- at least not 50% of it. About half the money spent in health care is Federal/State money. And that's what drives up prices. You have the private sector competing with the public sector for finite health care resources.
Although healthcare is primarily socialised in the UK, we also have a private sector. The situation overall is very far from problem-free, but it doesn't seem to suffer from the one that you describe. Perhaps you need *more* socialised healthcare?
No, I'm not sure how seriously I meant that, but it does suggest that either the problem is with the private:public balance or that that wasn't the specific problem at all.
At any rate, this is an interesting take on the situation explaining why adverse selection in relatively unregulated private insurance may be driving prices up and why the US seems to suffer most badly from this.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This made sense, because VHF antennas are large, bulky, expensive, and difficult to install, and because _currently_ all digital television frequency assignments are in the UHF band.
Parent makes a good point but with a slight inaccuracy:
Some DTV have been VHF for years:
In Kansas City KMBC analog channel 9 has been DTV channel 7 for years -- I specifically bought a large bulky VHF-UHF combo antenna just for this reason.
yes, it is horrible that you'll have to spend money on your friend due to his procrastination. the important part is understanding that it's that procrastination that's at fault, not the government. I'm not a huge fan of the performance of most government aid programs, but seriously, i have next to no sympathy for anyone that's getting 'left out' here. we're looking at 1 month left until the changeover is coming out, and they're 'starting' to run out of money. this program has been going on all last year at least, and the commercials on this television that your friend is so dependant of have been common since that time, progressively more so as we got closer. When you wait until dinner's wrapping up to get yourself a plate, don't come complaining when all that's left is scraps, or that they're cold.
That could be why dermatology is one of the most competitive residency programs to get into.
I would doubt that. Nearly all TVs sold today have ATSC tuners built in. Once converters are out there for the legacy TVs out there, it becomes a dead market. That said, I'm picking up a converter for my TV that does have a built in ATSC tuner because the built in one sucks. The converter for my other TV is fantastic. I'd plug it, but I can't remember what brand I actually bought...
Huh. Well that's good to know. I haven't noticed the issue with the DTVPal yet, but I'm going to be using the timers, so that's an important feature for me.
BGiving birth to a premie is about as unlikely to happen to the average person as getting hit by a bus. It's not that common. And I'm not sure where you got the $100,000 pricetag for heart surgery and ICU? My father had a pacemaker installed and it cost around $10,000. My grandfather spent time in ICU, and it was about $300 a day.
That's why insurance *works*. The people who it doesn't happen to pay for the people it does happen to. When exactly did your grandfather go to the ICU? Prices are in the $3000 a day range, at least: cite. I've had a couple relatives in the ICU for close to a month. Heart transplants are even more expensive.
People like yourself tend to exaggerate the health costs. They are expensive, but they are certainly not in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Almost all health costs are less than the cost of buying an SUV.
My insurance company paid close to a million dollars for my premature twins. What am I supposed to do with a million dollar hospital bill? "Almost all" does nothing to help the people who actually do have massive bills. There's no way I could save up a million dollars to pay for health care, and no way I could pay the interest on a million dollar loan if I had to get one to pay my hospital bill.
The *only* way modern health care can work is by sharing the risk through insurance; socialized or otherwise.
Also, you are overestimating the cost of SUV ownership; a 5 year old SUV will have ~half of its value left at tradein, making each subsequent purchase about $15,000, using your average.
Was tempted to leave it, but I'll cover your post and the GP post in one shot.
First, the GP - yes, at the last stage of my post, I was generalising my point to cover what would happen were this attitude of "I'll only pay for myself" to continue unchecked, forever. Sometimes you have to sit back, look at things, and figure out where your current compass course will eventually lead you.
Second, the post above - you've crossed a wire somewhere while reading my post. I was suggesting donating *personal* money, like the original poster was being asked to do (by PBS). Not government money. Heck, I'll happily donate $100 to this man's local PBS to pay for RD8.
No argument with you. You're entitled to take that position.
It's not my job to pay for things for other people either.
But if someone paid for me to see some entertainment for free, I'd be happy. Remember the last time someone did something or gave you something, for nothing in return? Remember how good that felt?
Again, though, you are entitled to take any position you like.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/ Also there's this:
The Gray-Hoverman antenna designs, schematics, and diagrams on this site are Copyright ©2008 and are free: you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at our option) any later version.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Where do I get all these magical digital freedoms? You make it sound like the Broadcast Flag and DMCA magically vanish with over the air transmission
The broadcast flag was cast off long ago, the FCC decided not to require adherence to it (and no stations are going to use it).
The video broadcast is all plain MPEG2 anyway - even if they later added the flag, all you need is equipment that ignores it. All equipment you can buy today ignores it...
Thus you get totally open MPEG2 video you can do whatever you want with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Everyone knew about the switch for more than a year and they had plenty of time to prepare. Anyone who doesn't know about the switch or isn't prepared is either an idiot or living under a rock. They should have done the switch earlier. I'm sick of seeing the ads about the switch.
Why couldn't we let market forces play in a bit? For example, why can't we wait until analog broadcasts aren't economically feasible? It seems that the rapid adoption of digital TV would make most analog channels economically unfeasible rather soon, anyway.
No, I will not work for your startup