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Senate Approves 4-Month Delay In Digital TV Switch
DJRumpy sends word that the US Senate has voted to delay the switch to digital TV until June. "The transition date would move to June 12 from February 17 under the bill that was fueled by worries that viewers are not technically ready for the Congressionally mandated switch-over. It would also allow consumers with expired coupons, available from the government to offset the cost of a $40 converter box, to request new coupons. The government ran out of coupons earlier this month, and about 2.5 million Americans are on a waiting list for them."
And then it'll be December 17.
One motion! Right off!
This a bad move by an equally mismanaged program. They say that there was not enough funding for the demand for coupons, but then the number of coupons exceeds the estimate of TVs receiving through broadcast signals. Most of those boxes are now for sale on eBay. And this does not even touch on the lobbying from the cable industry and other vested $$$ interests. Bad move.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
One of my stations switched recently anyways; other than telling my TV to check for a digital station on that channel, no issues. Picture improved, though it's pretty obvious that they're merely feeding it an analog signal through a converter for now.
While I'd push more funding in for the coupons; I have the feeling that many/most on that list don't actually need a box. Talking with various people, there's a lot getting them 'just in case' even though they get cable/dish. For that matter, I bought one for my CRT TV about a month before a great deal had me buying a new LCD TV.
The final point I'd have is that, at this point, delaying the switch won't get you that many more digital capable homes - many are procrastinating, and will continue to do so until they can't get broadcast TV.
Meanwhile I'd like to see those applications for the freed up bandwidth to actually happen. Of course, I saw on conspiracy theory that those wanting a delay have or are looking to bring out competing products.
I don't read AC A human right
Seriously senate, wev all seen the commercials and tv specials on our local news about this switch. And all of us in the tech know have been ready for months. Just do the switch and force those who were too lazy, to finally get their converter boxes.
People want CH 2 HD in Chicago to move to better signal will this slow that down?
I'm not talking about the "will delaying the transition allow everybody who has been ignoring the constant barrage of ads to ignore them some more" debate. February 17 is (soon to be "was") a date all broadcasters must stop BY. It doesn't mean you have (had) to stop ON that date. A local broadcaster actually just turned off their analog tower yesterday.
I'm wondering if many broadcasters will just choose to switch over on the 17th anyway, as the ball is already rolling, so to speak. It'd probably cost them a decent amount of money and wasted resources not to go ahead with the original plan.
(I could be wrong; there could be wording in the bill forcing broadcasters to wait off.)
Seriously, if you're watching TV and your color TV suddenly is B&W on every channel, and so is your buddy's, even the clueless idiot is going to drag his ass to the TV asile of walmart and start asking questions. You still get TV, and HDTV is avalible, but SDTV is black and white which will prompt people to go to the store and at least consider a HD tuner.
moox. for a new generation.
So how many of those 2.5 million are scammers and huckesters who are bilking the elderly and inept as we muddle through this insane clusterfuck? This mess is enough to turn the most die hard quasi-socialist into a small government, free market libertarian in the span of about 7 seconds.
Plus, now I've got to deal with four more months of commercials regarding this switch....ON MY CABLE FUCKING TV!!!! yeah, thanks comcast, thank you for reminding me every 29 seconds that the DTV switch is coming.
I need to drink more.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Perhaps I'm ignorant, but won't ~90% of broadcasters just stop broadcasting their analog signal anyway?
I mean, wasn't the whole mandate originally designed for FORCE broadcasters to change their equipment, and now that the date was looming, and plans had been solidified, why wouldn't most of them just turn off their analog anyway?
If in fact that happens, that will demonstrate that this move was not designed to help consumers at all...
The cable companies have been using the February switchover as subterfuge for their own plans.
For about a year, Comcast have been advertising that their customers can "keep on watching their favorite shows" after the switch with no changes needed. Very recently, the wording of their ads changed. Now all they say is that if you use their set-top-box, then you're covered.
I decided to call them and ask for the real answer.
Me: I see that you've changed the wording in your ads. Will my service change in February?
Comcast: blah blah blah blah affected blah blah.
Me: Would you please repeat that?
Comcast: blah blah blah blah affected blah blah.
Me: Wait. Will I be affected, or will I not be affected?
Comcast: You will be affected.
Me: How?
Comcast: You will lose some channels.
Me: Really! Which ones?
Comcast: We don't know yet.
Me: Well, how many channels will I lose?
Comcast: Between 7 and 10.
Me: I see. For a year you've been lying to us and you still won't tell us the truth. By the way, why does the Comcast have to change anything?
Comcast: We don't. The timing is coincidental.
Me: Fuck you!
Wow...look how much money we can make off of this 'transition'!!! And the longer it takes to accomplish, the more we can make!! Lobby for a delay!! Now!! Screw the public!!!!!!
Do what the treasury does. Out of money? Print more. Out of coupons? Duh, print more.
This is sooo important. We must be sure all Americans can watch sitcoms. What will they do with their time otherwise? And I have no problem paying for it. None at all, I love helping people so they can watch tv and be entertained. Our government is so responsible with our money.
The coupons would be better spent toward a new set that can receive DTV without a converter.
PBS claimed that delaying the conversion would cost them $22 million. Is that a check we have to write now lest we get sued?
And B&W will look fine.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The old buggers in the Senate probably just figured out how to work a DVD player and now are too afraid of the change to digital TV.
read some interesting stuff at mightyinteresting.com
The media is scared shitless that millions of households won't have converter boxes installed by the Feb. date, which, coincidentally, is during one of the "sweeps weeks" for broadcasters. Millions of eyeballs not able to watch tv will mean several millions in lost advertising revenue in a time when tv is already showing declining viewership among the more coveted demographics. Broadcasters prefer putting off the deadline till the beginning of summer when most everything on tv are reruns and viewership is at its lowest.
If TV is really that important to you, I think you can spend on a $40 converter box w/o depending on gov't handouts...
I'm just wondering when the offshore pirate broadcasts in protest are going to start. It doesn't take much to start a pirate TV station (most HAM radio FSTV transmitters can be tuned to other frequencies than are allotted in the HAM bands). Rig a boat with a studio, anchor in international waters, crank up the transmitter power, and go wild.
Also makes me wonder if the business is open up here in Canada and down south in Mexico to start border blasters.
Not another four months of listening to the "Are you ready for the digital transition commercials?"...
It would also allow consumers with expired coupons, available from the government to offset the cost of a $40 converter box, to request new coupons.
Wait a second... why wouldn't you print all such coupons to expire the day after the planned switchover? What possible reason is there to have them expire early?
Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
Currently we have 116 channels of mind-numbing NTSC channels.
After the switchover we will have several hundred more mind-numbing ATSC channels.
For the cable companies, this means that they will have more (apparent) capacity on their head-end equipment. Unfortunately they have decided it is more important to hand out executive bonuses rather than do the inevitable infrastructure upgrades necessary for the public to notice a difference in digital quality. (The cable companies have the luxury to choose when the switchover happens for their customers that are using the cable box or non-ATSC television (tuner). The rest of the CATV audience with an analog CATV ready TV can be allocated a smaller and smaller analog channel lineup to persuade them to either get a cable box or a new TV.)
For the OTA audience, let them visit the "TV repair shops" for an expensive lesson in Digital Broadcast Transmission.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Not trolling but honestly, why was this article flagged as corruption? Who really gains by pushing this out longer other than the people who are either 1. oblivious or 2. lazy?
I agree with the posters who say just do it. Personally I use Optimum so mine is covered on their end but it could be a nice little jolt to the economy having a bunch of people running out to buy HD tvs, cable packages or converter boxes.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
I have been waiting for 3 years for this change over.
Most of the stations I receive will increase their digital streanth. One channel will change frequency and I need to know if I can get that one or I will have to point the antenna to another city.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Yes, this will slow that down. Note that channel 7 will make the OPPOSITE move and go to VHF.
Technology moves on. Did the government give people who owned horses coupons to buy fords?
its TELEVISION, not national defense or health care.
Government spending is fine on a good cause, but I don't call the coffers of converter box manufacturers a good cause.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
What? Is there a chance that all those TV addicts won't be able to see Obama and Oprah? How sad.
And tell me again why the government should be in charge of health care?
And Obama's advisor who makes money from the current situation gets a little richer.
Or at least, the guy everyone is saying is going to be appointed by Obama to the job: Julius_Genachowski
You know, a board member of a number of media-related organizations like Common Sense Media, and Chief of Business Operations at IAC/Interactive.
Of course, he's a supporter of so-called 'net neutrality' (as all his business ventures are online-based), which is probably a good thing (depending on your POV) because it affects his bottom line, but at the same time, they're antagonizing all the broadcasters that have spent millions investing in the technology needed for this cutover by the date set over 4 years ago. Not to mention Qualcomm, AT&T, and Verizon, who spent millions to set up their MediaFLO network with the expectation that the analog channels would be freed up for their use by this date.
Lesson to these guys: Next time, make sure to contribute more to the Messiah's campaign.
TV is a luxury item, absolutely non-essential. So why is the government paying for people to be able to receive TV?
The people who should be paying for it are the TV companies, and the advertisers, ie. those who profit from millions of slack-jawed yokels staring at the tube all day.
Fundamentally, the guovernment seems to be guaranteeing access to TV for all. So what if you don't own one, should they provide you with a unit? Or if yours breaks down, should they pay to repair it?
I just don't get how and why the gov't got involved.
Here in Australia, politicians are having the same debate.
- There is no point, it's like a sphere -
Do they even make HD converter boxes? I've got an older Samsung HD monitor without a built-in tuner. We have cable, but the HD quality sucks. I'd like to at least try the OTA stuff, but it's wasted on the big TV. I don't want a combo DVR/DVD Recorder/whathaveyou that I've seen - do they just make a simple external OTA HD tuner that you can hook up to your TV??
I've debated about trying to find an HD tuner to add to my Vista Media Center, but I don't know if it's powerful enough to process the HD signal. Maybe I've got it wrong, though.
Worked out better for us. Don't know about the economy overall, but for us it was a deal, it made it so the old set is still functional, and it improved it immensely! Like a really good cheap upgrade! Got the coupon, bought a zenith 901 converter, and we get more stations now and they come in *clear*, out in north cow flop rural Georgia. Before, stations were all fuzzy, none of them clear, plus we picked up PBS, which we couldn't get at all before. Granted, you can *not* screw with the antenna once it is set, but once you have it adjusted ~just so~, it's great, the old tube has the best picture evar, like watching a disk. That's a dollars-intangible personal subjective improvement, but the lessening of the fuzzy stations annoyance factor has some net worth. And that is just using indoor rabbit ears! And despite other folks anecdotals, we haven't experienced much in the way of bad weather dropouts.
The only thing I don't like about the digital conversion is, we have two old battery portable units to use for during power outtages, and there are few replacements for those on the market yet and all spendy (compared to 15 dollar analog portable sets you can get still). There's a market niche that needs to be filled, I am sure many other people would like to have a portable digital TV in the affordable category. If I have to I'll just get another converter and run both devices from a 12 volt battery and an inverter. I have that rig now but use it for my laptop when the power goes out.
With that said, I wish the government would just broadcast a plain vanilla constantly updated local weather radar scan (that can be analog on some locked assigned frequency maybe), the weather radios don't quite cut it without that visual. That would be another improvement.
So, for some small spending, cash out of pocket plus my citizen tax payer share of the proceeds from the public spectrum auction in the form of the converter coupon, we get much better TV quality, and more stations, without having to purchase a new TV or go to monthly big bill satellite TV. Is that good or bad for the economy? For us it was a good enough deal. And who knoweth but maybe the freed up spectrum (the other 1/2 of the digital conversion package that will be used somehow) might go to someone getting wireless broadband that works out here, lead pipe cinch there isn't going to be anything wired ever run, no company is going to run anything decent for more than a mile to maybe pickup a total of six households, just ain't never gonna happen. And that is roughly 15% of the nation that still can't get any sort of broadband. And the benefits of broadband/internet are well understood. I use the net all the time to look stuff up we need for farming (just the amount of crap that breaks and needs new parts makes online shopping worthwhile) or to research things for my various geekier projects, saves a ton of time and driving around expense and cash dollars when we go to spend them. Dialup is good enough for that (although more expensive than most peoples broadband now), but for keeping a linux distro updated (or even getting the distro downloaded) it is the pits though...
I was actually looking forward to the overall big digital switch day, to see if we got even more channels as the stations went more power. We have an outside mast antenna, but it is more or less whipped and dysfunctional, if the big changeover goes very well, I will consider getting a rotor and a newer antenna to max out the freebie viewing experience (brand/make/model suggestions from anyone knowledgeable gratefully accepted).
Because right now you get both kinds of signal in most markets. That's why we got the zenith, it has analog pass through, so you can get either kind of signal. And even after the changeover, a lot of smaller powered community stations around the country will be staying with an analog signal. I dont know the particulars to the one you replied to, but it might be because the person's fav channel was analog only at this time, but they wanted to be prepared for the switch.
Yes, there will be a ton of people that will be rushing to get their converter boxes a week before the switch and a tons more after.
BUT why not use the emergency weather broadcast system? If you keep annoying people with a 4 second notice every half hour for several months during usual tv programming, then people will know.
But maybe that makes too much sense
And that space that was sold in the auction? Is the government going to reimburse the people who purchased the leases on this space that will be continued to be used? I smell another bailout..
Horse shit, there is no fence. These assholes (government, network TV, viewers) have had four years to get ready for this. Anyone dragging their feet over a $49US converter box is just a lazy shit-bum. Remember folks, TV is a luxury item that you don't need. It shouldn't be subsidized. If you want to continue watching it, get a converter. Simple as that. You've all had ample time to get the converter. The fact that 2.5 million people are on the waiting list tells me that there are 2.5 million lazy sons-of-bitches that will NEVER get with the program as long as there are delays. Remember when Al Gore said we had ten years to fix global warming? These same fuckers are waiting for the government delay on that too.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
I hope when the analog stations go off the air, they do the old horizontal line to a bright dot in the center of the screen. Like Outer Limits did at the end of the show.
Back in 2005 when the "Digital Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005" was passed by congress mandating DTV:
Republicans controlled both houses of congress.
The corrupting influence of lobbies in Washington during that time is beyond dispute (evidenced by their growth in numbers and the scandals that have broken).
The FCC was run by Michael "I don't know what public interest means." Powell.
The lobbies for over-air broadcasters likely could have influenced the timing of the transition and yet they didn't see any problem with having the transition occur near their sweeps?
Give them what they asked for.
Too many people watch too much t.v. Pull the switch.
What a process like that actually does is concentrate wealth/resources. Whether that constitutes "harming" the economy depends entirely upon one's values, ethics, and "economic party" (Capitalist, Socialist, Libertarian, Anarchist, etc.). I would guess you must be a socialist of sorts, but I have to tell you, many people for better or worse don't see the behavior you described as "harmful" at all.
It's that ethical failure, possibly delusional, to see the harm it causes that is the real danger, especially here in the United States (thanks to our own peculiar brand of indoctrination over the last century). We can't even agree on what constitutes harm. We can't agree on that because a significant segment of the population is so utterly self-centric that if it doesn't harm them or their own close circle, then it's simply not harm to them. The apparent lack of empathy for strangers is so pervasive that you might think half the population is autistic or something.
There doesn;t appear to be any bill on file.
Search http://thomas.loc.gov/ for coupon, and you get three results:
2 HR, and something different in the Senate...
Were that I say, pancakes?
As was previously posted on slashdot, Obama's chief advisor on the DTV transition was a Clearwire executive.
Clearwire, in cooperation with Sprint, is currently rolling out its WiMAX network. It faces competition from vendors attempting to rollout the competing LTE standard - on the TV bandwidth to be freed up by the DTV transition (for which they've already paid the government billions of bux in bandwidth auctions).
Delaying the transition delays the LTE rollouts - which both allows Clearwire to grab more market share and delays revenue from their investments to the LTE carriers.
Looks like Chicago politics has gone national. B-)
= = = =
PS: For those who are talking about forced purchase of converter boxes as an "economic stimulus": It's NOTHING compared to the LTE rollout that is on hold, locking up capital and creating huge opportunity costs.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So, criticizing Obama counts as "flamebait" now? Is Obama the new Apple on /.?
I think he has raises a good question: Is Obama tech savvy or not? This move to delay the switchover seems to imply he is not.
Not trolling but honestly, why was this article flagged as corruption?
Because Obama's adviser on the DTV transition was an executive VP at Clearwire, which (with Sprint) is rolling out a WiMAX network. The competition (notably Verizon) is about to roll out LTE on the bandwidth being freed by the DTV transition (which they bought at auction for billions.)
Delaying the DTV transition for months delays the LTE rollout ditto, while Clearwire captures more market share and the competitors' capital is locked up in useless assets that are producing no revenue.
See this slashdot article for more.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"I have a Black and White analog TV and I vote!" .. now... off my lawn!
Flamebait? Another way the clueless mod the intelligent. In the above context the "stupid" are those who whatever reason haven't gotten the fact that analog is going away. Hysteria ensues and it becomes a "tax" on the intelligent as we now have to wait.
They have plenty of coupons. They just don't have any money to back them up. I'm surprised they didn't keep issuing them anyway and send retailers an IOU.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I have the feeling that many/most on that list don't actually need a box. Talking with various people, there's a lot getting them 'just in case' even though they get cable/dish.
My household has Comcast cable, but the basic service doesn't have the PBS subchannels, so we don't get (say) Make Way for Noddy on PBS Kids without the converter. We also have a TV in a bedroom without a cable outlet.
So, ome of our local stations is planning to switch early. On February 6th to be exact. So I'm guessing that the Feb 17th date was a "must switch by" date but earlier was OK. Unless the new legislation has been written to prohibit switching early, what's to stop stations from sticking to the Feb 17th date?
Have gnu, will travel.
This will cost so much money it's not funny. Broadcasters have spent BILLIONS combined to switch over their equipment by Feb 17... and for what? They get to pay an massive gouge amount of digital broadcast equipment. In the end, what was the purpose of it? Set a date and stick to it. No one saves money on this... and isn't that what the Govt SHOULD be doing now?
Why is the government giving them a $40 coupon - dont they already get their tv for free while the rest of us pay $40 a month?
We never went metric either.
These cats were getting paid to say whatever their bosses told them to. I understand that you are primarily condemning Comcast here, but really? Sticking it to a phone monkey? I've been there man, it's a bad enough job as it is. Fun fact: If you sense that you have gotten a phone monkey who knows what they are talking about, speaking strictly in hypotheticals is an excellent way to get solid information off a solid rep.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Yeah, but if you're 12 miles offshore you'll need to broadcast a pretty high power signal. And unless you are ferrying batteries out to your transmitter, that means buying a lot of gas. Which, if you haven't noticed, is expensive these days.
The reception in remote areas is still pretty bad. Personally I think the signal for analog was better. Many portable TV's are going to go to waste.
Why do I have to request new coupons to replace my expired ones? Why doesn't the Congress just force the expired ones to be honored?
Blast, I was really hoping the whole thing would be over soon. I'm tired of hearing about it. I don't watch TV and don't care about TV and I've known about the switch for a long time. If there's really anyone who doesn't already know, they've either been living in Antarctica for the past two years or manage to care even less than I do (and that would be quite a feat). Seriously, there will always be someone who doesn't know, just switch already.
--Maven
Looks like Chicago politics has gone national. B-)
Hey, it's change you can believe in!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
At our new home of two months, reception is marginal on a few channels. I've been holding on for that last month wondering whether power will be diverted to HD when analog goes down so my problem will disappear. Or whether I need an amp and a better antenna. If they move the channels back to VHF when analog goes down will any given amp and antenna combo I buy now be optimal at VHF?
This is really annoying. We've been on broadcast HD for something like 2-1/4 years and I don't think that earns us any early-adopter bragging rights. If the Senate wants to please the greatest slice of the normal curve, I think they have aimed very low.
Well, I don't qualify for a coupon. So four months more means, four months longer I get to watch TV on TV then I will be limited to what I can watch online. Anyone wanna give me their coupon?
There is exactly one good reason why the mandatory cutoff date for digital (without requiring existing stations to delay any plans to switch next month) should be moved foward a few months. In the Rocky Mountain areas, it's winter time, and some transmitters are essentially inaccessible during February because they are snowed in. It's rather tricky to switch over a transmitter when you can't even roll a truck to it.
Of course we know that the main reason is still the Clearwire guy in the Obama cabinet.
I've been watching only digital for what, five years now? During the first year of that, I even stopped watching the Fox station because they only had an 800 watt (as in eight light bulbs) transmitter at that time, my HD tuner box didn't have an analog tuner and I didn't want to keep switching back and forth. Also, in the past few months, I haven't had to go up and precisely re-align my antenna after winds blow it around, so some of the stations must have improved their signal relatively recently.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
So, All the money that was spent too market "the switch" is now a waste. All those "on Feb 17th..." commercials and other marketing materials are wasted money that the Gov. will have to to again, and spend more money to "inform the masses" about the delay! Can we change the old saying to add stupidity? "Only 3 things are constant in life... death and taxes - and stupidity."
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
http://www.multichannel.com/article/162373-Verizon_Flip_Flops_On_DTV_Delay.php?rssid=20059/
If the people you allege are hurt by the government action are supporting the action, there's no real basis to say the action is being taken as a result of corruption by the people you allege are helped by it.
I have OTA from a roof antenna, which gets all the nYc HDTV stations with no problem. I also have a set of rabbit ears out in the office, hooked up to an old analog set (think grandma). This gets all the NYC analog stations with good but not perfect reception. I'm 40 miles north of NYC but with a line of sight down the Hudson River. Yesterday I hooked up a converter box to the rabbit ears for digital. I was able to get ONE station, and even that was not a stable picture. Looks like I need to run another cable from the rooftop antenna. Easy for me, but Grandma's going to have issues. Even so, we need the radio spectrum. How about using channel 4, 71 mhz, for WiMax ? (Best over hill coverage of any of the TV channels)
I was thinking about the changeover and it occurred to me that this is where the OJ Simpson jury pool could have come from.
I guess the government doesn't want a lot of unhappy people sitting at home without a TV to numb their minds for 4 hours a day.
Imagine if everyone's TV's stopped working at once during the first month Obama is in office? It'd be like the next Katrina for his administration! Plus, then people might start thinking for themselves... it could get ugly.
...you don't need a TV.
Duh.
One client of ours is paying $30,000 - $40,000 per month to keep their Analog broadcasts going... they can't wait for the shut off. (This is for 5 channels with 30-something terrestrial locations.)
Those analog transmitters take a lot of juice.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I don't care much whether they delay or not, but I think what they SHOULD do is shut down the signals on Feb 17th as planned, but only for 24 hours. Then, tell the whiners "ok, we've been warning you for years now, that was your final warning". Then shut it off on the new deadline without any additional delays - because you know there WILL be more complaining when that day rolls around too.
Of course, this would all have to also depend on the gov't actually getting those coupons out to everybody - THAT you can't blame them for.
Don't they get it everyone is happy with the analog system and it is working fine no one cares to switch. The whole think is a revenue boost for best buy and cable providers.
Who would want to be the president who 2 weeks after being in office takes television away from 20% of the country. It does not matter if the new president was Republican or Democrat. You could see this one coming on for a long time.
vi +
How the eff do they know that people haven't switched over? Seems to me that if you're still working off rabbit ears, you probably don't have a whole lot of contact with the outside world. Besides, it's not like these rumored slackers haven't had YEARS to deal with it. And then there's the issue of the recovered whitespace which a lot of companies are itching to build devices for. Is this a ploy by the new administration to shout "Do Over!" and then auction off the whitespace to make money for the bailout?
I have one of those converter boxes. Hooking it up to the same cheap antenna I had used for analog broadcasts, the quality of reception is much much lower. Lots of digital artifacts, choppiness, etc. The digital degrades much less gracefully than the analog broadcasts. I live in a decent-sized city, and we're talking local stations not broadcasting from particularly far away. So for the average consumer, particularly the type who were not willing/able to pay for cable or satellite before, the switchover is a Bad Thing, even if they get the free converters.
Now, to respond in advance to those who will tell me to go buy a better antenna to partially fix the problem- sure, I could do that. Of course, that means that the conversion causes yet another consumer expense, another reason the conversion is bad for the average person.
In my particular case, I very rarely bother to watch TV, except for local weather and occasional local news. My computer is already the better way to be entertained. So I don't have a big stake in whether my TV works. But there are plenty out there who are likely to be pissed when they discover how badly their The Price Is Right comes in now.
I don't disagree that the connections to Clearwire and WiMAX smells fishy, but important to note here is that Verizon has changed its original stance and is now supporting a DTV delay, so maybe the LTE rollout wasn't as ready as they'd have hoped.
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/01/verizon-does-180-says-it-now-supports-a-dtv-delay.ars
Personally, I think the bandaid just needs to be ripped off. The same idiots that aren't ready, won't be ready.
it doesn't make sense to have these coupon programs when the economy is doing so bad. i'm sure there are much better uses for the money spent on this program. i blame special interest groups and their gifts.
Excellent idea. I wish I had mod points for you.
"coupons, available from the government to offset the cost of a $40 converter box" ... that is not correct. Converter boxes are a variety of brices, not $40. The coupon is worth $40. Additionally, the people running this thing have determined that the people selling the boxes are jacking up the price in addition to the $40 coupon - because of the coupon. (More or less proving the coupon is not necessary)
I know the coverage sucks for some, but the outcome in the coming years will be better. An open network that will deliver all kinds of things will ultimately replace TV stations, Cell phone companies. After all this recession should let people know you better start tacking care of yourself because corps don't give a hoot about you. Why pay for network access when you can have it for pennies on the month or free if you generate your own power. Stay tuned....
I switched a few weeks ago. I had to spend $60 for an antenna (attic) and $40 for an antenna preamp. Loads more channels, much better quality. We're about 40 miles from the station. It was a pretty laborious job getting everything to work but we're very happy with what we have now. Combine that with hulu.com and we have all we need.
The problem with this program is that in many cases, you really need to add an antenna and preamp in addition to the converter box. Maybe $100 if you can do it yourself. Moderately more if you need someone else to do the installation on the roof.