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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."
PBS claimed that delaying the conversion would cost them $22 million. Is that a check we have to write now lest we get sued?
Obligatory Wikipedia page explaining this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
>>>TV Stations can still switch to digital early if they want to.
You're about the 10th person on this forum to say that, and it's not true. KSNC received a *waiver* from the FCC due to antenna damage. Other stations have asked for waivers because of economic hardship. Without these waivers they would still be required to continue broadcasting analog.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
one problem right now is many DTV signals are not being transmitted at their final full power because they are being sent from temporary transmitters and in many cases on different frequencies than then their final assignment. the stations will switch transmitters and frequencies when the switchover is made.So looking at DTV today does not necessarily tell what the signal will look like after the changeover.
Actually it is true. Early in the transition, waivers were needed. Towards the end, this was eliminated. You might want to read some details here.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Don't ignore the other aspect of this bill. As a holder of one of the 14 million expired coupons, I look forward to getting and using a new one. I requested so early, that it came in February, with an unexpected 3-month expiration period. For price and selection, I was motivated to wait as long as possible, and time ran out. My mistake, but if I get a second chance, I'll buy it right away.
I'm unsure if it'll really happen, because the funding looks to have been spent, and there's a waiting list of people who didn't waste their coupon ahead of me, but it's in the article, so it must be true. [sign-up required, editor - or you can change your user-agent to be the googlebot.]
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
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
Their licenses will get extended the 116 days the switchover is delayed:
US Senate passes bill to delay digital TV switch
There is an interesting politics as usual angle to this too:
Chicago politics lands in DC
When the government sells the spectrum and makes money they should certainly use some of that money to assist people in upgrading. I mean when they brokered the deal they certainly budgeted for it.
Duh. That wasn't it. In my haste I posted a dumb link. I found a lot more info here: http://www.tvfool.com/
I envy you.
Here in Sweden, they switched us over without considering the signal coverage in the countryside. Analogue reception was already bad, and it's impossible to put these heavily distorted radio signals together into digital video frames. No, the viewers were not ready. No, the government didn't care.
And no, they didn't offer coupons for set top boxes either.
Not really. First off, Sweeps is a month-long period, not a week. Also, March 2009, not February as usual, is sweeps month for this exact reason. It just made sense not to try and accurately gauge viewership in the middle of a changeover.