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US House Kills Proposed Delay For Digital TV Transition
An anonymous reader writes "The Digital TV transition delay bill has failed to pass the United States House of Representatives. By a vote 258 to 168 in favor of changing the date, the bill has failed as two-thirds of the votes are required for it to pass. The delay bill was once perceived as inevitable, [but the House] has now apparently made February 17th the date of transition once again. Now the question remains, will they attempt to pass it again by the deadline?"
...just do the cutover, get it over with. Sure, a short term pain, but I'm sick of hearing about it.
Really. Just do it already.
Probably.
Will it pass?
Probably not, unless they cram it in a popular bill.
being wasted over this is insane in my opinion.
The television is an entertainment device, nothing more. We have so much more to worry about in this country other than if someone will continue view ads on the tv when we move on from an archaic system.
Do I have this wrong? Is there something else about television that I am forgetting?
~ Ron Fitzgerald
The government doesn't realize that the TV companies have teams ready to go for Feb 17 and all this flip-flopping costs them money in rescheduling, etc..
Alot of technology-illiterate (or people who don't really care) might not know this is going down, but it has been a long time coming and people have had quite a while to get their stuff in order.
Enlighten us.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Lets get it over with already. The people who don't have converter boxes can just... *GASP* read a book, or do something productive instead.
He was asking for an example of television that wasn't entertainment.
for the first time in 8 years I am happy with something the republicans have done in congress.
any idiot who hasn't yet gotten off their a$$ to get their TWO FREE converter boxes is too st00pid to be allowed to watch the idiot box.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
>Anyone have suggestions that don't involving spending $70 a month for five tv shows that aren't online or on itunes?
Kill your TV.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
This transition has been communicated to everyone for a long time. Delaying it will just add to the confusion.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
As so many others have pointed out, It doesn't matter if the switchover happens 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years, or 30 years from now - you're going to have millions of people, most of them elderly or low income, who are going to turn on their TVs and say "What's wrong with this damn thing?" They don't read the news, they have no clue the switchover is coming, and they will scream bloody murder when it does.
The ONLY way to keep that from happening would be for the U.S. government to send teams of technicians to every household in America to verify the converter boxes were installed. Even then you'd have a lot of elderly shut-ins who would call the police to arrest the "intruders" at their door.
Time to bite the bullet and switch over NOW - waiting any longer will do nothing but delay the inevitable.
Often there is a conspiracy/cooperation between the two chambers where one chamber gets to have it both ways. Basically the House got to play the bad parent here. The Senate voted 100% knowing that the house would shoot it down. This would allows Senators who privately disagree with a bill to go on record as supporting it knowing that their vote will not end up passing the undesired legislation. Meanwhile, in the house the real vote went on that determined the issue.
the types of people who have tube TV's that aren't cable-ready (i.e. manufactured before '98 or so) and can't afford the $40 converter box really need to turn the fucking television off and go put in some job apps or something.
there's nothing wrong with being dirt poor. there's everything wrong with being a lazy scumbag.
may i remind you that every county in every state in the US of A has a free public library. Not to mention that the average cost of renting from non-free libraries is still less than the cost of electricity to power a tube television.
why are Americans acting as tho over-the-air televisual stimulation is an inalienable right?
How many prison TV are ready? February 17th may be a bad day to be a prison guard.
Doesn't congress have better things to do?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...that link you posted shows that you can get a Hauppage HVR-1250 for $50, and many other models right at $60. Which kind of undermines your entire argument.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Why didn't the Gov't just create a tax credit?
Why don't people just cough up the $60 lousy dollars and realize it's not the job of the government to bail you out because technology has changed? I used to have a perfectly functional AMPS cell phone that is a paperweight now because the FCC allowed the carriers to discontinue the service. Where's my coupon for a new phone?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Honestly, I don't get what the big deal about TV weather reports is. I don't watch TV, so I see what the weather is like when I look out the window in the morning. This has never proved to be a problem.
That's nice. You must live in a more temperate climate.
We'll get an inch of ice overnight here. Roads become extremely unsafe (and you often can't tell just by looking). Schools, businesses, roads close. During some winter storms, it is warm and safe all morning, and suddenly becomes very dangerous in the middle of the afternoon. If you are not informed, you will venture out unaware of severe weather heading your way.
Radio is an option, but I'd have to pay for one of those too.
After all, I am strangely colored.
delaying it is like pulling a bandaid off a wound slowly causing the pain to be prolonged and more acute, when just grabbing the bandaid and ripping it off completely gets it over with quicker, sure there is going to be some pain but you get it over with quicker and can get on when cleaning & dressing the wound with antibiotics and a fresh bandaid...
either way there is going to be some pain but what would you prefer? get it over with quicker? or prolonged and more acute pain?
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Last time I checked all your shit still works perfectly, including the part that receives analog TV signals, there are just no signals to be received. You're mad because the government is turning off a service that is provided to you essentially for free, and you want them to pay you so that you can enjoy a different free service?
To fix your analogy, this is like companies loaning you a bumper covered in ads, and now the government is telling them they have to stop offering the old shitty bumpers and offer a different design and you're pissed about buying new mounting brackets for your damn free bumpers claiming that your $3000 car is now useless because of the lack of free bumpers on the market!
Because there's limited OTA bandwidth, and allowing everybody to transmit willy nilly is a good way to get NO functionality out of it.
Thus the FCC, to regulate the bandwidth. Over time, more uses for wireless have come up, and they decided that if they can make TV broadcasting more efficient, they'd be able to serve the same number or more channels to customers while freeing up bandwidth for other uses/services that require their own bandwidth to function properly.
Thus digital television. They made it force of law because otherwise nobody would switch, and are funding the coupon program out of the proceeds of the spectrum auction.
I don't read AC A human right
No. The government has to make sure everyone gets a converter box because that's how they keep the circuses going for the sheeple. As long as the Bread and Circuses are in place the shysters running things are fine. Take either one away, and people might wake up and kick the bastards out.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yes, the image is slightly better with digital TV. It isn't a night and day improvement.
You aren't running HD though, are you? Perhaps you _are_ using a converter box on your old analog. There's a reason they are called _converter_ boxes. "Digital" and "HD" aren't synonymous.
If you've only browsed TVs at the electronics store, don't assume they were intelligently set up to demonstrate the best of HD to you. Watching broadcast analog at somebody's place almost makes me tear thinking my vision is clouded these days, and, yes, once HD is converted _down_ the difference is, well, worth the price of the converter box. What comes out that converter box isn't really the HD experience. Our one local news that actually runs 1080 is into art -- knee level shots of the scene clearly defining the rain drops hitting a street lamp lit street and the like. Best thing to being there until the Japanese push super-HD and 3D.
Converter boxes are just a stop gap. Something that lets those who don't want or can't afford anything better to still have access while they simultaneously don't hold the rest of us back.