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Senate Passes Another Bill To Delay Digital TV Transition
An anonymous reader tips news that the US Senate has passed another bill to delay the transition to digital TV. This is the second such bill to pass the Senate; the first was narrowly defeated in the House. The new version has an important difference — it would allow the transition to take place gradually over the four-month period between the original transition date (February 17th) and the extended date (June 12th). TV stations around the country could choose when they wanted to make the change, allowing those who have already begun plans to stop analog transmission to continue their shut-down operations.
I'm someone who doesn't watch much TV. I'm sure other people could go a few days (or however long it takes them to find out what's wrong with their television set) without TV. Now, how much MORE is this bill costing me in taxpayer dollars? And you justify this HOW?
Firstly, there's a pigeonhole problem here -- in order for some stations to take up their final digital frequency assignments, other stations will have to move theirs (usually back to their analog channel). This is one of the main reasons it was to be done all at once in the first place.
Secondly, this is going to be even MORE confusing. OK, so the person living in a cave for the past few months who comes out turns on their TV on February 18 would have gotten nothing. But at least they'd have some clue that something is wrong. With a gradual transition, maybe they'll lose CBS but not NBC and Fox... then the next month they'll lose Fox but keep CBS, etc. That's not making things any simpler.
Yes, yes, lets rip off that bandage as slooooowly as possible so we extend the pain and confusion as long as possible.
/sarcasm>
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There will always be millions of people who will have problems with the switchover. Most are poor and / or elderly. No amount of delay and / or money thrown at the problem will fix it. Just flip the damn switch already and deal with the small percentage of folks negatively affected. Seriously, this has been in the works for years -- if you don't know about it by now, you won't until your picture turns to a bunch of static.
What the fuck is the point of this? That spectrum has a new use which is only getting delayed yet again because of this. Why are they delaying? Its not like TV is something that you can't live without. And if you still haven't figured out that you need to upgrade your TV then either you: A) don't have a brain B) are senile and will probably never get the point C) rarely use your TV so it doesn't matter anyway. If they do this stupid delay I hope they at least make the analog required to just display 24/7 a text message stating that they need a digital TV or converter box with audio of a person reading it it in English and Spanish. Maybe then the last of the morons might get it.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
then please be sure to write your congressman and let them know. It was narrowly defeated last time, so the more people complaining the better chance it will be defeated again.
this is my sig, there are many like it, but this one is mine.
After seeing enough reports on the switch on TV, my wife who hates computers, asked me last night "Can you find the shows I watch online?" After we found them, she then said "What do we need the TV for?" And that is the big question.
My kids haven't watched TV, other than something in a restaurant or doctor's waiting room, in a couple years now. They watch everything online. Of the three shows my wife watches, two are available online at the network sites and the third can be found via torrents. Actually, all three are available on the network sites, it is just ABC USES SOME FUCKING PROPRIETARY PLAYER THAT DOESN'T WORK ON LINUX! Thus, we either live without that show (no big deal) or hit Pirate Bay. ABC, are you listening? Just use a standard Flash player like everyone else.
While some of the people still watching broadcast TV don't have broadband, most of those fall into the "old people -- gonna die soon" demographic. What happens to broadcast in 10 years?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That should be the motto of our government. If the government sets a deadline, they should hold to it, instead of wasting time and tax dollars by pushing back the finish line. What's wrong with making a decision and sticking to it, if there is no quantified risk to continue?
Just ensure that the vouchers are getting out to the people who haven't received them already. The people can do the rest. If they procrastinate, then let them reap the benefits of procrastination.
Apologies if I sound troll.
Or am I doing it wrong?
This from the party of "Green" everything? Here's the REAL story...a buddy of mine (who's dad is the chief engineer at an Amarillo, Texas TV station) tells me that it costs about $10,000 per month in electricity to run a transmitter. That's ONE transmitter - for either analog or digital. When you add a second transmitter, you double the juice, and double the cost. Same data. Same shows. Same commercials - just costs twice as much to air it. Now figure that there are over 300 local TV stations in the US. Delay the transition until June, and you're talking over $12,000,000 in wasted money (that the stations can't bill anybody for) and wasted electricity. How many friggin' mercury-filled florescent lightbulbs and carbon offsets will it take to make up for that kind of waste, hmm? While we're on the subject, how many people in the US don't have either cable or satellite TV? Seriously...I've asked as many low-income people I know or run into, and I've yet to find ANYbody that gets their TV through rabbit ears or a roof antenna. Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy the handful of Luddites new TVs and be done with it?
Captain Digital Fighting for truth, justice, and graphic design.
It is Clearwire that has a vested interest in this delay. They are attempting to roll out WiMax service to compete with the broadband 4G service Verizon is planning to offer on the freed up analog frequencies.
And guess which company one of the executives on Obama's DTV transition team works for? That's right, Clearwire...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/4g-war-conflict-of-interests-loom-behind-possible-dtv-delay.ars
Well I think the US chose the wrong time to switch. We should have done the switch Saturday Jan 31st. Then half the country would have missed the Superbowl and maybe that would be the catalyst for change in DC. I swear that could work.....
All points of time and space are connected.
It just kills me that the Obama administration has chosen this issue to be one to focus on. Television? I watch it, I don't have a problem with it. I'm not one of those people who triumphantly claim they don't watch television as if it makes them smarter.
But let's get real here. Television just isn't all that important, especially compared to say... health care, the economy, energy, torture, "the terrorists", North Korea, Putin, Russia, global warming, the housing crisis, Israel/Palestinian, New Orleans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Melamine, Salmonella, Gitmo, domestic spying, illegal immigration, crumbling infra-structure, and a host of other issues I'd rather just forget about. Each of those expands into a whole different set of problems, and they all interact with one another.
But.. the television switchover that's been going on in some fashion for the last 10 years is one of the FIRST issues the administration has chosen to take on. Why? I have my suspicions, mostly about Democrats being in bed with Big Content (hey, whenever you refer to Big it's bad.. right?).
The justification is just bizarre. The poor and technically inept might be without TV for a little while. I know around here we like to brow-beat anyone that's "stupid", or a technophile as if they deserve what they get. I'm not a big believer in that, but I am a believer in priorities. The people who television is THAT important to have gotten a converter. The people remaining might just have to go without for a while until they decide it's a priority. But yet this whole thing gets sold to us like it's an essential element to survival. Just yesterday I saw an ad from a local broadcaster urging people to "help their neighbors" in making sure they can get the digital broadcast, as if a hurricane has torn down houses, or a snowstorm has buried everyone in snow. This isn't a disaster... It's just television.
AccountKiller
I wonder why don't TV stations show an overlay banner saying "This station is available on digital channel ##. The analog channel will be discontinued at DATE. Please contact your local electronics store for how to receive digital broadcast."
Having people who watch analog TV suddenly go blank without knowing they should switch to digital, that is the colossal failure of broadcast media that can't disseminate information to their audience.
I once had a signature.
Our big friendly goverment decided to give away the boxes you reference, FOR FREE. They did this by issuing coupons worth $50 or so IIRC. Like most things given away by the government for free, lots of people who didn't need them got two or three of these boxes and stuck them on a shelf in their garage, where they're still collecting dust. Of course, the coupons ran out, and now some in our congress are claiming that the program was underfunded. It's a typical Washington clusterfuck -- exactly the sort of thing that happens when bureaucrats decide there's a huge "problem" somewhere and its solution requires spending tens of millions of our tax dollars.
The original bill didn't require analog stations to stay on until June either.
(if the link breaks, try this PDF link)
See Sec. 4, paragraph (a) which states in part: "Nothing in this Act is intended to prevent a licensee of a television broadcast station from terminating the broadcasting of such station's analog television signal (and continuing to broadcast exclusively in the digital television service) prior to the date established by law under section 3002(b) of the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 for termination of all licenses for full-power television stations in the analog television service (as amended by section 2 of this Act) so long as such prior termination is conducted in accordance with the Federal Communications Commission's requirements in effect on the date of enactment of this Act,.."
(typical government wordiness)
What it means is that before this bill was introduced, stations could sign off their analogs before Feb. 17th upon giving 30 days notice to the FCC and the viewers. Should the bill pass into law, paragraph (a) ensures they can still sign off before June 12th, again provided they give 30 days notice.
Several hundred stations have already given such notice. Including most of the major-network affiliates in Nashville, New Orleans, and Wichita among other cities.
The proposed new bill (PDF version) contains the same paragraph.
The problem is that when Abraham Lincoln and Jesse Helms wrote the constitution, they made it a right for the American people to have television. Now, 350 years later, congress changed the way TV has always been delivered - from an anolog microsft tower in Denver to a newer more technologically advanced 60 watt digital station located in Southern Pennsylvania.
The confusion has resulted in NASCAR cancelling their season, resulting in billions of dollars in lost revenue for Bud Light (a subsidiary of the Coors Brewing Company located in South Africa).
I hope that helps.
The delay is justified, for two reasons. First, the coupon program was bungled, and running out of coupons shows that consumers are NOT clueless, MORE have responded than expected, because they are doing their best to prepare.
Second, as nearly as I can tell, nothing is being done to prepare consumers for the channel reassignments that will occur along with the analog shutdown. A significant number of stations will be changing their assigned frequency for digital transmission, and quite a lot of them will be changing from UHF to VHF.
At the very least you'll need to do a channel rescan. If I were a station like WHDH, the big Channel 7 NBC affiliate in Boston, I'd long since have posted directions on my website telling people about this and, if possible, telling them how to do a manual channel rescan. But they haven't.
Now, if you have a honkin' big old UHF/VHF rooftop antenna left over from the eighties, and you buy a converter box, you'll be fine. But if you bought one of those nice, compact, inexpensive "HDTV antenna" they've been selling for several years now, that, my friends, is a UHF antenna and you'll lose any digital stations that move to VHF. Maybe not, if they're powerful enough. But I don't know how on earth you can find out before the actual moment arrives.
And if you don't have a big honkin' VHF antenna on your roof already, February 17th is not a great time to be up there installing one.
So, check antennaweb.org for those channel reassignments, because I suspect some of the smug digerati are not quite as prepared for the transition as they think they are.
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