US Digital TV Switchover Delayed Until June

necro81 writes "The Delay DTV Act was passed first by the Senate, now by the House, and will be signed by the President. The hard cutoff for turning off analog TV broadcasts in the US has been pushed out to June 12th. The act had earlier failed to gain a 2/3rds majority in the House, but passed this afternoon with a simple majority. The bill allows stations to cease analog transmissions at any point between Feb 17th (the old cutoff) and June 12th, and many have signaled they will do so."

Comments

Deja vu

[Anonymous Coward]

In June, you'll find that there are many people who have not bought digital receivers for their televisions. June is the new February.

Re:Deja vu

[commodore64_love]

No. Because of the transition, Sweeps was moved from February to March 5.

My dad thinks the delay is great, and he hopes Congress will suddenly decide to cancel Digital television completely. Well, he is approaching 80, so maybe he's not thinking straight. Today he said to me, "Just watch, in two more years they'll stop broadcast completely and make us all upgrade to cable. The politicians love to screw us."

According to the Nielsen Ratings Company, only 5% of households are not ready. So we postponed this switch for a measly 5% of the nation. Pathetic. ----- The other 95% already have access to cable, dish, or a DTV converter box. Here in Pennsylvania, the FCC placed the estimate at 99% ready! What the heck are we waiting for???

Re:Deja vu

[snowraver1]

This legislation is just a waste of time and money.

Look at it this way: At least they weren't legislating your freedoms away.

Re:Deja vu

[hedwards]

It's worse than that, due to the proviso that channels may change on their own at any time after Feb 17th, we now have a situation where nobody really knows when the switch is going to happen.

The same people that were still not aware that it was going to happen this month, are going to be caught even more off guard when channels switch over in a random fashion.

I cannot imagine how this is good news for anybody.

Confusion

[daveywest]

The reason for the date change: a bunch of elderly and poor TV viewers are confused about the switchover.

The result: now everyone is confused.

President O, aren't there more important things for you to be working on?

Re:Confusion

[geekoid]

A) it's not a whole lot of his time.
B) It important to a lot of people.

TO me the most important part of the bill is that I'll be able to get another card for a converter, since my last one expired.

Re:Confusion

[daveywest]

Before today's vote, only 6% of the population was confused by the changeover according to Neilson Media. That means you reached 94% of the population.

94% comprehension is a pretty good result.

I can only imagine how many people are going to be confused by a slow, staggered changeover instead of the solid Feb. 17 deadline. Its kind of like ripping off a band aid on a hairy arm. Its a lot more painful if you do it slowly.

Re:Confusion

[HeronBlademaster]

Especially confusing since stations have been shouting "FEBRUARY 17" from the rooftops for several months now.

The same kind of people who aren't ready for it by now won't be ready for it by June. I have a sneaking suspicion that the delay is much more for the benefit of stations that aren't ready, rather than consumers.

Re:Confusion

[Chris Burke]

TO me the most important part of the bill is that I'll be able to get another card for a converter, since my last one expired.

Yeah, more funding for the coupon program is a big part. You may be able to get another one regardless, since there's supposed to be two per household. Since an expired coupon's money goes back in the pool, you may luck out and be able to get one.

To people worried that this is just part of a never ending cycle of delays because we'll never have everyone ready for the switch... First, this delay is much shorter than previous delays which moved the roll out date by years, so even if it more delays occur I think we can all see the change is really going to happen. Second, you have to admit that there were problems with the implementation of the roll out. The coupon program was underfunded, and confusion resulted in a lot of people who didn't need converters using coupons to get them -- I remember seeing adds on cable TV that did not specify that having cable meant you didn't need the box. Shortages of converters meant a lot of people who did need the boxes couldn't get them before their coupon expired, then couldn't get a new one because the coupon program was out of money.

Fix those problems, let the extra publicity for the issue reach the public, give it a few months, and we should find that far fewer people are still unprepared. Yes not everyone will be and I'm perfectly happy letting the lazy suffer at that point. This is about fixing the problems the government caused by screwing up the program. If they do in fact fix the problem, they'll get most of the people who weren't ready because of those problems, and then I'll say we'll be ready for the switch.

Re:Confusion

[nabsltd]

With a hard cutoff date and no option to switch before that day, far less people would be confused.

As it is, now you are adding people who already have ATSC receivers to the "likely confused", as they will have to keep track of exactly when each station switches and how that station switches (changing frequency, power level, transmitter location, virtual channel, etc.).

In addition, automatically programmed devices (like the HD TiVo) will have to change the virtual to physical mapping at different times for each station. In some cases, the stations will choose to re-brand with the new permanent channel because that old channel could now be opened up. Think of the confusion if some new station ends up on channel 4 while "NBC 4" is broadcasting on channel 48.

The thing that is most stupid is that the original plan wasn't to do the cutover on a Saturday afternoon. What possible reason could there be to make Tuesday the changeover day?

Re:Confusion

[commodore64_love]

If you look at the voting rolls (and listen to the speeches), you can see that this is a case of the Democrats falling-in-line behind Democrat Obama's wishes. 95% of them voted "yes" while only 5% of Republicans joined them. The Republicans (rightly) decided the delay was not necessary, but instead proposed simply handing-out more coupons to help people buy boxes.

As for the speeches, it was amusing: "We must postpone the analog switchoff because it we don't, emergency responders won't be able to hear their calls." - Um what?!?!? Clearly the Congresswoman who said this has no idea what she's voting for. They're just obediently falling into line as commanded by their Democrat Speaker of the House. "We have to support Obama and he wants to delay the analog switchoff, so vote yes even if you don't understand what it's about."

I was happy when I heard this Democrat from California: "I suspect another motive. I suspect President Obama's decision to delay DTV comes from his new advisor - a man who works for Clearchannel Communications that purchased channels 52 to 69. It's not about helping the people, but about helping a corporation. We should investigate this further."

Re:Confusion

[walt-sjc]

Holy shit. In other words, Obama can do no wrong... Like the fact that he, like his good buddy Bush, still supports warrant-less domestic spying on Americans and granting immunity to the telcos - but it's OK *NOW*, he is a Democrat! And Bush was the devil!

Here is a giant freakin cluebat. Obama is NOT the black Jesus Christ come to save the world. Don't get me wrong, our other option for Pres. was no better, but decisions like this (DTV delay) are just fucking stupid, and the majority of congress support this stupidity.

Now there are many good reasons for supporting Obama and that's FINE! This, however, isn't one of them.

Re:Many stations switchin anyway...

[BorgAssimilator]

I applaud those stations. The confusion coming from the government is _not_ being fair to the television stations.

Re:Washington comes together...

[sexconker]

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Re:Many stations switchin anyway...

[BorgAssimilator]

Um... the TV stations should be able to do whatever the hell they want. If they screw up, they'll pay for it by people not watching them which could lead them going out of business, but that doesn't mean that people have a right to tell the company what to do directly.

Screw the protesters

[HornWumpus]

What are they going to do vote the head of the FCC out? (the FCC head is appointed).

People with time on their hands to protest are generally useless anyhow. The fact they haven't gotten it together to prepare for the switch reinforces that for me.

I hope they are going to compensate the new owners of the bandwidth for the delay.

Re:Many stations switchin anyway...

[JamesP]

Their first and foremost responsibility is to the citizens as a whole.

Screw the stations. If enough people protested this, then they should revoke the whole digital broadcasting.

But this is TEEEVEEE

It's not about people's liberties, human rights, jobs, salary, etc It's the fscking soma machine

Let's worry and spend money where it really matters, like, I dunno, healthcare, education, etc, etc

And if you want TV so bad fork the $50 dollars or something. Can't afford it and doesn't have a coupon!? Well, if you couldn't bother to pay attention in sonething that was advertised for the last COUPLE OF YEARS.

Re:House vote: 264-158

[plasmacutter]

That is nothing the Dem's haven't done for years. Yeah! High School Politics!!!

False.

In most votes on bush policy you had considerable support from the other side of the aisle.

The minute the situation is reversed the republicans pull this "not one vote, no matter what" crap.

This kind of "partisan for the sake of it" garbage is the reason why they continue to lose seats. Here's hoping they lose more and more each election until they learn being the opposition doesn't mean getting in the way for the sake of getting in the way.

The democrats were voted in overwhelmingly. This means the public wants what the democrats offered in their policy platforms. It's the republican's jobs to offer their perspective and grounding to that platform, not blindly rail against it tooth and nail.

This means instead of saying "no universal healthcare", they should be saying "If the public wants it, this is how it should work"