Posted on 06/13/2009 1:08:42 PM PDT by Dallas59
DUHHHH
If these cretins have been living under a rock and missed the paid ads and PSA’s in regards to this switch, were given vouchers for conversion kits etc, and if THEY didn’t know about the switch, WITF did they get the hot line #??????
The govt should have BOUGHT EVERYONE a TV 5 years ago and we wouldn’t be having this problem. The money spent in ads, court visits, congressional hearings and just plain BS would have covered the cost of the TV’s, bookoo people would have had jobs and we may have salvaged a US based TV manufacturer.
Of course what do I know, I am just a White Conservative so I guess the ‘storm troopers’ will be telling me to STFU.
But wait, LETS BLAME BUSH....
How could these 700,000 morons even watch TV for the last 2 years and NOT know it was coming? Obama voters I’m sure.
These are the people who cannot make it in life without the Nanny State holding their hand and guiding them the whole way. They are the base of the Democratic Party.
Like, uh maybe, like they can't see the picture now? ...like really, how dumb.
From many decades of “pro-leftist brainwashing”!
I saw that movie...now, it was STUPID, but...I gotta tell you, I thought it was right on the money! The “Ow, My Balls” channel would be a best seller today!
I laughed pretty vigorously when I saw that...:)
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
If you live on the fringe, buy the right antenna and booster. It made a HUGE difference for us.
for example ... http://www.amazon.com/Antennas-Direct-DB8-Multidirectional-Antenna/dp/B000EHWCDW/ref=pd_cp_e_2
Uh, because they watch TV?
Another cable refugee here. The local monopoly only carries Fox News Channel as part of the upscale “premium” package. I’m not interested in paying $66 for $10 worth of product. If I can’t get what I want at an affordable rate that way I’ll get the essence of it from the ‘net.
So I signed up for the coupon and purchased a box when the local broadcasters started offering digital content. I quickly discovered that while I get decent analog signal in my area, the digital signal is nearly nonexistent. So I bought a new combo VHF-UHF antenna. That got me about 15% better signal and could actually receive a few stations every once in awhile.
Encouraged, I bought a signal amplifier and that was good for about an additional 10%. Now I’m getting four stations 40 to 60% of the time (they regularly freeze up and dissolve into digital dust the rest of the time). So I went from 10 stations (analog) to not quite 4 (digital). The net result of this exercise was that I spent several hundred dollars and a couple of trips up on the roof and I’m in worse shape than when I started.
I sent emails to each of the local broadcasters whose signals I had lost and explained that my results were likely to be repeated by thousands of others in my area and only two responded. One told me that “There is no Constitutional right to television signals”. I had to LOL!
TV for me was an attractive nuisance - I can easily live without it. There are many whose lives are so dreary that TV is one of their chief distractions. They were the supporters of TV and now TV has cut them off.
I predict more fallout and none of it good for the industry.
Vinnie - I was advised to rescan my converter box. You may (or may not) recover the lost channels.
Good luck...
He did, several times. Maybe CH 7 Boston is under limited power at the moment. Acc. to antennaweb.org my friend lives
about 19 miles from their transmitter. Only 19 miles.
And they get to vote! Frightening isn’t it?
Reception’s never been a big problem for me, which made it a whole lot easier to drop the cable and not end up with DirecTV or something.
I get (got, lol) signal from nine different cities, four different metros, two states, and can get a lot more in rare atmospheric conditions. A lot of duplication in programming, though. They all still have their ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX affiliates.
I’m afraid I’ll never get Blue Ridge Public Television out of Virgina again, and that was the one I watched most often, when I actually was watching and not just using it for background noise. That one’s not nearly so maddeningly pc as UNC-TV, and a lot of unique, original programming.
My sister and her family live on a large, 150+ year old farm, and the public road passed it by fifty years ago, so they don’t have the option of cable, unless they want to pay a big surcharge to run it down their half mile long driveway, that once was the road. Dish is out, bad exposure to the southwest (I think?). So, they do broadcast, too, and didn’t resist like I have, lol. She reports a good twenty channels, with a very basic (read cheap) indoor antenna. Some surprising things, like an all-weather channel from one local CBS affiliate, public tv having three channels including a children’s channel, which pleases my six year old niece, etc.
I actually broke out the contents of the converter box on the shelf, Zenith, but with some wacky Chinese offbrand battery for the remote.
I’m thinking of hooking the danged thing up before the last signal dies, much to my chagrin.
Should I do it, lol?
I was reading on another site that it would take awhile for the various channels to get up to full power and for the engineers to sort out the details.
I also read that some channels will be able to apply to the FCC for increased power in order to get their ranges comperable to their previous analog range. That process may take months.
I live way out in the sticks, luckily, I got 32 channels when I rescanned all of the TVs last night.
Good luck.
“Should I do it, lol?”
The worst thing that could happen is that you find something you like to watch and start wasting time in front of the boob tube.
I live in tornado alley, I really like the 24 hour weather. I also get sucked into the PBS home and hobby channel.
Good luck.
I’ve never really known where the broadcast tower for the signal I’ve been receiving is located; they don’t announce their physical location frequently like commercial stations do. It was UHF channel 15, though. There are quite a few ridges between me and there, I’m sure.
I’ll look it up.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I think I'm going to go ahead and hook it up. Looks way less complicated than connecting peripherals to your average desktop computer.
I'll probably switch it off periodically to see if Digital Dweeb is still ticcing away urgently in analog on channel 12, though. I've grown sort of fond of him, lol.
Thanks—again, this is a friend I’m talking about (in Salem MA); myself, I have cable and am all set.
On a radio-interest mailing list someone who lives on high ground in Swampscott MA, not far from my friend, also couldn’t get Ch 7 to come in...
http://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2009-June/021132.html
>>Being reasonably aware [and an EE at that], even I had to
struggle to get ch. 7 today. First, after a rescan, my DTV didn’t have any “7”. No 7 even when
manually entered. Hmmm... I can SEE the TV towers, even tho I’m in Swampscott... Every other Boston (and many other) DTV channel came in
fine. Eventually I figured out that I had analog 7 set to skip in the DTV setup. That was half the solution after another rescan. Then I had to extend the wabbit ears on my indoor Terk from the 9” ‘stabilizer’ function they had been serving the last year or so. Finally, after another rescan, there it was, sort of. Walk around the room and it breaks up. Boy, whatever OTA [over the air] viewers they had, they
have a lot fewer now...
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