[benjibrowder]

What exactly is DTV? I know what WiMax is, but what's DTV?

[taxcontrol]

harumph.... should have forced digital radio first.

[sionnsar]

Here it comes ping

[VOA]

bump

[Revolting cat!]

FREE MONEY PING!

[Gator101]

So...will my regular old TV still work in 2009 or not?

[Revolting cat!]

We'll then have 500 channels and nothing on. Progress!

[iPod Shuffle]

The final bill includes up to $1.5 billion in funding to provide two $40 vouchers per household to use toward the purchase of digital-to-analog set-top converter boxes.

Un-Freepin' Believable!

[Tall_Texan]

Just in time for the NEW administration to catch the blame when millions of grannies and people on fixed incomes watch their screens go blank and are told they must pay thousands to watch tv again. Brilliant!

[MamaTexan]

Legislation requiring U.S. broadcasters to abandon their analog spectrum, opening up the "beachfront" spectrum to next-generation wireless services and emergency response agencies, is headed to U.S. President George Bush to be signed into law.

WOW!

I'm so glad that Congress has solved all out country's problems so they can focus on our TV reception!

Would someone point out the part in the Constitution that allows congress to tell broadcasters HOW they must send out their signals?

[Revolting cat!]

The sane response to the utterly unoriginal knee-jerk reaction to the spending bill is this: gummint requires, gummint pays, end of discussion!

[Decepticon]

Part of the spectrum will also go to help public safety agencies better communicate with each other.

Cool, I can crank my home AM and FM transmitters to 100 watts and not P.O. my neighbors.......life is good......I Heard It on the X.......

[operation clinton cleanup]

The final bill includes up to $1.5 billion in funding to provide two $40 vouchers per household to use toward the purchase of digital-to-analog set-top converter boxes.It would be interesting to see who manufactures these set top boxes that the vouchers qualifies for. A must be "Made in the USA" provision would be nice.

[GalaxieFiveHundred]

Kewl!

[Alex Murphy]

Late Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a large budget reconciliation bill that included a deadline of February 17, 2009, for broadcasters to stop broadcasting analog signals and move to digital television (DTV).

Which either means they continue using the existing UHF/VHF bandwidth, just changing what and how they transmit over it...

Or all of your local (free) network channels will be going off the air February 17, to broadcast exclusively via some form of satellite or land-line (copper/fiber).

[savedbygrace]

So retailers can add $40 to the price of the converter boxes, huh?

[XR7]

All this means is that now companies will be able to stick it to everybody.

[Revolting cat!]

2009? That's a long time away. Most of us will be singing duets with John Lennon by then:

if I ain't dead already, 
ooh, girl you know the reason why 

[MississippiMan]

I'm personally thrilled, but I can hear the Democrats now when the date starts bearing down: "This discriminates! We have to help the less fortunate buy digital TVs!"

MM

[TC Rider]

I want my HDTV (broadcasts)!!

I can hardly wait of more HD content. I've had mine for a couple of months now and love it.

I get my signal from Time-Warner Cable, though I could get our five local stations over the air for CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and PBS.

One of the odd things that happens is that on cable the stations get a chunk of bandwidth and will split it up into a couple of standard def versions with different content., often to the detriment of the high def signal. For example WRAL here has an all weather and all news feed, but there HD signal has such crummy compression you lose a lot. My understanding is that over the air is the same way.

On the other hand, some of the cable fed HD, like DiscoverHD, PBS, ESPNHD and others are literally stunning.

If you want a crash course in HDTV, home theater, hardware, etc you need to visit the FR of HighDef, the avsforum.com.