Rabbit-ear TVs about to reach end of the road

sfgate ^ | Tuesday, March 13, 2007 | Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

[bikerman]

I remember our first Admiral TV 14 inch screen had a 8 pin octal plug for a color converter on the back of the set of course there never was a converter made but it looked impressive.Later there was a color piece of clear paper blue on the top red in the middle and green on the bottom you would put on the screen to simulate color.

[discostu]

It depends on how you're looking at it. From the FCC's point of view their job is to maintain the American public's ability to access over the air broadcasts that serve the "public interest, convenience, or necessity." Necessity is an important part of that clause when you couple it with the existence of the Emergency Alert System (formerly the Emergency Broadcast System). Thanks to the EAS and the fact that it covers VHF broadcasts there's an arguable mandate there to make sure analog TVs can still process digital VHF signals.

Then of course you have the revenue stream side of it, the FCC doesn't give licenses for free. The money for these converter boxes could easily come out of license fees, especially since once the change over happens there will be many more VHF licenses available for sale. Whether or not they'll actualy be bought is another question.

[cmsgop]

I forgot to add their house is around 4500 sqf and a 3 car garage. Woo Hoo PARTY!

[mewzilla]

I still have one and it works just fine. It's a forty year old B&W portable. Guess it'll be headed off to that appliance boneyard in the sky soon. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

[Tail Gunner John]

I cut off my cable for the same reason you did, young impressionable kids in the house. Once the kids were gone I got a dish and found that rather than having 6 channels choked full of crap I now had 150. The dish is now gone.

I now invest what were dish payments in quality T.V. A month's dish payment will buy another full season of Leave it to Beaver, Perry Mason, Combat or Andy Griffith.

It is still possible to enjoy great television.

[tophat9000]

Very ignorant reporter; old-fashioned antennas are still used in over the digital tv... it's the analog TV receiver that will be obsolete not the antennas

My rabbit ears work just fine on my HDTV for digital broadcast

[new cruelty]

My wife and I make a decent sum, like your democrat couple, we too huddle around the rabbit eared TV.

[infowarrior]

I remember when cable first came out in the `70`s everyone was saying "Oh it will be commercial free TV because you are paying for it! Yippee!! No commercials!!" Now you can`t even watch a station without these freggin` commercials popping up every 2 minutes.

Bearing in mind that it is extremely rare for me to be watching the tube to begin with, on those few times I have tuned in, it seems that the commercial to program ratio was more like every 45 seconds...

the infowarrior

[Screamname]

Tell me about it. If it was up to me I`d get rid of cable as all I really use it for is to watch DVD`s, but my cable company doesn`t allow it if I want cable internet.

TV is a joke today, you can literally flip through the stations one after another and see nothing but commercials for 10 minutes, usually for some credit repair scam (what is the deal with those anyway?) on each one without one single TV show.

So I figure what it boils down to is I`m paying $100 bucks a month for internet and 24 hour a day commercials for credit repair (or 30 minute long "paid programming infomercials" if it`s late at night.)

Oh yeah, another thing, if you think that`s bad, here in New York city I drive a taxi to help pay for my out of control ever rising apartment rent that rises 150% every 7 to 8 years thanks to the tidal wave of illegals driving it up by stuffing themselves 50 to a room.

What they are going to do now if you can believe it for NY taxis, is by November each taxi is going to have TV screens placed right in the passengers face playing what else? Commercials... with the deception that is a "GPS unit"...But it`s not.

What it is, is a GPS unit that can track where the taxi is at any given moment, but that`s it. It doesn`t give directions or do anything else. It shows the passenger on the TV screen where he is now (as if he can`t look out the window) but in the meantime they play commercials. That`s the only reason for this. The city and the billionaire owners of the taxi medallions (which cost around $365k each) get all the advertising revenue while the drivers get nothing and the customer gets constantly harrassed by commercials in his face the entire ride. Of course he can look out the window and avoid the tv screen, but if we are passing through Disneyland, I mean Times Square, he once again will have this shoved in his face......

[Kevmo]

bump for later reading