Posted on 01/08/2009 9:27:20 AM PST by lewisglad
Consumers Union is urging Congress to delay the nation's transition to digital television, saying the program to help TV viewers prepare for the switch next month has been underfunded and poorly implemented.
In a letter sent last night to President Bush, President-elect Barack Obama, House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the consumer advocacy group said Congress should push back the transition "until a plan is in place to minimize the number of consumers who will lose TV signals."
The request comes two days after the federal government said it has run out of money to provide coupons to help offset the cost of converter boxes. Analog television sets that rely on "rabbit ears" or rooftop antennas to receive broadcasts will need a converter box to get a picture after Feb. 17, when all full-powered television stations will stop airing analog signals and move to digital-only broadcasts.
Lawmakers are looking for ways to make sure consumers who need coupons get them in time. "But with the date looming, moving the date back certainly warrants further discussion and may be a wise choice," said Daniel Reilly, a spokesman for Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet.
As of Sunday, consumers requesting $40 vouchers to help purchase a converter box are being placed on a waiting list, and federal officials warn that TV watchers may not receive the coupons in time for the switch.
A coupon is not needed to purchase a converter box. But with boxes costing $80 in retail stores, Congress allocated $1.34 billion to provide coupons to help offset the price. Consumers who have a newer digital television or who subscribe to cable or satellite service will not lose programming.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Folks in my area have found that when they made the switch from analog to digital they went from maybe half a dozen decent channels and another half-dozen marginal, snowy channels, to three dozen or more crystal-clear digital channels.
The digital format needs less power to decode cleanly than analog does, which means that a station transmitting digital at a given power will be available farther away than a station transmitting analog at the same power.
It depends on the receiver. The cheaper ones don't do as well with multipath, but the better ones do.
I was having problems getting ANALOG stations on a nice TV set that someone had. Out of maybe 9 receivable channels (this was in the city, North Miami Beach to be exact), a nice set of rabbit ears netted 2 "very good" channels, two more just watchable, and the rest were terrible (this was the ANALOG reception). Terrible multipath problems, snowy pictures, just terrible.
In desparation, I got the family a digital converter, the Zenith DTT901. Hooked it up to the TV's better inputs (rca/phono plugs in the back), and hooked up the rabbit ears to it. Had it "search" for digital channels, and it found about 23. The picture quality? For most channels it was EXCELLENT. Some channels you could tell were transmitted with more compression, so they were softer. As long as you got decent signal reception, you got a perfect picture with few if any episodes of pixelation.
So my experience has been good.
They will delay the transition. The libs control television. They can’t risk the peasants listening to radio for their news.
Of course... now if we had a fairness doctrine... Hmmm....
I’m thinking of all the fraud that might be occuring ACORN style with a shyster merchant.......
That’s what I think...I sure don’t think the converter box is worth 60 bucks (which is what mine cost). I had the coupon, but I believe it’s a racket. Charging 60 bucks for a 20 dollar device...just to get the gov. money.
Are you familiar with Broadband-over-Power-Lines (BPL)?
Michigan has it.
Are you familiar with RFID or NAIS?
How about the fact that some Chinese microchips are hardware Trojans?
CALEA?
Technologically it is possible. Whether it’s in use—and who uses it and why—is another matter.
I anticipate that it will be in use, if not immediately, later. Industry will want it for the advertising/channel-surfing information, if nothing else.
All they did was swap the Sunday night game for the Monday night game. SNF is now where the true feature game is, and with flexible scheduling they can keep it that way all season. The old SNF games were on cable while the MNF feature game was on broadcast, now the SNF feature is on broadcast and MNF non-feature-get-everybody-on-primetime is on cable. ESPN has done a good job of pretending the MNF games are still the feature game, but it’s not.
You would of course be wrong. The digital boxes just convert an inbound digital signal to an analog signal your non-digital TV can understand, the only part of the outside world they plug into is the power grid.
These devices have no output to such systems - take one apart yourself and see.
It's funny how liberals are always surprised by "poorly implemented" government programs.
Great. One thing I can relax about.
;^)
Is this the same Consumers Union that has been pushing for decades for socialized medicine? Strange, they can recognize that because of an "underfunded and poorly implemented" program that some people might not get Oprah in February, but don't bother with counting how many people will die from the same government pushing an underfunded and poorly implemented medical system in which finding an alternative outlet is illegal.
And I bet that most of those morons are the same clueless ones that voted for Obama.
I was in Bend, OR over the holidays and on Jan. 2 the broadband provider shut down their analog signal. We were in a rented house, so we were a bit upset that we had to go spend money at a bar to watch the Sugar Bowl.
Aw, geeze, not this cp*p again!
Digital TUBE type 16:9 TV with DIGITAL tuner && VCR/DVD-R machine with DIGITAL tuner for timeshifting == WAY LESS money than a small LCD or Plasma flat-screen digital TV.
Old fashion bow-tie UHF (so far no digital is broadcast on the VHF frequencys) antenna == approx. $20 7 years ago.
Digital over-the-air reception == free.
Watching people wet themselves because they are not prepared/don’t have cable (or satellite) == PRICELESS!
Peet
“Does anyone have any experience with how well the new digital format works in areas where analog reception is marginal?”
If you can tolerate a snowy signal, you will absolutely hate digital. It is all or nothing. The picture will stutter, freeze, and go out entirely. It will be unwatchable. I used to live in a fringe area and actually liked late night distance viewing, tweaking the signal as it faded. No more. Ah, the good old days...
Hahahahaha. As I suspected! I am not doing anything and will see what happens to my humble rabbit ears RCA set on 2/17/09.
Not necessarily morons. Some of us are making a choice.
GACK! Substitute “Digital TUBE type” with “Digital CRT type”
That’s CRT v.s. LCD/Plasma
Whoops - not vacuum tube Peet you dingbat!
They can listen to NPR radio and they do. They have radio also; we don’t necessarily dominate that as they claim.
Anyway, I’ve ignored all this digital conversion stuff because I feel it is just a test to see how obedient the sheeple are.
More tinfoil, please.
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