Free Republic

Till now our traditional Catholic household has always enjoyed life free of television except occasional DVD viewing. With a new elderly member of the household, with reluctance we are considering setting up limited, low budget, low tech, due to privacy concerns (no Alexia nor two way TV with camera nor google for example) television platform for the member's viewing. The venue sought is very limited at most: news, sports, weather, nature, and occasional clean family-oriented made-for-tv series and movies and documentaries. We wish to not pay for nor deal with bundles of shows that are objectionable or otherwise will not...

Officially cancelled my DirecTV today--I have been working with a Roku which my hubby has taken to like a duck to water.

Speaking at a gathering of digital advertisers in New York City last night, Mr Schmidt refused to forecast when internet video would displace television, instead declaring: "That's already happened." "It's not a replacement for something that we know," he added. "It's a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms." YouTube recently surpassed the milestone of a billion unique users a month. Only the Google search engine and social network Facebook are frequented more often by those browsing the internet worldwide. However, the video site lags behind traditional television in the UK,...

EVERYONE complains about the quality of TV programs, the endless repeats, and the scheduling, but are there programs that NO-ONE actually watches? An old AFL thriller, Italian soccer, an animated children’s program about underwear-obsessed pirates and a triathlon were just four of the 24 programs which managed to attract zero viewers in Australia on Wednesday. IS DIGITAL TV A DISAPPOINTMENT OR WATCHABLE. TELL US BELOWWhile the launch of digital channels on major networks Channel 7 (7Two), Channel 9 (Go!), Channel 10 (OneHD) and public broadcaster ABC TV (ABC2 and ABC3), as well as SBS Two, has added variety to the...

Here is one of the MANY commercials we all had to see on switching from ANALOG to DIGITAL TV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LjItFkWdgI Greta's show last night was asking why the government was paying for this. Does anyone know why? Why was a political flunkie given 6 million dollars in the stimulus 1 package to produce these commercials? I have found no answers but one and that is the online youtube video that claims that the new digital boxes are big brother watching equipped with mini-cameras and a microphone. Cameras in Digital Convert Boxes! BEWARE!!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4iIM8Eljc As nuts as the above sounds. As...

I have a "box" (gummint issue) and have yet to install it.I came across this a couple of months ago and now I'm wonderin' if it works as shown.

HELP, this digital TV conversion really is horrible! I used to get 9 channels with my antenna. I bought a new digital TV and now I get 2 channels, and they are spotty. I live outside the cable covered area and they will not bring it on up the road, so how can I get local TV stations like I did before?

WHDH-TV acknowledged yesterday what thousands of viewers had already discovered since last Friday’s nationwide conversion to digital television: its Channel 7 signal is hard to get in the post-analog era. The NBC affiliate said yesterday that it has begun simulcasting its signal on Channel 42, its temporary sister digital station, until it works out “signal difficulties” with the Federal Communications Commission. “We are very sorry for the inconvenience to our viewers, and we hope to have this resolved quickly,” said general manager Chris Wayland. In a statement, WHDH blamed the problem on a “power allocation” issue. The station said that...

FYI- WE ARE NOW UP ON CH 42- PLEASE LET OUR VIEWERS KNOW We received your recent e-mail regarding our digital channel. We are now simulcasting our digital signal on Channel 7 and on Channel 42 (our pre-transition digital channel). In order to see us on Channel 42, you will need to rescan again. To rescan, press "menu" on your remote. Then choose "auto-scan" or "installation." This begins the rescan process---it may take several minutes to complete this process. Like a number of other stations in cities across the country, WHDH is experiencing signal difficulties following the transition that took...

Millions of households will lose television reception next week when about 1,000 broadcasters around the nation shut off their analog signals and complete their conversion to digital programming, federal officials say. The government has spent more than $2 billion to ease the transition to digital television, and in the last few months has cut in half the number of households that are unprepared for the final conversion on June 12. But the latest survey by the Nielsen Company indicates that as of the end of May, more than 10 percent of the 114 million households that have television sets are...

The lowly TV antenna is making a comeback, and bringing free TV along with it. Sales of over-the-air TV antennas jumped last year thanks to the digital TV transition, as users upgrade their gear for better reception. At the same time, some consumers looking to save money in today's economy are dumping cable and satellite pay TV services in favor of free broadcast television. Makers of antennas, as well as local broadcasters, hope to drive more viewers to free television by touting its merits. Besides being free, broadcast television offers the best high-definition picture quality, because it's uncompressed. Cable and...

DTV Transition Partially Occurs, World Doesn't End Federal call center easily handles user calls, problems... 05:58PM Thursday Feb 19 2009 by Karl Bode About 421 of the nation's roughly 1,800 stations made the transition to digital broadcasts on the originally scheduled date (February 17), and so far the world has continued rotating. Fears that consumers weren't ready for the switch resulted in Congress extending the deadline into June, though TV stations were given the right to cut over ahead of the deadline -- as long as they got permission from the FCC. According to the Associated Press, the Federal call...

Some TV stations will cut their analog signals today and move to digital-only broadcasting. Others will take advantage of a grace period passed by Congress and wait until June 12. In theater superstition, a bad dress rehearsal is supposed to foretell a good opening night. If so, the U.S. might be in good shape when it turns off the last analog TV broadcasts in June, because the lead-up to the smaller-scale turnoff Tuesday has been confusing to both viewers and TV stations....snip... A patchwork of 641 stations across the country, mainly in thinly populated areas, are still turning off their...

(AP) -- Television viewers who use antennas and were expecting a few more months to prepare for digital TV may not have much time left before their sets go dark: Many stations still plan to drop analog broadcasts in less than two weeks. When Congress postponed the mandatory transition to digital TV until June, it also gave stations the option to stick to the originally scheduled date of Feb. 17. That means the shutdown of analog signals, which broadcasters had hoped would happen at nearly the same time nationwide, could now unfold in a confusing patchwork of different schedules. Lawmakers...

WASHINGTON. D.C. – House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) today sent a letter to the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) urging her to postpone a vote on legislation to delay the transition to digital television until the impact of a reported conflict of interest from an advisor to President Obama is fully known and disclosed. “The policy recommendations made by President Obama may have been influenced by an individual with a conflict of interest of which he may not have been aware,” the letter states. “Any improper influences on the President’s policy positions that...

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Monday voted unanimously to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting by four months to June 12 — setting the stage for Congress to pass the proposal as early as Tuesday. Monday's Senate vote is a big victory for the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, who have been pushing for a delay amid growing concerns that too many Americans won't be ready for the currently scheduled Feb. 17 changeover. The Nielsen Co. estimates that more than 6.5 million U.S. households that rely on analog television sets to pick up over-the-air broadcast...

Switch from analog signals deemed too important to leave in private hands, with predictable results. If you watch TV for more than a few minutes a day, you have probably seen ads and public service announcements about the Feb. 17 changeover from analog to digital television broadcasting. During the other transition, several officials of the incoming Obama administration have suggested pushing back the transition date three months, and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller has submitted a bill to push back the date to June 12. Why the fumbling and confusion? The short answer is that the government, beginning as...

A telecommunications company has confirmed for this columnist that its vice president for policy—who is also an Obama donor and a former lobbyist—is advising Barack Obama’s transition team on telecom policy. Obama’s transition team, which has failed to disclose this executive’s involvement, happens to have proposed a significant change in telecom policy that will profit that very company, called Clearwire. ...snip... Salemme, a former telecom lobbyist who has given thousands to Obama, including $5,000 to Obama’s transition team, has helped Obama craft a policy that will benefit Salemme’s company. This is just the sort of arrangement that led to years...

(SNIP) Hawaii was moving to all-digital TV before the Feb. 17 date set for the rest of the nation because of an endangered bird, the Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel. Broadcasters and park rangers want to take down analog transmission towers on the slopes of Maui's Haleakala volcano before the bird's nesting season. (SNIP)

President-elect Barack Obama is urging Congress to postpone the Feb. 17 switch from analog to digital television broadcasting. In a letter to key lawmakers, transition team co-chair John Podesta warned today that too many Americans who rely on analog TV sets to pick up over-the-air broadcasts won’t be ready. The incoming administration is pushing for a delay in part because the Commerce Department has run out of money for the coupons that subsidize digital TV converter boxes for consumers. People who don’t have cable or satellite TV or a new TV with a digital tuner will need the converter boxes...