"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."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/26/senate-unanimously-votes-push-digital-tv-transition/
We've only been bombarded with notifications about the DTV conversion for many, many months. We've had opportunities to get free converter boxes from the government (at a cost of 1.34 BILLION). Now, we have a delay of four months. On the surface, perhaps this looks like the caring thing to do for the people, but what about the television stations? They've had to pay to convert to digital systems AND they've been carrying the costs of broadcasting digital and analog signals. I can imagine that an extra 4 months of analog is quite an impact on their bottom line. But, let's all celebrate 'cause this is supposed to make us feel good.
There are other companies waiting to use the vacated analog spectrum. They've invested in new services and technologies that are now also put on hold. What is the impact of this?
Here's an idea - people buying new TV sets would stimulate the economy.
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Or solve the problem for all your older sets and get on cable.
I understand the rationale of delaying this conversion to digital signal. The concern is that there is a sizable percentage of the populace that has procrastinated in either updating their equipment or at least getting the converter that will step down the signal from digital to analog. This would mean a fair percentage of the electorate would be cut off from information/news/weather and all that and if there's one thing this country does not need it is more ignorance.
I don't see this as anything to celebrate. Rather it is another example of how there's just no helping some people. To paraphrase, you can lead people to the converter but you can't make them switch.
There are other issues at play here though. Not the least of which are potential loss of market share and the associated effect on ad rates and revenue to the broadcasters. Reduced targeted demographics. These would have a negative impact on the networks and they know it. To portray this as a government mandated screw job on the over the air networks isn't telling the whole story.
Yea what both of you said. By switching to digital you free up a bunch of extra frequencies that can be used for the already overloaded emergency response spectrum. More room to expand fire, Police, Coast Guard, FAA etc. etc. I don,t think the Presidents motives are as simple as helping the PO folk. We shall see.
Wow Sean. This is way above and beyond my techno ability to understand!
Teresa and I don't watch TV at all (nor have any intrest in watching TV). We get all of we we need off the internet. And when we want to watch a 'flic', I get sent on a 'honey to do mission' to the video store', to rent one.
But, we are buying that 'Digital TV conversion thing of amagig thing' just for the sake of getting it, having it. Guess I will have TV service sooner than later rather, I like it or not?
Teresa and I will be getting a new monitor (tube) when we get the new 'thing of amagic'.
Sean, if I have any technological questions about our new hook-up and monitor...I'll be giving you a call brother!
Over the politics of this all...I question, "why must our goverment always get involved"? When ever the goverment gets involved with something, it fails 100% of the time.
Well who else would you suggest "get involved" with this conversion. By legal definition the airwaves are in the domain of the people which translates to the government. You know, government by, of and for the people.
Given corporate America's proclivity for dicking things up beyond repair lately would suggest that some government regulation is quite appropriate.
Even given our governments dubious historical record of under achievement in the nurturing of the greater good to attribute a 100% failure rate to its efforts is a bit of a stretch.
I have a friend that has a digital rabbit ear TV in his camper and he gets MTV, Food Channel etc. without any cable fees. Does anyone know anything about that? I couldn't find anything on the web to support it though.
Juls, Teresa and I do a lot of camping in the summer and have one of those battery operated portable televisions. We get a lot of diffrent channels that are suppose to be true cable channels only as well, even though they do not come in that clear, we can see them and hear the audio with a snow on the screen.
Maybe it works in the same way as CB radio's, a thing called 'skip', or perhaps it comes over the airways as a side-ban channel?
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