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Change is coming to America's TV sets, but Representative Anthony Weiner says it's happening too fast. On February 17th, the government will require all television signals to switch from analog, as received by TVs with "220;rabbit ears," to digital. Weiner says too many people are unprepared, and it could result in "a major public safety problem" in the case of a emergency government announcement. He estimates that some 300,000 New Yorkers who have applied for federal funds to purchase digital converter boxes for their TVs still haven't used the money, so he he's pushing congress to postpone the digital revolution until June 15th, and also wants an additional $650 million to help subsidize the purchase of the converter boxes. (A similar bill passed in the Senate yesterday.) As of last month, nearly 7.6 million homes were not ready for the change, many of them inhabited by elderly viewers who worked their whole lives so they could sit and watch their stories.
Weiner Backs Digital TV Delay
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Good move! A lot of people have no idea what the whole thing is - a major give-away to some financial cronies by way of blackmailing the consumers. It should have never been made into an exclusive, mandatory technology. I bet right now in some garage the next best thing is being concocted, and we'll be stuck with the one imposed on us until other lobbyists impose the next advancement.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/dont-delay-the-dtv-transition.ars
You're going after the wrong dirty lobbyists. The delay is a bad thing.
You have got to be kidding? Over the past year I've probably seen or read about the conversion at least 250 times. Even my 75 year-old immigrant mother knew enough to get a converter box. You would think that something as important as a functioning idiot box would be something to which public pays attention.
I don't see how the extra time is going to help. They're not going to change the way they inform the public - so what will that extra time really help?
I don't undersdtand it. We've had more than 9 months to "ready" ourselves for the "digital revolution." I guarantee that on June 14 the same politicians will be asking to push it back again and ask for more money to subsidize the boxes.
If the countless commercials and reminders have not motivated people to go out and get a box, maybe not having television will.
It's been far longer than nine months. The transition to digital TV has been in the works since the mid to late 1990s. The people in charge knew that if they didn't put a hard deadline in place, people would hold onto their old, analog tech forever. Technophobes don't like change. And now that people are still resisting by not using the coupons that they got for free, some politicians claim that the deadline was a bad idea.
I honestly don't understand why some people find it so difficult. I went online, applied for my coupons, got them in about a month, ordered my boxes, got those in a week and I'm watching digital TV. These Luddites really need to come into the 21st century.
I'm really glad that you got your coupons, but part of the problem with all the people hoarding them is that some of us have now been waiting for about three months for our coupons.
I will happily buy the box, once I get my coupons - except they won't be releasing any more coupons until after the February switch date when they can evaluate how many of the coupons were never cashed. I didn't wait until the very last minute, but I'm being punished, in a way.
The coupons expire after three months, so hoarding is useless. For some reason, the DTV coupon program has statistics updated every week. The government knows exactly how many cards have not been cashed in. As of January 21, that number was 14,039,258. There are 11.7 million 'live' coupons.
You should not be waiting three months for coupons. According to the website, people who applied before Jan 3 should have received coupons. There are about 3 million coupons yet to be sent, out of almost 50 million coupons requested. About 1 million of those are currently in mail processing.
Bad move. If people have no idea what the whole thing is, then they are either morons or ignorant. There have been endless commercials about the thing, and some tv stations have gone so far as to hold public seminars. There are websites, 800 numbers, and again the tv stations also have hotlines and special test programs. Basically, if you don't know what's going on by this point, you don't want to know what's going on. Unfortunately, this is just the culture in our country.
The technology is not exclusive. There are several manufacturers of boxes (both coupon-eligible and otherwise). Furthermore there is a very valid technical reason behind the change. It has nothing to do with giveaways. The government got almost $20 billion by re-auctioning the analog spectrum.
TV stations and others have been preparing for years, and it is extremely unfair to them to change course now just because the American people are lazy.
The sad truth is that this was announced in 2005. What that means is that people have had almost 4 years to get themselves a 40 dollar box, meaning they would have to save a hefty 10 dollars a year. If your TV is so important to you one would think you could plan accordingly and take advantage of the many years Americans were given to prepare for this pending "major public safety problem."
The problem is people will NEVER be ready until the TV shows snow instead of a picture and then they will wake up. Very bad move..
I say we make the DTV transition immediate.
If you need to set up an external/outdoor antenna to get a digital signal in the dead of winter, then this is the stupidest time of the year to make this change. A summer deadline should have been selected in the first place.
The deadline is completely irrelevant to that issue. This has been going on for more than a year, so you've already had your pick of seasons to do it. Laziness is not an excuse.
Many people didn't get their coupons until recently. So, yeah, the timing and weather has a lot to do with it.
I've never set up an outdoor antenna in my life ( I have cable), but I wouldn't want to do it now. Any federal deadline compromising safety is a future class action case and a lot of trips to the emergency room.
I have the same response. The coupon program has been in place for over a year. If one had a concern about installing an antenna in winter, one could have easily avoided that scenario.
The government is rarely liable for anything. There is no possible way they can be sued here.
I stand by my response: It's bad public tech policy to impose a new standard on the poor and elderly in the middle of winter when the weather DOES matter. It's cruel not to give them a simple 4 month delay that still puts us years ahead of the European Union.
The extra time is needed because people are on waiting lists to get coupons with no end in sight. The conversion will happen and some little old lady will probably have to wait a couple more weeks or months for that coupon to arrive. Yes, it's her fault for not buying a converter sooner, but it's the FCC's fault for not having that coupon available immediately.
That's how poorly planned and underfunded the FCC has been conducting this conversion. Even Obama is skeptical of the FCC's handling of it all.
Note, this isn't being done by the FCC. It's NTIA, under Commerce.
I don't know if this is any one entity's fault. It's the people's fault for not getting the coupons in a timely manner, but it's also the Congress' fault for setting up the silly coupon system in the first place, imo.
So, any apartment dwellers get set up, yet? We get broadcast from a common antenna on the roof. After installing the box and hooking up to the common antenna, the result was zip, zilch, nada. But I bought a rabbit-ears-like personal antenna and it worked fine.
I wonder how many buildings are going to have to wrangle over their current setup, considering that it's a case of a majority who just get cable vs. a handful of broadcast holdouts.
FYI:
www.antennaweb.org
For those equipped, the OTA (over the air) digital tv broadcasts are hi-def with better picture quality than cable or sattelite offerings, and they're free.
But there is a catch: You will either get a clear digital signal or nothing. The snowy analog picture where you could see something will be largely extinct. You won't be able to hear TV on the radio (good for sports) anymore.
There's a video on YouTube that shows how to make a good indoor antenna for digital TV out of a piece of wood, a few wire hangers and some nuts and bolts. Total price about $5.
I made one using some chewing gum and an old mass spectrometer. Total cost:$11,652.