House Rejects DTV Transition Delay

If you're using rabbit ears for your TV reception, you better get ready for the switch to digital transmission next month! The House of Representatives just rejected a bill delaying the switch to June. The vote was 258-168, just under the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill; the bill was passed by the Senate on Monday. Earlier this week, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference to discuss the transition, "Although most New Yorkers do not have to do anything to prepare for the national conversion to Digital Television because they subscribe to cable or satellite services, about 300,000 New York City households receive television signals over the air and may have older TVs that cannot accommodate a digital broadcast." Tips are here.

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By Jen Chung in News on January 28, 2009 3:36 PM

Comments [rss]

dd7

Remember when TV used to be free? Now, you have to pay the cable company or the satellite company. Corporate America wins again.

Spirit of 76

Uh, buy a convertor box (a Dish Network TR-40 costs you $12 for shipping and NYS sales tax after you apply the coupon) and an antenna and you don't have to pay anybody after that. Do I get the impression you have no idea what digital broadcast TV is?

Here's the simple story in a nutshell. The USA is finally ready to ditch broadcast (i.e. "free," over the air) TV technology that's over a half century old. You can't just use the same frequencies for the new channels or there would be lots of interference. The government gave local broadcast channels new frequencies for the new technology, on the condition that when the deadline arrives, they stop transmitting on the old frequencies, which the government gets back and reassigns for other uses. Corporate America would have won if they could have kept both the old and the new. That's not the case.

runs with scissors

New York City's schools are still without converter boxes and the FCC did not make coupons available either.

babyhitler

i'm confused. How come the stimulus package goes through the house first and then the senate but this is vice versa?

MacMuttonchops

Because the Senate passed a bill to delay the transition to June. Then it goes back to the House, but they struck it down. Clearly stated in the article.

jaycjay

"Politicians actually doing something good."

By, unsurprisingly... not doing anything.

Steven

Politicians actually doing something good.

ides_of_march

A TV blackout can only help improve the country's collective IQ.

ganghiscon

They've been running ads nonstop for at least two years. Failure to prepare on the part of any of those 300,000 households is their problem.