Digital TV Deadline Faces Vote, May be Delayed

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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Nov 27, 2006
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Congress will vote this week on a bill introduced by WV Senator John D. Rockefeller that pushes back the deadline for the digital TV transition. The original deadline is Feb. 17 but if the bill passes, the new deadline will be June 12.

"The shameful truth is that we are not poised to do this transition right," Rockefeller said in a statement. "We are only weeks away from doing it dreadfully wrong -- and leaving consumers with the consequences."
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this is crap. just switch it already. if some slow tards lose thier tv for a few days who really cares? i didnt think tv was like electricity or water....
 
Yeah what is the difference, if you haven't heard about it or don't know how to do it then you probably don't care and shouldn't complain when you wonder what happened to analog tv.
 
NOOOOOOOOO!!! :mad: DON'T DELAY IT YOU F TARDS!!! :mad: I NEED MY DIGITAL CHANNELS TO UP THE OUTPUT POWER!!! :mad:
 
What I don't get is i've been watching these stupid ass comercials about the switch over for the last year.... if anyone hasn't gotten the memo yet then it's their own fault.
 
Yes switch already. HDTV over the air is so easy to get (well if you are close to towers and i am). and yes its hecka clear even with a cheapo TV tuner for my PC..
 
i move for a vote to switch it earlier, and end the damn ads/news talk/infomercially things about it. This was announced more than a year in advance. That's 10 months more notice than is needed.
 
Problem isnt people switching to a tuner box or just having cable or sat... Its the fact that the government hasnt spent enough already (12 billion dollars on the DTV Switch) so they have to figure out how to get more so they can spend it too.
 
Stu55 said:
Yeah what is the difference, if you haven't heard about it or don't know how to do it then you probably don't care and shouldn't complain when you wonder what happened to analog tv.
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This has nothing to do with consumers or who will or will not get a signal after the switch… what this is about is that certain companies trying to delay the switch to hurt their competitors that have heavily invested in the anticipation of freed up spectrum.

Follow the money… contributions.

This is pure politics.
 
Seriously you guys should write your congressman. Due to the bandwidth we have to waste on analog you guys are missing out on quality and HD channels we could provide. I'm sitting next to a stack of H.264 encoder switches wasting space.


Max Mike said:
This has nothing to do with consumers or who will or will not get a signal after the switch… what this is about is that certain companies trying to delay the switch to hurt their competitors that have heavily invested in the anticipation of freed up spectrum.

Follow the money… contributions.

This is pure politics.
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More delays! This is ludicrous. How much more time do we need to give people to make the switch.
 
The fuck do I care, I have DirecTV it's all digital anyways.

More channels? Who fucking cares I have too many as it is, and if there are any usefully cool channels chances are they'll just be put in a premium package pricing like they currently do with channels, yet I get shit like BET in the lowest tier *sigh*
 
Personally, I say they should just switch and get it over with, but either way it doesn't affect me.

What I do have to complain about is the fact they wasted money on these coupons and instead should have spent money on making sure the signal is available everywhere. Take my dad for instance. He lives out in the boonies of Oklahoma and just barely recieves the over-the-air analog signals. I honestly doubt there is any way for him to recieve the signals as he is approximately 60 miles from the transmission towers, in a single story house out in the country with lots of trees. According to antennaweb.org, he might get them but requires a large directional antenna with a pre-amp...

Instead of giving out coupons, they should have improved the television infrastructure by adding "boosting towers" or something to increase the range and availability of the signals.

Heck, even I require a large directional antenna with a pre-amp accoding to antennaweb and I live just north of Houston. There is no way I'm sticking a big antenna on top of my house, let alone the fact I'm not sure my homeowners association even allows it. Of course, amazingly enough I can pick up several analog stations with rabbit ears when the cable goes out .......

They should have been required to get the digital transmissions in a equal availability state (or better) then the analog before even thinking about switching IMO. In other words, if I can pick up CBS via analog with rabbit ears, they should be required to provide a digital signal that I could pick up with nothing more than a small indoor antenna just as well if not better....
 
TV isn't a right, the converter box program is a waste of taxpayer funds.

$40 coupon for a $50 box with $10 worth of electronics in it.
 
Pushing it back is only going to make it more confusing... if that is even possible.

Using rabbit ears? You need to get a tuner. How freeking hard is that?
 
sfsuphysics said:
The fuck do I care, I have DirecTV it's all digital anyways.

More channels? Who fucking cares I have too many as it is, and if there are any usefully cool channels chances are they'll just be put in a premium package pricing like they currently do with channels, yet I get shit like BET in the lowest tier *sigh*
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Couldn't agree more, Got sick of cable shit and horrible selection. So upgraded thinking it be better with dish network. Just more shit and nothing great on :( but hey. I get a nice guide now :p and sirus music stations!!!!! no commercials
 
from article said:
The Nielsen Co. said Thursday that more than 6.5 million U.S. households are still not prepared for the upcoming transition and could see their television sets go dark next month.
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Yeah, so that's what... ~2% of the US population?

Lets go already, I'm tired of seeing the ads EVERY FRIGGING DAY.
 
Jester1550 said:
Yeah, so that's what... ~2% of the US population?

Lets go already, I'm tired of seeing the ads EVERY FRIGGING DAY.
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Projected total number of US households for 2010 is 114m. So a bit more than 2% of households(The only metric that really counts for this scenario). Either way, a delay will improve nothing. Make the switch, those people left in the dark will get the converter boxes if they need it. Right now there is no real incentive to switch.
 
Dew said:
Right now there is no real incentive to switch.
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QFT.

You want people to be ready? Make the blitherin' switch. If I can sit here on my fat butt and watch analog all day, and don't have to go to the store to buy a box, why will I?? I know most people are already ready to go. The rest of them can go BUY THEM. My local electronics stores have STACKS of them.

TV is NOT a right. You had to buy a TV just to be able to watch programming. Instead of having to buy a NEW TV you can simply buy a $50 box. That way you still get TV. They made it easy and cheap.

I am suspicious that the leaders pushing for a delay have buddies who will benefit financially from the delay. No one's going to delay it for 7 mil people out of almost 300 mil. Stupid. Just plain stupid to delay.

And people who whine that it's their only way to get warnings of emergencies or news can go buy a $5 radio if they're too cheap to buy a tuner.
 
Dew said:
Projected total number of US households for 2010 is 114m. So a bit more than 2% of households(The only metric that really counts for this scenario). Either way, a delay will improve nothing. Make the switch, those people left in the dark will get the converter boxes if they need it. Right now there is no real incentive to switch.
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You're right, I read 6.5 million people not households, and the US Census predicts 113.5m US households by July of this year.

So, ~5.7% of US households may be left in the dark.
 
This needs to stop. Just do it already! There have been enough delays.

Now, there is a more serious aspect to this that I've not heard the government address whatsoever:

The millions, if not billions, of analog TV's out there. It's not just the primary TV's. It's the small, emergency TV's that just about everyone has. I have THREE of them. Two 9" CRT's, a small 5" b/w, and a 7" LCD.

Just where are all these TV's going to end up? In the land-fills. Just think about this for a second.

Done properly, there should have already been plans for numerous drop-off points for people to bring these for recycling.

No one is going to buy digital tuners for these. Most of these TV's run on battey power. I've yet to see an add-on digital tuner that runs on power.

I sold a $250, 3 year old Toshiba 20" that had maybe 3 hours total on it (bedroom TV) for $20. At least I know it will go to good use for the new owner (with cable) instead of ending up in the landfill, which is where it was headed shortly.
 
Have been hearing about this for years and am tired of seeing the commercials about it from all different groups.Lets get it over already.
The people who are late in getting a voucher are late in everything else. Early bird gets the worm. Now thay want Obama to save them.
 
If they were going to have this many delays, or delay it at all, they never should have tried in the first place.
 
"The shameful truth is that we are not poised to do this transition right," Rockefeller said in a statement. "We are only weeks away from doing it dreadfully wrong -- and leaving consumers with the consequences."

Give me an example where the politicians were correctly poised to do anything right. Historically, politicians mimic the actions of fast-food workers, where a customer arrives, and they react. At least this guy admits to being incompetent, as he was in office when the original bill was scribed.
 
And some people want them in charge of their health care, ROFL.
 
Grrrrr... Are these people morons, blissfully unaware of the programs advertised in the papers and on tv for the last 2 years. The switchover has already been delayed some 6 years now.

Wake up! Park that Model T! Get a new block of Ice for the IceBox! And gleefully move forward!

Friggin Luddites....
 
They need to just stick to the date that has been set .....

It has been in the TV, Radio, Intenet, and all type of sign media ....

This is just plain silly !
 
Digital TV is a bad idea. What they should do is IPHDTV. If you do digital tv now, you'll have to switch technologies again soon.
 
We (Hawaii) did ours on January 15.
It's almost a non-issue here, though, since the vast majority of people have cable or dish satellite.
 
lol wasnt the original projected date back in 2007 or something
 
Sparky said:
Early bird gets the worm..
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But the second mouse gets the cheese!!

This is stupid. There shouldn't have even been a government coupon program. It's not the government's responsibility to maintain people's televisions. The notifications and ads and so forth should have gone forward, and people should have been left to their own to buy a converter box out of their own damn pocket. IF there was to be a coupon program, one of it's elegibility requirements should have been financial necessity. The coupons should have gone to those for which buying one of these boxes would have been a burden. Even at that, 2 per household would be one too many. One would be enough for a tv to get news and basic emergency coverage.
 
The fucking scumbag media has used this stupid subject to "fullfill" thier duty to provide Public Service Ad quota's for months now.

No more YourBrainOnDrugs crap, instead its an inane flood of DTV switchover omfgweRallgonnaDie crap.

They should all be SHOT for avoiding thier lawful duty to provide meaningful PSAs as part of thier licensing requirements.

At this point switch already. The only people left unawarez are the fucking CRACK WHORES and TWEAKERS who wouldn't know the difference between "static" and a tv show if thier lives depended on it. :eek::rolleyes::p
 
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