Obama makes a decision .......oh yeah!!

Honestly, i don't think they did their homework right when they mandated the DTV switch. First, they underestimated the need for receiver boxes, and didn't fund the coupon program adequately, causing the current talk of pushing back the date by 4 months so they can fund it and get coupons to those who need it. Second, they didn't take into account the cliff effect. Essentially, with old analog TV, people in poor reception areas (with a hill between them and the tower, for example) still worked fine. things might be a little snowy, but they still got their TV. With digital, it's all or nothing. If your signal to noise ratio is 15DB or lower, you simply don't get TV. And we don't have enough towers in the right places to cover everyone who wants TV. The FCC has a solution for this, but it'll take time, and i'm pretty sure it isn't ready yet. Home Theater: FCC Green-Lights DTV Range Fix

Besides, what's the hassle for everyone here? If you've got your box, you can hook it up and it'll work, no problem. If you're house is fully outfited for the switch over, then you're getting your digital signal and not really caring when analog is laid to rest.

 

If the OP is correct and Obama delayed the switch, I'll consider this his first bad move. I'm tired of catering to the lowest common denominator and the laziest among us. We need a national switch to cater to the highest level (numerator?) among us can achieve and let the lowest denominator take an example of how to achieve. ENOUGH with junior's 'lowered expectations' which was roundly touted as he first entered office. So poor you can't get with the program? You're most likely the ones most in need of turning off the tube and taking a community college course, going for a walk, or volunteering somewhere. As you walk past those houses with DTV you will become inspired to find a way to join the rest of the nation, or better yet toss your TV and continue to use your time more wisely.

 

Why did you place poor in quotes?

 

Yeah, it seems like nobody's considered that the *last* thing
po' folks need to be doing is sitting around like alpha-state
zombies watching TV when they've got a life to hold together.
Not pushing the date back could be one of the best things to happen
to this country, but I doubt it's going to happen that way.
.
_H*

 

a simple question... what position of authority in the government does Obama currently hold? He's resigned his Senate seat, and he assume the office of the presidency until January 20. So... how can this be his decision? The switch was supposed to take place Feb 17 - less than a month after he takes office...

 

No politician in his right mind is going to push the envelope on forcing the DTV switchover. There are plenty of people who will have trouble getting the whole thing to work, even if they can get coupons and buy the boxes. A politician who can't talk to the people by TV because the government shut off the TV is in trouble.

Case in point, my sister. She got a coupon, and then couldn't find a store with a converter box to sell. The coupon ran out. She got another one, and then bought a box. She couldn't figure out how to connect it. She has a TV with rabbit ear antenna, VCR, DVD player, and an AB switch. There were no leftover places to plug in another device, and the AB switch really confuses her. So she waited several months until I could visit and figure out what to do.

The instructions gave no hints about how to connect the 5 devices. The old rabbit ear antenna didn't work on several channels. The power outlet was full. The whole system was controlled by a wall switch used to turn off lights in the room. Turning off everything caused the system to come back up in "configure me" mode when the switch was turned on.

These problems were all easy to solve for a gadget freak like me, but there is no way I could have done it over the phone. Somebody technical had to physically look at the setup and fiddle with it. It was a whole lot more complicated than "plug the antenna into the new box, and connect a wire from the new box to where the antenna wire used to go".

The system (just calling it a TV doesn't do justice) all works fine now. She is getting at least twice as many channels as before, and they all come in perfectly. The picture quality is truly amazing when compared to the analog signals that she used before.

Long road, happy ending. Some people are going to need more time and maybe some assistance to make it all work.

 

i hate to say it, but i know far too many people who complain about how little money they have, who also have a $50/month (or more) cable tv subscription...

cable tv was one of the first things to go when we ran into some tough times, and we haven't had it since.

 

You have no idea how much aggravation you've avoided. Comcast cable has been an unending series of outages, weak signals, and deceptive service charges.

We originally got cable to upgrade the signal quality. Now with DTV the off-air picture is every bit as good as digital cable.

I just installed a 4 bowtie UHF only antenna for the DTV. It works fine at 50 miles from the collection of stations in San Francisco.

We haven't dumped cable yet, but that option is getting much more viable.

 

Hi kk6pd,

Somehow, I get the feeling that with the money involved, even if Obama does get the delay, the TV stations will just go off the air for the delay period, because they wont be able to legally fire up the new transmitters, they HAVE to switch too due to the economics of the conversion process.

For example. I know WBBM here in Chicagoland will be firing up a new channel 12 transmitter to replace their Channel 3 single Batwing dipole 3 KW transmitter right now. Yea, I know pitiful! But hey, I receive it out here 35 miles away on a homemade twin-lead dipole. If the legislated postponement happens, WBBM may go off the air, because everything is keyed to switch over to the Channel 12 antenna, but wont be able to unless they can get the Channel 12 Analog stations in the nearby area to go off-the-air on the original schedule. WLS is up on channel 5X something or other. And its scheduled to go to Channel 7 their existing analog alocation. A LP station may need that channel 5X allocation due to somebody else firing up HDTV on schedule.

I know, I am reaching here. But maybe somebody can take this idea, and come up with an actual unavoidable shutdown that will need to happen because the post ponement screws up the coordination everybody originally had.

 

Hey TV techno TV snobs! Paying for TV is for boobs (yes, I used to be a cable subscriber with "57 channels and nuthin' on"). I ordered and received my 2 discount cards before the boxes were available (about one year ago, NOT two). Later I found out the cards had a 90 day expiration date. Having to buy a box for each TV and VCR (I have 5 TVs and two VCRs) is way too much to ask. I was, however smart enough to count on the fact that there would have to be a delay. It is perfectly understandable for Grandmas around the country to not fully understand this high tech crapola. DTV, HDTV, LCD, cable ready, HD ready etc, etc, etc are deliberately being marketed to deceive many non-tech saavy consumers.

 

Hi ken...,

Well, delaying the changeover is not going to help any Grandmas to understand it any faster. And I doubt many Grandmas have 5 personal TV's.

Besides have you not seen the instructional programs on how to set up a converter box with all those 5 TV's and VCR's? They are even being broadcast in spanish, let alone on PBS and many of the commercial stations.

 

I'd prefer that the conversion be spread out over several months, rather than all at once. Individual stations could turn off their analog signal whenever they decide that their market has sufficiently moved to digital. People who are slow to make the conversion would see stations drop out one at a time, instead of all at once.

The TV installers will be much better able to spread out their work if the pressure grows incrementally, instead of all at once.

In my market (San Francisco area), all of the digital signals are available. None of the analog signals have to be disabled before any digital stations are started up. Given that a single digital channel can carry at least a half dozen or more virtual channels, there really shouldn't be any conflict.

The real analog cutoff should only occur when the next user of the spectrum space is ready to use it. As far as I know, that's going to be many months beyond even the delayed cutoff 5 months from now. Stations could individually negotiate when to drop their analog signals. Perhaps there could be an increasing fee charged to maintain the analog signal. A station with an analog customer base may choose to continue the analog signal until the fee becomes prohibitive.

 

If you ask me, a better solution would be to shut off TV transmission entirely. I travel a lot, and whenever I'm in a hotel I turn on the TV. For about 5 minutes. Which is the time it takes to go through all the channels and find out that there's nothing on but cr@p!

If they put a stop to TV people would have to start reading books instead. The national IQ would rise by 25 points. We'd rise out of bottom place for educational level among industrialized nations. People would learn how to think.

Next to religion, television is the most destructive influence in modern life. Kill your TV! :smash: Get a library card instead.