Obama Recommends Delay in Digital TV Switch

[alfi33]

Interesting....

http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2...tal-tv-switch/

How many times has it been pushed back already?

[sandor]

Originally Posted by alfi33

Interesting....

http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2...tal-tv-switch/

How many times has it been pushed back already?

i think it has only really been (legislatively) pushed back once - from january 2007 to february 2009. it has been a long time coming, and i really think they just need to do it. i've been using ATSC since 2004 (thanks to a line of site five mile distance to the broadcast towers) and i'm ready for them to go full power...

[dgeezer]

I read this article. As usual it's based on somewhat dated information (early December). I wonder what percentage of the people without a digital TV or converter box waited to give the family a new TV for Christmas? I know 2 people who did this...

<rant>
Of course no politician would ever miss a chance to pander to the ignorant, uninformed and ill-prepared voters.
</rant>

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by dgeezer

<rant>
Of course no politician would ever miss a chance to pander to the ignorant, uninformed and ill-prepared voters.
</rant>

Not to mention I know nobody who relies on an antenna. It seems everyone has cable or sat nowdays. I wonder what the stats really are.

[Taddeusz]

I believe the only real problem with the digital switch is the lack of portable digital capable TV's. The main reason for this is because the ATSC signal doesn't lend itself well to portable reception. It assumes a fixed non-moving antenna.

The reason this is important is for people who live on the fringe of cable company's service area and who's only choice is either broadcast TV or satellite. At least here in OKC that can be a problem when the weather is bad and you want to get constant weather updates. When the wind picks up the satellite reception is gone. Then the power goes out and your only choice then is broadcast on a battery powered TV. I'm sure those problems can be worked out with ATSC on portable devices but there is going to be a gap between the time the analog signal gets cut off and portable devices become a reality and come to market.

For those outside the US there are already portable DVB-T devices but then the signal was designed to lend itself well to that purpose.

[pjpjpjpj]

So how many millions (if not billions) of advertising dollars would be wasted if they move the date? I've been seeing commercials for a good 8 months, at least, and our local TV news broadcast mentions it daily (and has for almost a year).

At this point, I figured probably everyone at least was aware of the situation, or had begun the process to do something about it. Then FCC head Kevin Martin came to town this week to do a Q&A about the switch. The local news covered it... "tempers flared" as all these people complained that they had not yet applied for their convertor coupons and now they are sold out. Um, you waited until a month ahead of time for something from the government??

And then a co-worker - a pretty smart, usually tech-savvy one at that - came by my desk yesterday because I'm known as the "HDTV expert" around here. He said he needed to get a small (like 27") HDTV to replace the old one in a room in their house, because of the switchover. I asked a few questions and determined that he had cable... and that his TV was on it. He thought you needed to get a digital cable box for the switchover, so he was just going to buy a replacement TV instead.

On another note, in following with the comment above, the one thing that I am bummed about is the portable TV aspect of the switch. I have an old 5" battery-powered TV (with an antenna, and no AV inputs whatsoever) that I have used on occasion to watch a football game when out somewhere (at a picnic or whatnot). It will become a doorstop next month. No AV inputs = no way to convert.

[samgreco]

The way I read it was that they ran out of money and CAN'T issue any more coupons until they get more funding.

So where did the planning fall apart on that? 'Cause even I know that there will always be last minute types out there that wait until the day before to do things.

[scott2020]

Another major issue right now is the FCC identified areas where analog reception is OK, but digital reception will be much more difficult if not impossible. So people who have analog reception on the fringe now may not receive anything digitally due to frequency changes, power output changes, whever other mumbo jumbo. There is a link to that article somewhere.

[sic0048]

While I agree that many of the scenerios played out in the article are likely to happen during the switchover, I have to say that they are likely to occur during the switchover even if it is delayed 6mo, 12mo, 2 yrs, etc.

I agree that this deadline has been a long time coming, a lot of money has been spent trying to educate people on it, and it sees like it will likely cost a lot of money to delay the switch.

So just let it happen already! I agree that more money should be allocated for the coupon program however. Afterall, isn't money growing on trees right now

Just my 2 cents.

[Taddeusz]

Yea, I agree. Even with the portability problems and such. The change should occur. If anything the cutoff will force the development of new technologies to deal with the issue of portability. I think right now it seems like they're not putting much effort into it. Possibly because there isn't that much pubic outcry in that direction. I've only heard one of my friends mention it. With the exception of an article I read on the topic I haven't heard anyone else even mention the problem of portable TV's.

[Menehune]

Hawaii is switching early on Jan 15

On my island, the transmitters are being moved from the top of the 10 000 foot mountain down to around the 8000 foot level. The justification for the transmitter site move was to finally eliminate interference to the telescopes on the summit and the justification for the date change was to eliminate disturbances to the nesting native endangered birds during the antenna removal process.

I can't wait to see how the OTA signals look. The unencrypted "HD" signals on cable range from 5th gen VHS compressed up the wazzo to beautiful, razor sharp Football and local PBS origination. Most HD network feeds look worse (to my eyes) than the analog signals they are replacing.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

No AV inputs = no way to convert.

http://www.provantage.com/belkin-f8v3063~7BELC15A.htm

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

http://www.provantage.com/belkin-f8v3063~7BELC15A.htm

Most portable TV's, especially tiny ones, don't even have coax inputs. And besides, this kind of defeats the purpose of a portable (read battery operated) TV.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Most portable TV's, especially tiny ones, don't even have coax inputs. And besides, this kind of defeats the purpose of a portable (read battery operated) TV.

Ok, got it now!!! and a headache!

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by samgreco

The way I read it was that they ran out of money and CAN'T issue any more coupons until they get more funding.

So where did the planning fall apart on that? 'Cause even I know that there will always be last minute types out there that wait until the day before to do things.

It fell apart when they announced that the coupons were ready, and you had all of these people rush forward to get a coupon even though they didn't need one. You know, just in case....

I'm sure there are several people who bought one of the things and have their coax cable from the wall hooked up to it.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

It fell apart when they announced that the coupons were ready, and you had all of these people rush forward to get a coupon even though they didn't need one. You know, just in case....

I'm sure there are several people who bought one of the things and have their coax cable from the wall hooked up to it.

I was one of those people because I didn't know, then I found out I didn't need it and let the coupon expire. So, it should be right back in the fund.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

Ok, got it now!!! and a headache!

Yeah, taddeusz beat me to it. This little thing doesn't have any inputs. Just a hard-connected antenna on a swivel. Plus there's that "makes it not portable" aspect.

I actually have one of those gadgets you linked. I installed it at my mother-in-law's since her old TV only had single coax in, and I wanted to connect cable AND a DVD player. It works as an automatic switch, but it's far from portable.

Back to the coupon discussion - my suspicion was that the government was taking a stab at the number of households that have no cable/sat and giving them two coupons each, but what they missed were the large number of people who have cable or satellite but ALSO have several TVs that are NOT on that feed and just operate with a rabbit ears. I think this is especially prevalent with people with either digital cable or satellite, where you need a box per TV and have to pay an extra monthly fee per box. For example, my house has TWO spare rooms set up as guest rooms. Each one has an old TV in it, for when we have house guests. But I'll be da*ned if I was going to pay DirecTV $5/mo to have satellite service on those TVs, since we don't have guests very often. So those TVs (both analog) have rabbit ears. So I registered for, and received, two convertor coupons, for those TVs (and bought and installed the boxes). But I bet the government didn't count on me when they were counting chickens to make the budget request a few years ago.

Similar to the guest room situation, a lot of people don't bother paying for boxes for TVs in their kids' rooms, for example.

And, of course, there's the fact that a lot of people have more than two TVs in their house, and probably got friends/neighbors who have cable to get coupons and give the coupons to them.

[scott2020]

I was reading over in AVS forums a guy who works for a TV station can't wait until the digital switchover, because his station will save a lot of money just on electricity costs. They are running two transmitters now, analog taking a lot of power, plus the cost of having to cool all of that. It costs a fortune to run in parallel especially. I can't imagine how many stations are running two transmitters now and how much energy that wastes!

[MattHelm]

My $0.02. GET it over with!!!!

Also, after Feb. 17th, Verizon and AT&T own some of those channels (52 and higher), and could just start charging the goverment for the use. That'll waist a lot of tax dollors too.

[panteragstk]

Since I work at a big box tv store I'm more ready than anyone for the switch. I'm very tired of people asking for converter boxes who have cable and dish of some kind. The people with an antenna don't realize that just because they got an analog signal with their 30 year old antenna doesn't mean their converter box will get the same signal with atsc. That and people that still use VCr's to record ota will be very angry when they realize most manufacture res don't make vcr's with any type of tuner. Some have digital tuners, but they are about $250+.

No more delays please, I won't be able to take more of those stupid commercials...