senate tries delaying digital transition to television yet again

[EnglishEdward]

Consider the 75 year old person who was told about this 5 years ago.

Their view might well have been. I don't know if I will live that long.
And if I do, I may not be living here then, but in an old peoples' home.
I will wait and see what actually happens. And deal with it then.

 

[Patroklos]

they sure ran out of money for the coupons - now there may be enough expiring for this to not matter - but most likely they'll need some more money

Ahhhh, you realize that happend on Jan 4th 2009, like I said complete morons waiting until the last second.

I'm surprised at how many people have cable or satellite, it's horrible value for what you get out of it.

I am always surprised by who hase cable and satillite. Every time I have to counsel a sailor over financial problems it never fails that they have cable TV with every package available. They can't feed their children, but yet you should hear them protest over canceling their cable

Consider the 75 year old person who was told about this 5 years ago.

That 75 year old selfish procrasitnator is statistically irrelevant. Even if he weren't, it is still a stupid reason to delay.

 

[Shylock]

Why is it pizza places owned by old Chinese people can put out coupons like every week and the government screws it up?

 

[Shadylookin]

I don't think it should be delayed I've known about it for many a year now. I'm pretty sure almost everyone that's watched television in the past 10 years has known they were going to switch to digital. For the sake of argument though lets say only the past 2 years. If all the poor disenfranchised television watchers had saved up 7 cents a day they could now afford an average priced converter box without needing a government subsidy.

No amount of government planning is going to benefit some people who refuse to take action until the problem has slapped them right across the face so they might as well just get it over with. Television isn't even a basic necessity(I can happily go weeks without it)

 

[carmen510]

The only people who haven't changed yet are:

a) People who rarely watch TV anyways, and didn't see the DTV warnings.
b) People watching foreign channels
c) Women watching shopping channels
d) Stupid People

So all in all, not really concerned for the rest.

 

[Elliot]

Ugh, this means those stupid commercials will continue. I wish TV's were smart enough to figure out that you already have a tv capable of digital tv that it would just show something else.

 

[Civfan333]

I don't care what happens, Hawaii already switched on January 14.....

 

[Cutlass]

I'm always surprised at how many people don't have cable / satellite.

Going back 10-11 years, I forget exactly, I moved into a new apartment and called the cable company to sign up. They never showed. After a few years of going back and forth they still insisted that my address did not exist. After so long of not having cable, I find I don't really miss it. I have a high def Tv, so I never paid attention to the need to get a converter. But I have also learned that over the air HD signals absolutely suck. And even though I get HD, many times I've watched something in analog just because it was too hard to get a watchable signal in HD. And in some of these cases, distance is not a factor. I can see the building the Fox affiliate is in from out front of my building. And most of the transmitters are not 15 miles away.

 

[illram]

IIRC high def over the air is all about line of sight, so the signal can change dramatically based on where you are in a small area. When I lived on the top floor of an apt building in the western half of SF where there are no high rises, I got fantastic HD over the air reception. When I moved downtown, nada.

Although even when I was getting good reception, I had an inside antenna that was extremely picky about what angle it was at to get reception. I think to really get decent OTA you need a rooftop antenna. When I did get reception though, it was awesome.

 

[Cutlass]

The problem with that being that line of sight in the very hilly areas of the country, like the Northeast, do not have long sight lines. New Haven is only some 40 miles away, but I get not a hint of HD signal from there, even though analog TV and radio signals are fine. And there is an awful lot of the country that doesn't live within 40 miles of the cities and towns large enough to have tv stations.

 

[Zelig]

Note to discussion: Digital does not equal HD.

 

[Irish Caesar]

Congress approved a delay until June 12.

 

[a_propagandist]

It must be those failed libs.

 

[fishjie]

bumping thread. this guy says what i want to in a much more eloquent way. but trolling is much more fun. essentially, what the guy says in a much more politically correct (boring) way, is that stupid poor procrastinators will always procrastinate when given a deadline extension.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339694,00.asp

i am astounded that obama supports this. i really did think he was for change. i didn't think he was going to change much given how bad things are, but now the fact that he can't even make a small change such as this one kind of cements that fact for me. sigh. but he's still 10 billion trillion times better than palin.

 

[Aramazd]

bumping thread. this guy says what i want to in a much more eloquent way. but trolling is much more fun. essentially, what the guy says in a much more politically correct (boring) way, is that stupid poor procrastinators will always procrastinate when given a deadline extension.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339694,00.asp

While the DTV transition will give us some cool stuff, a few months isn't that big of a deal. That said, the government bungled the transition.

 

[Archbob]

Buy a sense of humor please.

Sorry, the government ran out of coupons for me to buy that too.

 

[Aramazd]

If I'm reading the news correctly, broadcasters will be allowed to turn off their analog signals on Feb. 17th if they want to, but are no longer forced to. Not much consolation for techies and companies who want to use the spectrum, but good for networks who were planning on dumping their analog equipment on the original date.

 

[fishjie]

While the DTV transition will give us some cool stuff, a few months isn't that big of a deal. That said, the government bungled the transition.

oh come on i bet you that once those months are up, people still won't be ready, there will be lots of tears and crying, and the spineless dems will cave yet again.

 

[Aramazd]

oh come on i bet you that once those months are up, people still won't be ready, there will be lots of tears and crying, and the spineless dems will cave yet again.

Maybe, but I doubt it. If they refund the coupon program they won't have a reason to extend it out any longer.

 

[Martacus]

They can do whatever they want to do, and will; but I don't see the point in delaying this any further. I'm ready; I have been for months. I ordered one coupon, ran out straight away and purchased one converter box for our one television, plus a digital antenna, for a total cost to me of $50 plus 7% sales tax. Honestly, if people can't do that in all the time they have had to do so, then they can suffer the consequences. Most people already have cable/satellite hook-ups and don't need boxes for their old sets anyway. Just get the deed over and done with already.