HD converter boxes

a little off topic, but i dont buy the reason for all this:

govt said: Broadcasters transitioned to digital to provide important benefits to consumers. Because digital broadcasting is more efficient, broadcasters require less of the airwaves to provide a better television viewing experience. Now that the DTV transition has been completed, some television channels will be turned over to fire and police departments for emergency communication and others have been auctioned to companies to provide new wireless services.

leeme see, now all those little battery portable tv's people use in emergencies (like hurricanes, earthquakes, ect) are useless. if you do have an older tv, you need an additional electronic accessory to make it work (when the power goes, they're useless, even if the portable tv does have an antenna in jack to hook up the converter too)..oh, and all those old tvs get dumped into landfills en masse'?? i suppose digital radio will be next, further rendering people incommunicado during emergencies...

To be clear, im not completely against this transition, i hooked up a tv card to my pc and get 11 channels and the picture is excellent on most of the channels (apparently i should only get two..) its as good as or better even than my "dish" connected household tv's. But i do wonder how many people will be completely cut off in a natural disaster or other true emergency. This transition shouldve been done over a decade or more, given the number of analog tv's still in use, three years or so is way to short of span, and even with the converter coupon program, the have nots will be affected, especially if bad things happen, emergency communication to the masses will suffer.

Despite what the "stated reasons" are. this was about greed and profiteering, plain and simple...

rant over, you may now return to your originally scheduled discussion...

924guy wrote: Despite what the "stated reasons" are. this was about greed and profiteering, plain and simple...

Or.. When 9/11 happened the on site rescue workers had so much cross talk it hindered their ability to help people. It really happened.. I can put you in touch with some cops and NYFD if you want.

924guy, here yah go

http://www.tvconversionhelp.com/2008/10/01/winegard-rcdt09a-first-battery-powered-converter-box-available-soon/

I have an HD set. When I moved I hooked up an ancient Archer rabbit-ear antenna just to get some TV until I got cable. That was a year ago and I never got cable. The antenna I have is that old thing with the 6-position dial switch fine tuning knob on it and the two rabbit ears with the round antenna in the middle. I get 10 HD air channels in Austin. The Fox station just went digital and I'm having trouble getting it to come in reliably, but I find it humorous that I'm watching HD TV on a 42" LCD using a Radio Shack antenna from 1981.

Also, mind you that this is a set-top antenna that is in the middle of the apartment, shielded by three walls to the east, a brick wall outside the window to the west, 30 apartments to the north and south, and 2 apartments above me. I'm going to get more coax and see if I can get more by moving it to a window.

HD air channels, my DVD collection, plus my Netflix membership means all the entertainment I could possibly need for $9.95 a month. Beats cable if you ask me, and its genuine HD stuff. I had DirecTV before, and didn't get the HD package, so I had zero HD channels for $79. Now I get 10 HDs for free. Of course I can't get skinamax or spike, but I just watch stuff like that on the 'net.

Ditchdigger got it right. I too built the coat hanger antenna and got all the stations around. It is somewhat directional, but beats the heck out of the < $80 store-bought antennas.

I simply cannot believe that the government took some of my tax dollars and gave them to people so they can watch TV. I just can't believe it. This is a chance for people to have a reason to get off the couch and go outside--think about all the positive effects of this economically! But no, instead of looking for a job, Joe Dirt wants to sit on his couch, drink a six-pack, and watch TV and the gubment is stealing his TV from him!

It used to be that if a law mandated a change in the electronic environment (or if the change came about through electronic evolution), you either upgraded your equipment yourself, or you didn't enjoy that branch of the technology tree for a while. Remember the analog to digital cell phone switch? Yeah, did the government pay you money to upgrade your cell phone? No? Didn't think so.

This is pure waste.

ignorant wrote:

924guy wrote: Despite what the "stated reasons" are. this was about greed and profiteering, plain and simple...

Or.. When 9/11 happened the on site rescue workers had so much cross talk it hindered their ability to help people. It really happened.. I can put you in touch with some cops and NYFD if you want.

While you are correct that there were major issues on 9/11, 924guy is correct that this is primarily about greed. The primary bandwidths that have been made available are not going to local emergency service providers. Verizon bought most of them at FCC auction about 6 months ago.

The local emergency service providers may get something, but they are not getting the best bandwidths. If they are getting anything, it is probably more like the rinky dink PBS bandwidths and the leftover stuff the big guys don't want, not the good stuff.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/psic/PSIC%20Investment%20Data%20Analysis%20(report%20only).pdf said: This digital television transition will reallocate 24 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum for public safety use. The remaining portion of the returned spectrum was auctioned for commercial use.

sounds so greedy...

And how much of that spectrum was made available for commercial applications?

SVreX wrote: And how much of that spectrum was made available for commercial applications?

how much of that money from the sale was needed to funnel back into the grants that are mentioned in the nita study?

ahh, most big cities converted their communications to digital signals years ago, so they would need analog bands for, what?

yep, i question the stated reasons..not saying the digital conversion is a bad thing, I just have concerns when our elected leaders tell us something is for the greater good, and cant prove it.. typical government "the public is dumber than we are, so they'll follow blindly, and if they dont, we wont give em choice anyhow... " attitude. IMO this seemed to be the norm with the previous administration, its too soon to say if this trend is continuing on the same massive level now, but seems a bit less lately. time will tell...

I honestly dont think theres anything nefarious about the whole deal. It just concerns me that they :

1. didn't just say " look, the broadcasters can fit ten new channels in the airspace the old system uses for one channel, at higher quality" (instead of giving bunk reasons.) and the government needs the cash flow from the leasing of the freed up airspace. its simple, its easy, and has allot more truth to it.

2. issued these dtv converter box coupons solely, instead of issuing coupons that could be applicable to new digital tuner tv purchases as well. this would help people upgrade their old tv (especially portable ones used in power outages) as well as boost retail sales in a time when its needed so badly. and

3. didn't encourage a recycling program or create incentives somehow for all those old tv (like a cash for cars program or whatever.) seems a no brainer to me, and would have also create jobs and helped protect the environment... thats all i have, im not a tree hugger or an activist, i just question stuff like this and think we all should look a little deeper, and make our own conclusions.. right, wrong, or indifferent.

I looked at Radio Shack for a little portable TV like we have now so that we could use it during power outages. They don't have one. That last ice storm when we were without power for a week really changes your perspective on things. Portable radio was useless. I don't care what the satellite broadcast from Ohio says, I want to know what the power company is doing about my electricty. "Hello " pause, change in voice tone/recording equipment "93-3 The Eagle" pause, change in equipment "listeners..." We used the little battery TV for news and weather. The radio was OK for music entertainment, but that's it.

And, coming from 35 years of radio communications experience, yeah, the government has been BSing us on the whole thing. It is as 924guy sez. "Look, we can sell this bandwidth to people instead of our current giving it to them for free." And then take that money and give bonuses to everyone involved. Oh, and we (us U.S. Americans) get to pay for it. Again. Sure, the analog TV system is out dated. It has a slight amount of compression built in from a suppressed sideband, but it is still 6MHz wide. That's a good chunk of bandwidth. Digital compression can use that bandwidth a lot more efficiently, and the extra space could be put to better uses, like better internet access OUT HERE IN THE STICKS. I'm all for better, cheaper broadcasting. I just don't like the way we have been BSed about the whole thing as certain large corporations and congress critters make a bunch of money from this.

ignorant wrote:

SVreX wrote: And how much of that spectrum was made available for commercial applications?

how much of that money from the sale was needed to funnel back into the grants that are mentioned in the nita study?

So you are suggesting that we should be proud of them for selling the bandwidth and using the proceeds to funnel back into grants that are to be used for the purchase of bandwidth, right?

Governmentspeak.

Would you mind trying to answer my question? You made the case that the FCC was very generous (not greedy) in allocating the bandwidth, based on the quantity of bandwidth allocated to emergency services, but you did not offer the quantity that had been sold to commercial ventures. I'm not going to buy your argument if you can't attempt to present the entire picture.

SVreX wrote: So you are suggesting that we should be proud of them for selling the bandwidth and using the proceeds to funnel back into grants that are to be used for the purchase of bandwidth, right?

nope that money was directly funneled back to emergency services to update their communications, far as I understand.

I don't think the government was generous at all. I however, don't think it was pure greed...

if they were truly greedy they'd do some crazy ass lease for the bandwidth with draconian "lease fees" per month. Then Jack the rates every year or so............ Sort of like a title loan.

17 channels were freed up. 4 of those were allocated for public safety services. The rest were auctioned for commercial ventures.

The public safety bandwidth WAS NOT given away. It was also sold, and $1 billion of Federal grant money was made available to States for this purchase.

There's a WHOLE LOT of politics involved.

The dirty little secret on converter boxes and digital receivers is that there are some places that they WILL NOT work.

I, unfortunately, live in one. After a weekend of effort, I learned that the reality of digital reception in my area is that there are NO signals to receive.

Apparently, there may be 6 million other homes like me.

NY Times article

USA Today article

Now, I'm trying to decide if I can afford cable, because it looks like there will no longer be ANY free air service in my area. Interestingly, Mediacom is pushing it on their website.

If I was selling cable services, I'd have been lobbying like crazy for this digital conversion. 6 million new customers sounds pretty good.

I dumped the satellite. $720/yr for 24/7 comercials and 20 year old movies I've seen 100 times if they were any good or ignored 1000 times if they weren't. That's a lot of R compound tires or Locost race parts, and that's for a year. We were getting 3 channels of nothing instead, but now with digital, we get 7 channels of nothing. I hooked a PC up to the TV and we can hit HULU.com and some other sites and watch "tv", and I get various shows on disk to watch. We just finished Firefly, ending with Serenity, and we're in S01E03 of Red Dwarf now.

Oh, and we got an amplified external antennae that works pretty good. From monoprice.com.

Haha did I inspire the hulu? Pretty awesome huh? I like the option sometimes of watching my commercial all at once, or in reality spending 1:30 on GRM while the commercial passes, I'm on S3E11 of Stargate SG1, and there's soooooooo much more to watch, now if only I could get the wife to give up reality tv....man the money I could save....sigh.

I think the reality TV stuff is on Hulu too, isn't it? We get some of that stuff on the new free digital channels. Oh, and that last analog station dropped off, so we have zero analog and 7 or 8 (depending on how many PBS feels like showing) digital channels now.

After S01E03 of Red Dwarf (DIVX), we HULU'ed S01E3 of The Addams Family last night. That $720 will go to some tires for the Esprit and my Track Day this Wednesday at Hallett, where I plan on cording what's on there now. I hope to have just enough to drive home on.

can i jerkin my CANOE?

AngryCorvair wrote: can i jerkin my CANOE?

Why do they like to bring back the dead? It's almost always a 2-3 year old thread.

I wonder if anyone will try to revive the original discussion.....

alfadriver wrote:

AngryCorvair wrote: can i jerkin my CANOE?

Why do they like to bring back the dead? It's almost always a 2-3 year old thread. I wonder if anyone will try to revive the original discussion.....

because they want to remind us that forgot about these threads...

honestly this is great... i'd forgotten about this and now with no cable in the house i'm going to make a coat hanger antenna :)

This thread is a zombie, you can't kill it (and it's totally harmless).