Obama wants to delay the transition to DTV

Except when the Gov. post lies like this.

A coupon is not needed to purchase a converter box. But with boxes costing $50 to $80 in retail stores, Congress allocated $1.34 billion to provide coupons to help offset the price. Consumers who have a newer digital television or who subscribe to cable or satellite service will not lose programming…

They really need to explain themselves when they make comments like this.
 
His administration only suggested that it be delayed. Due to the fact that Millions of people do not have cable and sat, and Millions do not have the coupon. Also a lot of folks are dropping cable and sat subscriptions. Just looking out for Americans. Thats all.

You hit the nail on the head man.:up
Most of us who are able to put food on the table and have a little extra cash to throw around, and are moderately tech savvy, already have HDTVs, or at least digital tuners, and have been prepared for quite a while.
The reality is, there are TONS of people who are elderly, not educated enough about this transition, or who are just plain broke and can't afford to fork out 40 or 50 bucks right now. Many of these people have had the same old t.v. for ten or twenty years.
So, we give these people an extra four or five months to prepare. Whether they choose to or not is their problem. And really, who cares anyway? It doesn't affect the rest of us that are fortunate enough to have the time and money to complain about it.
 
monstertoonz said:
The reality is, there are TONS of people who are elderly, not educated enough about this transition, or who are just plain broke and can't afford to fork out 40 or 50 bucks right now.

That's a stereotype. According to the latest figures from Nielsen, people over the age of 55 are actually the best prepared for the DTV transition.

The group who is least prepared for the DTV transition: people under the age of 35.

One key reason supporting that surprising fact is older people watch more news programming, particularly local news broadcasts. They have seen the warnings about the DTV transition much more often than younger people who don't watch news or stay up on current events.

In short, progress is being held up by a bunch of slackers. This HDTV transition project has been over 30 years in the making. It absolutely has not been rushed. The change is very long overdue. It's time to get it done already.
 
That's a stereotype. According to the latest figures from Nielsen, people over the age of 55 are actually the best prepared for the DTV transition.

The group who is least prepared for the DTV transition: people under the age of 35.

One key reason supporting that surprising fact is older people watch more news programming, particularly local news broadcasts. They have seen the warnings about the DTV transition much more often than younger people who don't watch news or stay up on current events.

In short, progress is being held up by a bunch of slackers. This HDTV transition project has been over 30 years in the making. It absolutely has not been rushed. The change is very long overdue. It's time to get it done already.

Slackers.
 

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MY GOD! BOB HALLER IS A CARTOON CHARACTER!!

seriously...been reading "Mother Goose & Grimm" in my local paper and the character Ralph is eerily similar to Bob Haller

see attached
 

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Except when the Gov. post lies like this.

A coupon is not needed to purchase a converter box. But with boxes costing $50 to $80 in retail stores, Congress allocated $1.34 billion to provide coupons to help offset the price. Consumers who have a newer digital television or who subscribe to cable or satellite service will not lose programming…

They really need to explain themselves when they make comments like this.


1.34 billion worth of $40 coupons. That's 33.5 million coupons. How many people get their TV from OTA antennas?
 
Nice to see the compassion from so many here. Reminds me why I stopped coming around. But...I thought I would share my experience of the past week. My wife is a social worker whose clients are low income elderly. Some of you may end up being elderly one of these days. I hope someone has more compassion for you than you do for them.

Last week I was asked by my wife to help out a couple with Dish. Now we have all heard thousands of times in the past year that if you have cable or satellite you should be OK. So, these foolish old people believed what they have been hearing. They have Dish, they should be OK. Except, these people have had Dish for years. Since long before satellite companies started rolling out local channels. They have been getting 2 analog channels from a rooftop antenna. When they realized they had lost one of their channels, and were going to lose the others, they got a converter box. They were also told they would need a $700 antenna to go with it (old people with no money make such good targets). I went to their home to see what we could do with their existing antenna. Without going into the entire setup, they had the typical birds nest of wires and cables. I hooked it up, and my first attempt resulted in a very poor picture. After trying various combinations of connections, I realized what the problem was when one of the crimped ends fell off the cable. Great job Mr. installer. I jammed it back on, and then the first way I had it hooked up resulted in the reception of 25 channels with their old antenna. I replaced the cable, and they should be OK for the future.
Monday is my day off. As my wife visited more clients I followed her from one to another. Again, hooked up to Dish, with the same problem, locals provided from an OTA antenna. He thought his Dish box was a "converter" box, which is what the ads have been telling him for months. Of course at this point he can't get one of the coupons. Someone donated one to my wife, and she promised to put it in the mail for him. In another week, when he gets his Social Security check (yes, $10 is a big expense for some people, who don't have much more to do than watch TV), he will get the converter box and I will go back and hook it up.
The next person had gotten a digital TV, but the community OTA antenna is aimed so that it only picks up 1 digital channel. I left that connection so that he can pick up the remaining analog channels for the time being, and hooked up a set of rabbit ears he had to pick up the available digital channels.
The last person I visited that day once again had Dish, and was also connected to the community antenna and had lost at least one channel. She also thought since she had Dish she would be OK. We explained she would have to get a converter box to continue getting the channels OTA. We discussed the $5 charge to get locals through Dish, for a total of $60 a year, which would continue as long as she lived, as opposed to $50, even if she had to pay full price for the converter box. When she gets one I probably will be back to connect it. I'm concerned with the problem of the focus of the community antenna.

Yep, people have had months and months to prepare. My take on this is that many have been misled by the advertisements to believe that since they have a satellite dish they are OK, and are now finding out they aren't, with no coupons left to ask for, at least not at present. The other problem is that they are being ripped off for antennas that are not necessary (my wife has more than one client that has been told they need a $600-$700 antenna to get the digital signals). As opposed to most of us, they have arthritic fingers that don't have the strength or dexterity to change over cables on their own. I would encourage others of you to also help out your elderly neighbors. If you need the money, these hard up older citizens have all offered to pay me for my trouble. They are used to paying their own way. Personally, I don't need the money that bad.
 
i wonder how many was ready for color back in the late 50's and 60's lol
Big difference, color was designed backwards compatible with B&W, so B&W TV's still worked.
Hell, my parents still had small B&W TV's in the kids rooms in the early 80's, with only the living room TV and their bedroom TV being color.
 
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