Looks like June now. In June people will still be floundering around.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate passed a bill on Monday to delay the nationwide switch to digital TV signals, giving consumers nearly four more months to prepare.
The transition date would move to June 12 from February 17 under the bill that was fueled by worries that viewers are not technically ready for the congressionally-mandated switch-over.
It also would allow consumers with expired coupons, available from the government to offset the cost of a $40 converter box, to request new coupons. The government ran out of coupons earlier this month, and about 2.5 million Americans are on a waiting list for them.
"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in news:Jmvfl.19555$ snipped-for-privacy@nlpi067.nbdc.sbc.com:
Good news! I have an expired coupon;I was waiting for the $40 Echostar converter which never appeared before the cuopon expired.Now CompUSA is selling a DTV converter for $40.01,so with a coupon it's just the tax you have to pay,about $3.00
Looks like the hooha over passports to the Carribean fiasco. Put a deadline way in advance, publicize the heck out of it, have most get ready but a few screw around, listen to those few scream about how they can't get ready, put it off. It'll be interesting to see if (as in the passport case) if the idiots screw around again and get it pushed back even more.
Likely because it is indicative of the sad state of people's interests and why we are in the economic mess we are in. The red and blue teams do what their owners ask and no one even cares. Few seem to pay attention to anything beyond American idol or what "brittanny" is doing today.
Coupons expire? Dam those tv commercials didnt tell me, we need alot more of them to help us know this stuff. We need to be informed, maybe they should get Billy Mays to do infomercials on the conversion.
Countless companies have made decisions predicated on a date certain and now the government is poised to muck it up.
Many municipalities have contracted to switch over to new frequencies on Feb 18th and de-activate their existing emergency transmitters. Workers are poised to re-equip police cars, ambulances, and the like. Technicians have been hired and trained to accomplish the change-over on a specific date.
Other companies are ready to market services using the freed-up bands. They won't be able to do so for three months. The payments on their loans for new equipment won't be delayed, but their anticipated revenue will be zero.
Bottom line: There is a significant cost to hundreds of companies and governmental agencies. Some emergency services may even go off the air as the people to whom a city sold their (supposedly redundant) equipment demand access to THEIR equipment.
Suppose I borrowed $10 million to buy the city of Chicago's police radios and in turn sold them all to the government of Costa Rico. The contract with Costa Rico specifies delivery by March 30th. I've contracted with technicans to disassemble and pack the existing equipment by March 1st, deliver it to a shipping company by March 3rd for transit on a ship that departs Chicago for Costa Rico on March 5th. I've already paid the city of Chicago for the equipment, paid salaries to the technicians, posted a deposit to the shipping company, etc.
Now the government says: "Time out?"
I'm screwed.
Effective commerce cannot efficiently exist based on governmental whim.
I haven't read the actual bill and the story linked to doesn't say precisely the terms but what I heard reported last night indicated the bill extends the mandatory analog cut-off date but doesn't preclude those stations that are ready making the Feb 17 transition anyway.
If that is indeed so, it's like most of what Congress does, posturing for effect w/o being useful. The conclusion drawn from the story I saw was that most stations will go ahead as planned.
One would have to find and read the actual legislation to determine what it actual does mandate. The coupon extension/funding is probably good; I used one the day it was to expire on the only box locally available; I have no clue whether it will actually work satisfactorily as none of the OTA transmitters we receive has been dual-broadcasting except one very low power. It would be nice to have the second for a "second chance" at an alternative w/ the decision possible to be made after there's something in the ether to try to capture rather than being totally guesswork...
Another stupid waste. The only idiots who are still clueless now will also be clueless in June. The only way they'll wake up is if all the stations put up a graphic with the DTV info on the analog channel and just leave it up for a month or two vs. turning off the analog entirely.
So, does what Brittany is doing matter to you? Does it have an impact on your life? It has no bearing on my life, and neither does stalling DTV. I'm ready for the switch, have been for a long time, but it doesn't matter in my life if it happens in February or June, or not at all for that matter. As my mother used to say...if you just take care of your own business, you'll have plenty to do.
It'd be nice to have all my local channels on their final assignments so that I could start testing antenna designs/locations...
I bet a lot of broadcasters are even more pissed and/or may take their analog stuff off in Feb. anyway to get it over with (and cut the expense of running xmitters on two different frequencies with the same programming)
I remember some recent reasoning as for time of year and economics being a reason to grant a delay. But if the delay gets to close to a year then it's screwing around.
I think that a reasonable final deadline would be close to Memorial Day Weekend and shortly ahead of summer vacations. People being spared by a deadline extension and unable to handle DTV conversion by then due to full-steam-ahead-with-vacation-plans are screwing around. In this new age of cutting back driving, I think that latecomers to DTV conversion spared by a deadline extension should make DTV conversion their activity for the 2009 Memorial Day Weekend.
Maybe a nice deadline could be first Wednesday after July 4th. Anyone who hasn't adapted to DTV yet and who does not make use of the next few months and the Memorial Day and July-4th weekend times and their associated sales to accomplish adaptation to DTV by then appears to me to deserve to be "screwed".
"You need me to get you hooked up for DTV 4 months after a deadline extension after most of a year of advertizing blitz? If ya need it within 2-3 maybe 4 days, ya only get lube for the 'screwing' if I like to use it! Otherwise it's a week or 2-plus!"
I would favor Federal legislation dictating that no gubmint-subsidized coupons for DTV converters be good after the Tuesday before Labor Day
2009, and for those coupons (among any good that late) to lose half their value a week or two before. I would favor final blackout deadline for analog broadcast TV transmissions in USA to be at least 6 weeks before that time (maybe second Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday of July 2009). Fellow Americans who can't get up to speed before late next summer are a disgrace and embarassment in the nation most using GPS devices and radar detectors! Maybe disgrace-squared!
Myself - I managed to adapt to DTV in the summer of 2008. I knew for several months already by then that the change was a'comin'!!!
You named someone that some, likely many, people would like to ignore and get away from as quickly as possible.
Not too many days ago, a thread started in sci.electronics.design started for a filter to "quench"/"quelch"/"squelch" (my words as opposed to ones used in that thread) or otherwise detect and block presence of that particular personality in "commercials"!
I don't even know who he is - maybe due to being low on watching TV!
But I have been gaining an impression that if that particular personality comes on in an ad or an "infomercial", then I give good chance that I will be quick to change the channel or turn the darned "boob tube" "Off"!
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