Andy comments:
In Family Dollar Stores in North Texas.... and at WalMart, an ATSC (digital) set , with 19" screen, is about $120
In a year, they will be under $90
The BIG SCREEN stuff is from $300 to $1000, depending on a lot of features....
And old analog TVs will be at Goodwill Stores for many years, for about $20, which will work OK with converter boxes....
Just wanted to let folks know that the world didn't end...
Andy in Eureka, Texas
dpb wrote: ...
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I watch very little TV if any at all, yet I have a theater room. No cable. Get all the news and weather online and with radio. My theater room is used for playing DVDs, no Blu-ray yet until prices come down. If there is a TV program I want to watch, I record it on my PC (I have a tuner) then play it back. I can watch an hour show in about 40 minutes when I skip the crap. Most of the time PBS is the only channel worth watching.
TV...
Well maybe they can think of themselves as citizens of Ecuador.
You must not have seen Entertainment Tonight.
>
Should they be a dollar? Or 10 dollars if it's a big family?
You'll be able to find those on the sidewalks and inside and next to dumpsters, starting the day after Xmas, and peaking in the week or two after the conversion.
When I lived in NYC, people made a point of throwing good trash away days before the garbage man came, so people could take the stuff. Or they would put it on the top of the garbage can. One time I was on my bike and I saw a 9 inch tv on top of a garbage can, and while I was trying to figure out how to attach it to my racing bike (with luggage rack) the woman of the house came out with rope to help me. She said it didn't need much work and it didn't, a fuse or less.
do you have an outside antenna for above?
mm wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I have an econo digital TV. No converter box. It still takes a moment for the station to lock in. Seems to depend on the signal strength. I see:
Pic and sound comes in very fast Pic comes in but sound is delayed Black screen for a bit then all comes in Blue screen of death with Unusable Signal message Pixelization - I'm near FT Bragg helicopter airfield, very near. Every time an Apache or Blackhawk goes over it whacks things out.
Seems to depend on the signal strength.
All I have is some indoor amplified ears. Good enough for the 15 min a day I turn on the TV...sometimes.
No, not on my econo digital TV anyway. I can keep pushing the channel up button. The station display will change and the pic will not (well sometimes anyway). Stop hitting the selection button and it goes to what was last displayed...sometimes anyway. Hey, it's free. F* Time Warner (mid-south). Comcast too (northeast).
Rant: I remember when CATV was just coming into play from antenna days. Big draw was something about fewer (or none?) commercials. Last time I had cable a few years back I actually counted commercials once. 12 in a row.
mm wrote:>
Andy comments:
Yeah, I've always been a collector of electronic trash myself. If I couldn't fix it, I'd junk it for parts, as I have been an electronics hobbyist since the
8th grade..... I don't think I've ever had to cannibilize a TV I found in a trash heap, tho , since it seemed I could always get them fixed, usually by just re-soldering the connections on the main board. Cold solder joints are difficult to locate, so I just take 10 minutes and re-solder the whole mother board..... Usually that would do the trick. And, when a TV set of mine got to the point that I couldn't fix it, I'd cut out the capacitors and power resistors, maybe the potentiometers, and power transistors and xtal, and junk it.If "I" have thrown it out.... it NEEDED throwing out :>))))
I rarely do that anymore, tho. It just ain't worth the trouble...
Andy in Eureka, Texas
Most broadcast TV is trash, but cable and sat have many very good informative channels. Discovery and History Channel are two of my favorites. Did you catch the 2 hour show on the life of Einstein? Some of the travel shows? While I'm proud to say I've never watched Desperate Housewives, I do enjoy Modern Marvels, How Its Made, and similar shows.
Wow, I could have written that. 'Cept I'm still in California.
I do, however, have Dish Network and subscribe to movie channels only. If you buy your own equipment you can get access for $6/mo and with that you can subscribe to such movie channels as Encore for $5/mo for five channels or Cinemax or HBO for $12/mo. Total for five decent movie channels is $11/mo. Not only that but you also get NASA, Sky Angel, and a bunch of infommercial channels and home shopping channels and you can get the local weather. Plus you can watch Pay-Per-View if you so choose and can get a dial tone. They also have free preview channels occasionally and sometimes they are decent movie channels such as IFC, TCM, or Fox Movies. I think there is also a free Mexican and Chinese channel.
I'll second that. I watch a few hours of network TV each week (reality shows and DH not included), but more often than not, am tuned into one of the non-OTA channels. I couldn't justify the $46 a month for Satt just for the conventional networks- I'd make do with a roof antenna.
I have had this same discussion with a few of my TV-snob relatives that won't even have a set in the house.
-- aem sends...
One local station is continually replaying the message about the changeover. In that message they state that they expect to reach 90% of current viewers after the changeover. Or conversely, 10% will be SOL, just like you. KC
OK, 2 questions, what do you mean by your PC having a tuner, and what is the signal source if you don't have cable?
I can't listen to NPR for more than a minute or two at a time. Too far left liberal for me.
Only if you like the far left, liberal point of view.
I don't know why you think that. Very few people get their signal from OTA these days. I have 3 standard TVs that will all work just fine with cable. And, they will show up on places like Craigslist before people just throw them away. I just bought my girlfriend a 27" Sony Wega Flatscreen with the original remote off of CL for $30.00. That thing has a better picture than a lot of the LCDs that I've seen!
On Tue 02 Dec 2008 09:30:33p, Ron told us...
Here is an example of a TV tuner card that can be inserted into a card slot in your PC.
That type of antenna setup should also work with your present converters and TVs and bring in more broadcast stations.
$200.00!? Ah, no thanks.
A moment would be a lot better. Maybe it will do better when and if the signal strength is greater.
All I have is a 6' wire lying on the floor, plugged into the center of the co-ax connector. I can get Baltimore stations, but not DC like I can in analog. (I live on the NW side of Baltimore) I can get all but one DC station in analog with just the wire, and I'm sure when I repair or replace the amplified antenna in the attic, I'll be able to get them all, and maybe then the digital too, and maybe in a moment rather than 5 seconds. I can't get up in the attic until the surgeon puts me back together again. I'm hoping for the first week in January, plus he says 6 weeks to recover, which I think means 3 weeks before I can climb up to the attic.
Does econo have a brand name?
This is good in the long run, but bad for me in the short run. I had planned to use this DVDR as my tuner for years to come, but now, unless the tune-in time gets much lower, I'm going to be very frustrated waiting for tune-in every time, or having to use the number buttons. I've only gotten two new tv's in my life. One was a premium for opening a bank account. It had loads of weaknesses, but I couldn't return it because they only had one model. Then it was stolen a couple months later. The other was an Akai or Aiwa, or something like that and broke 2 or 3 times, and much sooner than it should have.
My brother was very disappointed to find out that cable had commercials. I somehow found out before I paid for it. Motels or hospitals or something like that.
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