Comments on: The Coming DTV Nightmare

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By: I, Cringely Blog Archive The Coming DTV Nightmare - Cringely … | Senior Monitor

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:56:18 +0000

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By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:57:04 +0000

Power of advertising? We are so inundated with advertising (on television – and everywhere else) that, I suspect, many people do the same thing I do – tune it out. With a government that is trying to force people to switch to cable so the bandwidth can be sold to the cell phone companies, viewers will be forced to pay double for television. Cable used to have few commercials, its expenses paid by subscribers. Broadcast television had commercials to pay for the delivery of content. Viewers paid by giving up a little of their time watching commercials. Now, viewers watching cable pay to subscribe and pay by giving up a much larger amount of their time for the commercials. And, then there is Pay Per View on top of that. The digital transition is just a step toward the total abolition of broadcast television. Combine that with the transition to what some are calling HD radio, and the government will soon have you paying double for any entertainment. Sure to line the pockets of their rich buddies.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:44:52 +0000

“Two million angry people could have ended the war in Iraq.”

Well, in the UK which has a population a fifth of the US population – something around 59 million, we did actually have a protest like that. Somewhere between 1 and 2 million people angry people did actually turn up on a march to protest about going to war. For many of them it was the first time they’d ever been on a political demonstration. We only have one city in the country whose population exceeds the number of people on the march.

They were summarily ignored. And we helped invade Iraq anyway…

By: Janden

Janden — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:36:06 +0000

Right on Karen…I am agree with you !!!! we are stressed out with these hard times as well, have spent endless research time about antenna’s, converter boxes and such…been to all the web sites …. and I too have crap tv with both of our tv’s one is the newer flat screen…but I guess not new enough it needed a converter box (unreal)…and the older Toshiba tv with it’s converter box and the right antenna gets the same crappy freezing up pixed out reception with just six channels, I have undone the converter box for now….and get seven channels in excellent clear
picture until June…as for the flat screen…crappy freezing up, no signal, parttime good only five channels….and we use to have comcast….then went to direct tv….but have cut back … so I guess we may just watch on my computer ….we don’t need to see the depressing news and endless commercials anyway…..we well probably be better off for it…;-)

By: Tommy Bee

Tommy Bee — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:59:21 +0000

The antenna issue is huge, especially for folks living in fringe areas who got used to their fuzzy/snowy over the air analog TV reception. Chances are they will lose many of their channels because their existing antennas won’t be good enough (as in “NO SIGNAL” coming up on their TVs after plugging in their DTV converter box). I’m located about about 75 miles north of New York City, and we got our converter box coupons early last year. After I hooked up the box to our fringe VHF and UHF antennas located on the roof, I couldn’t get any digital TV stations coming out of New York City, which worked fine for analog channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. These are 25 year old rooftop antennas. I spent last summer updating the antenna wire from twin lead to coaxial cable, added a mast mounted preamp and tried again. Not much better. All we could get were WNYW-DT from NYC plus two local stations (WTBY and WRNN). Three stations – and only one of them is a major network (FOX) out of New York City. Now what are we supposed to do – go out a buy an even larger antenna? Our existing antennas are already huge and rated for 70+ miles. Taking down antennas and installing bigger ones is a do-it-yourself job. All the antenna installers went out of business in the 1970s when Cable TV became available. That’s when all my neighbors took down their antennas and got cable. We live in the only house on the street that still have antennas on the roof. Basic cable (broadcast only stations on analog cable) is starting to sound a lot better every day. If Cable TV is available where DTV reception is poor I think people will cave in and subscribe. The rest may join the angy mob that Cringely predicts but nothing will be accomplished in the process because fringe area viewers who live too far from the broadcast towers will be dismissed as being “out of market” anyway. The percentage of over the air viewers will shrink even more after the transition, and the main reason will be because of antenna reception issues.

Here’s some more links about the antenna reception issues:

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901150335

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-03-02-digital-tv-reception_N.htm

http://www.tvtechnology.com/article.aspx?articleId=70764&mnu_id=52

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/dtv-its-the-ant.html

By: Mark Bates

Mark Bates — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:28:04 +0000

WARNING !!!!!!!!!!! I ordered 2 boxes from freetvsignal.com in early January and over a month later I received only 1 box and IT DID NOT WORK- DEFECTIVE POWER SUPPLY. No invoice, no return address, no way to return the box for repair/replacement, and no mention of the other box. I used the contact info on their site but it does not work- appears to be FAKE !!!!!! I was able to reply to the shipping email I got when they finally shipped but they do not respond after several attempts. I HAVE BEEN CHEATED OUT OF $80.00 by this company with no feasible recourse.

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:30:12 +0000

I am insensed at the attitude of some of the people who have blogged this site. Particularly the person who said that ‘If you can’t afford to buy new equipment, or cable, you don’t deserve to watch’. Has anyone noticed how many Americans have lost their jobs and are hanging by a thread! All Americans should have access to the local and national news and weather at the very least. We should not be charged these exorbitant rates for bad programming and endless paid programs , and then have to watch boundless advertisments to start out with. Now they want to force everyone to spend money we don’t have anymore since we lost our jobs. I lost my job, and my cable was turned off. The only reason I can see the news is because I put a paper clip into the cable connection, which will not work on Feb. 17 . We, the poor of this country, are being disinfrancised by these damned corporations wanting to make too much money; and in the face of a deep depression!! Say what you will, this is not the country I grew up in!

By: rollstwenties

rollstwenties — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:08:36 +0000

@Mags: You are right about the HDTV not being needed, but you do NOT *pay* for OTA transmitted HDTV. You get digital HD for free over the air, hence why people who have HDTVs want to get an antenna and get their local channels for free. I have Comcast Standard definition cable, but I use an antenna to watch my local channels (for the news/House/Fringe/Scrubs) in HD. It’s FREE (after the price of the antenna). Also, it will keep your TV clock synced and give you localized emergency alerts as well as what show is currently on. So it’s actually reinvigorating the OTA television field.

On another note, I don’t think Bob made it clear enough that an HD antenna and a regular antenna are the same thing. They just throw HD on there as advertising. Though you do want to make sure it is UHF. For anyone interested, this site is very useful and has some even more useful links: http://www.hdtvantennalabs.com/index.php Oh, and Bob, most indoor antenna’s are horrible. I have the AntennasDirect DB2 (technically an outdoor antenna, but I use it inside). It works great. The DB4 is supposed to be even better, but too large to use indoors, and I don’t live that far away from the stations.