Posted on 01/27/2009 1:54:39 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Washington, D.C. (January 27, 2009) -- The U.S. Senate last night voted to delay the nation's switch to Digital TV from Feb. 17 to June 12 and the House could do the same as early as today.
On February 17, 2009, all full-powered local stations are scheduled to switch their analog signals to digital which means viewers will need a Digital TV, a digital converter box or a pay TV subscription to continuing watching television.
But the Obama administration has urged Congress to delay the transition from analog to digital, saying that millions of people are not ready for the switch and therefore could lose their TV signals.
The president and others have noted that the federal government has run out of funds for $40 coupons that consumers can use to defray the cost of the converters. Obama's proposed economic stimulus legislation includes $650 million to refund the converter coupon program.
The Senate passed the delay bill last night on a voice vote, but key senators have said for weeks that the nation is not ready for the transition.
"I firmly believe that our nation is not yet ready to make this transition at this time," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller who proposed the delay bill.
To generate Republican support, Rockefeller has promised not to seek more delays past the June 12 deadline. Additionally, local stations are permitted to switch to digital before June if they get approval from the FCC.
LVD
(If you search Freerepublic using the keyword "“HDTV”, you will find most of the past HDTV postings.. )
Along that line of thinking, we should have postponed the One’s inauguration.
How many companies where planning to start testing and building on this new open bandwidth are now having their business plans thwarted?
If I were a broadcaster, I’d sure hate to have to pay $10,000 per month for an addtional 4 months just to broadcast a duplicate signal.
It’s about education (brainwashing) of the masses through conventional Television - something which the majority of Obama hypno-subjects regularly watch for their source of ‘programming’ (double meaning there)
This is scarier than Y2K !
The disenfranchised have a choice, free HDTV’s or food stamps...
And that would be a bad thing?....maybe they could instead read a book, get their news from the Internet or *gasp*, listen to talk radio.
Who knows, they might even learn something.
But I digress, I think I see the folly in my meandering thoughts.
Especially because the people that aren’t ready now won’t be in 4 months. Procrastinators are like that.
Funny you should ask.
Short answer, Verizon
Guess who Obambi's digital advisor used to work for..?
Sprint/Nextel
Sextel employee as an adviser to Bambi? LOL.. isn’t that like the only major teleco that is completely bombing? Great... instead of taking advice from those who are successful in their career, he chooses someone from the worst performing company.
Funny, but the same people who aren’t ready now will not be ready in four months, either. There will always be someone, somewhere, who will wait until the last possible minute before acting.
You could delay the switchover till 2016, and still have a segment of the population screaming for more time.
Just do it and get it over with.
Just another thing that makes me immensely distrust President Obama. He apparently can’t to stand to have anything make him look bad, yet he is willing to pass legislation that makes the Bush administration look like a failure on this issue even though they did everything they could to facilitate a smooth transition.
This adds more confusion...stations will have the option to switch earlier than the new June deadline.
Some of these stations, which are currently broadcasting in both DTV and analog, were scheduled to move the frequency of the DTV signal after the deadline...now who knows when they switch the DTV freq....and some of these stations will change power output of the DTV, after moving to a different freq, because the range will be different, causing some to need amplifiers.
Gee wiz they have made a simple thing hard.
Why do I have a feeling that its Obama voters who can’t figure out how to accomplish getting a converter box?
Do I have to unplug the unit to make it go off??
just kidding..
You may be kidding but that’s my deep down feeling about the whole thing.
Why?
I was not afraid in Y2K, whats scary about missing a few tv shows? There is nothing on the thing worth watching anyway.
I sure was, I thought the world would end as we know it.
I thought as my last noble deed on this earth, I would marry my girlfriend on Jan. 01, 2000.
THAT WAS 9 YEARS AGO! ...damn the hysteria!
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