Posted on 06/13/2009 1:08:42 PM PDT by Dallas59
LOS ANGELES -
Nearly 700,000 calls were received by a federal hot line this week from people confused about the nationwide switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts that occurred Friday.
The Federal Communications Commission said Saturday that about 317,450 calls went into the help line, 1-888-CALL-FCC, on Friday alone, the day analog signals were cut off.
About a third of the calls were about federal coupons to pay for digital converter boxes, an indication that at least 100,000 people still didn't have the right equipment to receive digital signals.
(Excerpt) Read more at tech.yahoo.com ...
How can so many people be so STUPID?
HOW is this difficult? Haven’t we been hearing about this for, oh I don’t know, over a year?!
There was a local report about the switch here in Dallas. This elderly lady, bless her heart, had a hard time understanding how to hook it up.
Next question?
They will pay to have someone come and connect it for you.
govt waste
How many 911 calls?
LMAO
One of my part time jobs took me to an Assisted Living home on Friday. The switch and the “My TV isn’t working” was the prime topic of conversation.
Why, don't you know? The answer is simplicity itself...it is the same reason that THEY voted Obama into office last year. What is the answer? repeat after me...
There now...wasn't that easy?
Two words: Tee. Vee.
Take two seconds and speak with an 0 voter and you will, well you already know.
Waiting for congress to come up with a new program to turn in your old tv and receive a $1000.00 credit toward a new tv for certain areas of the country.
What a country.
Great, now I suppose everyone's gonna have to switch back until these idiots can figure it out. They've only had a year and an extension already ......
There was a YouTube video spoofing the “digital TV help”
informercials. An old lady is seen going through a bunch of
steps to install it then asks, “Will this help me pick up
Jack Benny?”
A friend of mine has an old set and no cable. He got the
converter box months ago. Trouble is, as of today he can
no longer receive WHDH-TV 7 Boston (the NBC affiliate that
was in the news recently for a plan, since ditched, to
not carry Jay Leno’s new show). They were broadcasting on digital Ch 42 but went back to ch 7 today...more than a
few people also couldn’t pick them up.
Maybe my friend needs to “re-orient his antenna” to pick it up (either he’ll get it or not...)
http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=146906.0
>>Every other Boston station still comes in after the transition. But not WHDH. As upset as many around here are, just think how WHDH must feel. It’s sure going to cut into ad revenue when nobody can view the channel anymore. The over the air signal is pretty much gone if you live more than 20 miles from the tower. I sure hope they do something to fix things.
one response:
>>I think they should have stayed on Channel 42. That 42 signal was quite adequate. I noticed the significant loss of signal strength between Channel 7 and 42. Unfortunately, this is the way things are. Channel 7 will need a bit more power to equal that of 42 or analog 7. Who knows?
My Pop could have cared less as long as he got KDFW Fox 4 on his “tube” TV.
Barack Obama is president and you have to ask that?
You’re right.
Shouldn’t have asked.
I slipped up.
It has been in the works for over 15 years and warnings have been plastered all over the TV for at least two years.
I try to forget that ... it’s depressing.
He’s the WORST and most VILE President we have ever elected.
You have seen nothing yet. Jails, prisons, state homes, VA facilities, and numerous other state run enterprises have just started to notice. This boondoggle is going to cost us a lot. Some of us in the industry tried to help in scheduling and establishing priorities, but the politics got in the way. Free TV is going to cost us dearly. Now the Rural Broadband Initiative is cranking up. Administered by the federal bastion of efficiency and freedom. The United States Department of Agriculture. Free rural broadband is going to cost even more. Wi-fi, 3G, and LCD displays in every pot.
“The largest volume of calls came from the Chicago area, followed by Dallas-Ft. Worth, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.”....LOL!!!!!
These are the same 700,000 rocket scientists who tell the pollsters that “global warming” exists, Obama is doing an excellent job with the economy and that we are losing the WOT.
I dropped cable years ago, and have relied on broadcast ever since. I just use it for background white noise anyway, not many shows interest me all that much. I’m sitting here right now with the stupid public service thing playing over and over, on the only channel that still picks up, starts out with stupid electronica Muzak, then the dweeb with the nervous tic, then en Espaniol, wash, rinse repeat.
I guess I’ll break down and hook up the infernal box that’s been laying on a shelf for a year, after this last signal dies, lol. I’m getting some sort of weird satisfaction, watching it go, myself.
Boxes are available at the local Flea Market on Jacksboro Hwy!
Your not missing much...Weather radar is available 24/7 on 35 channels.
Unfortunately sticking a satellite dish out the apartment window isn’t an option where I live and TV isn’t worth the $500 a year to me.
I’ve lost the local ABC affiliate for some reason and have gained about two dozen junk channels - 8 PBS channels including one that seems to play nothing but jazz videos, six Spanish language channels, a PC looking cartoon channel and a lot of other junk most of which seems to be in Korean.
I bought the converter for the 1 TV I have that’s not on cable.
Made a 4 bowtie uhf antenna. Tested it some weeks ago and got wonderful reception.
Yesterday I turned on the set after the switch and zonk!
A few stations are passable but one in particular, the CBS affiliate is ‘no program’ or ‘weak signal’.
Do this have something to do with my TV no longer working?
I have mine on my Sharp LCD/ Monitor. Regular TV just got a 1000X worse. TV would come back if to a degree if Natgeo, Discovery, Animal Planet and so on would broadcast a watered down version on broadcast television. Anything would be better than what’s on now.
LMAO!
Are you referring to TV or how they vote?
Any person, to which this came as a surprise, is too dumb to be allowed to own a TV.
This is more proof that we have become an Idiocracy. The movie may have been conceived as absurd, but it is hitting more closer to reality that we'd like to believe.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Try turning the antenna and re-scanning in 45 degree increments. Old school but that’s what worked for me.
Don’t know exactly where you’re at but if you’re around the junction of I85 and I40 according to the FCC you should be able to pick about 7 channels.
Here’s their web site, just plug in your zip code:
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/
I mean if you can’t trust a government agency to give you straight information.... Never mind.
MOnths and months of advertising. Not a single person can say they didn’t know. Well, I guess the stupid Obama voter types didn’t.
The taxpayers should not be jumping through hoops to placate these dummies.
He needs to rescan his channels. The converter will not see any digital channels that where moved until he does so.
I have a Mac hooked up to my 27” TV monitor. By going to www.blinko.com I can (when it works) get Fox, Fox Business, CNN, Discovery Channel and a really cool pan sequence of the Marathon Key City Marina. The only annoying part is that I have to use a wireless mouse as a remote which, being Blue Tooth, has to be within 10 feet of the Mac to be reliable.
Fox and Discovery are enough for me but I too would like The History Channel, Animal Planet and NatGeo. Internet TV is now about where broadcast TV was in the early sixties. Given time, competition and improved bandwidth it will get better but until then we’re stuck with either broadcast, which just got worse, or paying for the cable provider’s obscene business model.
I’m northwest of there, closest to the intersection of NC 68 and NC 150.
Prior to the original switch, I could pick up 13 channels well enough to bother, and eight clearly. Prior to yesterday, that was down to 10 at least marginal, and five clearly. Today, it’s just one, clear as a bell, playing the announcement over and over.
Haven’t connected the converter box yet, but will keep your advice in mind when I do. As I mentioned, I’m getting some strange thrill out of watching it fade into oblivion.
85% of those calling are members of ACORN.
700,000 zero voters.
DUHHHH
If these cretins have been living under a rock and missed the paid ads and PSA’s in regards to this switch, were given vouchers for conversion kits etc, and if THEY didn’t know about the switch, WITF did they get the hot line #??????
The govt should have BOUGHT EVERYONE a TV 5 years ago and we wouldn’t be having this problem. The money spent in ads, court visits, congressional hearings and just plain BS would have covered the cost of the TV’s, bookoo people would have had jobs and we may have salvaged a US based TV manufacturer.
Of course what do I know, I am just a White Conservative so I guess the ‘storm troopers’ will be telling me to STFU.
But wait, LETS BLAME BUSH....
How could these 700,000 morons even watch TV for the last 2 years and NOT know it was coming? Obama voters I’m sure.
These are the people who cannot make it in life without the Nanny State holding their hand and guiding them the whole way. They are the base of the Democratic Party.
Like, uh maybe, like they can't see the picture now? ...like really, how dumb.
From many decades of “pro-leftist brainwashing”!
I saw that movie...now, it was STUPID, but...I gotta tell you, I thought it was right on the money! The “Ow, My Balls” channel would be a best seller today!
I laughed pretty vigorously when I saw that...:)
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
If you live on the fringe, buy the right antenna and booster. It made a HUGE difference for us.
for example ... http://www.amazon.com/Antennas-Direct-DB8-Multidirectional-Antenna/dp/B000EHWCDW/ref=pd_cp_e_2
Uh, because they watch TV?
Another cable refugee here. The local monopoly only carries Fox News Channel as part of the upscale “premium” package. I’m not interested in paying $66 for $10 worth of product. If I can’t get what I want at an affordable rate that way I’ll get the essence of it from the ‘net.
So I signed up for the coupon and purchased a box when the local broadcasters started offering digital content. I quickly discovered that while I get decent analog signal in my area, the digital signal is nearly nonexistent. So I bought a new combo VHF-UHF antenna. That got me about 15% better signal and could actually receive a few stations every once in awhile.
Encouraged, I bought a signal amplifier and that was good for about an additional 10%. Now I’m getting four stations 40 to 60% of the time (they regularly freeze up and dissolve into digital dust the rest of the time). So I went from 10 stations (analog) to not quite 4 (digital). The net result of this exercise was that I spent several hundred dollars and a couple of trips up on the roof and I’m in worse shape than when I started.
I sent emails to each of the local broadcasters whose signals I had lost and explained that my results were likely to be repeated by thousands of others in my area and only two responded. One told me that “There is no Constitutional right to television signals”. I had to LOL!
TV for me was an attractive nuisance - I can easily live without it. There are many whose lives are so dreary that TV is one of their chief distractions. They were the supporters of TV and now TV has cut them off.
I predict more fallout and none of it good for the industry.
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