Weblog

News

War of the Worlds - Cable style

by Kim S
Wednesday, July 6, 2005. 03:19PM
623 Views 6 Comments

In case you're living under a rock...

Momentum is gaining on Capitol Hill for setting a hard date for the U.S. to switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts. Under the plan, all national broadcasts would switch on Jan. 1, 2009, which means about one-fifth of U.S. households that don’t subscribe to cable or satellite TV would see only static (WSJ, p.A4).

Anyone think cable has too much power on Capitol Hill??? What about all those places that can't get cable? or can't afford a dish? (or cable for that matter).

Me thinks the airwaves won't be "free" anymore...

(login to vote or comment.)

Comments

 6 shown
Thursday, July 7, 2005. 12:50PM by Kim S
good call on the blog Marc - I'm sure the price of converters will go down... and the price in stock will go up... at least for a couple of years... And yes of course it's "FREE" but you still have to pay for something one way or another... pass the popcorn :)
Thursday, July 7, 2005. 12:25PM by Marc Lefton
Ah and here it is: http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/12...
Thursday, July 7, 2005. 12:22PM by Marc Lefton
Mark Cuban wrote pretty extensively about this issue on his blog. Apparently, digital television will be made available for free over the airwaves and you'll need a converter to get it. But the converter will be largely subsidized and hardly cost anything at all. There were other times in television history when you needed to 'upgrade' your television set and they happened without a hitch. If I'm able to find the article I'll post it here.
Thursday, July 7, 2005. 12:11PM by Kim S
You ONLY have 5? Capers Capers... I have 12 and counting... (one in every room and even 2 outside on my big 'ole California country deck) And I know they're not all digitial either!! Sure you can get converters, they're probably a little hard to find now, but take stock - literaly, I'm sure there's going to be a rush to get converters in the next few years... the picture quality is going to suck. Might as well get a new tv with a digital tuner... right now I think converters are around a hundred bucks...
Thursday, July 7, 2005. 10:52AM by Capers Hammond
Kim, you are in the business , isn't there a converter or somthing that will translate the digital back to analog? seems like that would be possible and be a stop gap until people migrated to the new technology. I know it would still cost money but at least it would be less than a new tv. I have 5 Tv sets and only one of them is digital. How abut everyone else out there? I'm waiting for the proices to come down first.
Wednesday, July 6, 2005. 08:28PM by x x
I remember black and white and when Batman came on every week it was a huge deal in color. I am glad I got to witness that part of TV history being made. If you've got four years from now to figure out a way to avoid rabbit ears but you can't do it, then I am not sure I have a lot of sympathy.

Topics

Archives

Subscribe