DTV Coupon Program Out of Money 591
Thelasko writes "It appears that the US Government's digital converter box program is running out of money. If you sign up after the program runs out of money, you will receive your voucher if the program receives more funding. Older analog televisions will no longer work without a converter box after February 17."
Remember.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:2, Informative)
The converter boxes are $50 at most places that sell this stuff. *shrug*
It could be difficult for someone on a fixed income, but generally, I agree. The target, though, is senior citizens on a fixed income...they figured most everyone else would have cable or satellite and thus the converter boxes would be a non-issue.
I have cable and won't be getting rid of it anytime soon, so this is a total non-issue for me.
Maybe not expensive to you (Score:4, Informative)
New TVs are not that expensive.
New TVs are expensive. If you're living on less than $800 a month, that $100+ is going to be felt. Trust me. This is obvious to anyone who hasn't had money supplied to them by their parents for their entire lives...
20 billion auctioned off, 1.3 billion in coupons? (Score:4, Informative)
So the FCC made around 20 billion dollars auctioning off the spectrum [slashdot.org], but only allocated 1.3 billion for the coupon program? At $40 /coupon, that's around 32 million coupons. I'm guessing there's more non-cable televisions than that. Something seems quite a bit wrong with the amount allocated.
Re:Hidden Cost & Annoyances (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.converters.tv/products/colour_correction_225.html
WTF... ATSC DTV has MacroVision ACP? (Score:1, Informative)
WTF! What you're describing sounds like Macrovision ACP [wikipedia.org], I hadn't known that this was part of ATSC but I guess I'm not surprised.
ATSC hands MPEG-LA the patent rights to all broadcast TV video, and Dolby Labs the patent rights to all broadcast TV audio channels. For legal means to achieve what you want, you are likely screwed. The soap opera rights-owner is having the TV broadcaster set a "not allowed to be recorded" flag.
If you wish to potentially break the law (consult an attorney), you may be able to put an 'image stabilizer' or other device inline after the box.
Re:Hidden Cost & Annoyances (Score:3, Informative)
Welcome to DRM.
I remember trying to copy some old VHS tapes that I'd picked up somewhere, so I didn't have to use/lose the original in a possibly abusive environment, and running across that problem. It was some encoding scheme by Macrovision that screwed up the recording circuits in a VCR, but wouldn't do anything to the playback circuits. There was a circuit diagram floating around somewhere at the time - you could probably still find it, maybe one of the links from here: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic246129.html [videohelp.com] - for a Macrovision scrubber. It would probably do the job for you in this case, too.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:4, Informative)
This is where you're confused. The citizens of this country shouldn't have had to pay *ANYTHING* to buy a converter. The spectrum was sold for BILLIONS of DOLLARS to third parties and being that the citizens OWN the spectrum and the government does not, the money gained by this sale should have gone directly to us. I promise you that the $80 in coupons (which I didn't even get and they won't replace even though they didn't send it in any trackable manner) won't cover what we should have been given.
It's sad that people don't understand the simple fact that we got fucked on this deal all around.
Re:Maybe not expensive to you (Score:3, Informative)
If you're living off of 800 a month (net) you're total annual income is only about $11,000 which puts you well into the bottom 10% of incomes - and likewise makes it time to recognize a luxury good.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually you would... if for no other reason than the beam patterns on headlights are angled such that they illuminate high towards the non traffic side of the road to help read signs and they illuminate low towards the on-coming traffic side of the road to prevent you from blinding oncoming traffic.
without replacing your head lights to a set that emits the proper beam pattern during night driving you'd be unable to read signs on the side of the road, and you would be blinding (not to mention blinded by) oncoming traffic.
Market forces = backward compatible (Score:3, Informative)
I disagree 100%. Over the past 70 years, the NTSC standard has evolved from a mono sound, black & white picture to include color, stereo sound, second audio program and closed captions. These non-trivial changes were done without breaking backward compatibility with the original standard, not because of government protection, but because of market forces. No reasonable business wants to tick of a large installed base of users, even if starting fresh with a new standard would have been cleaner and easier. That's why Microsoft and Apple try to maintain backward compatibility with each new OS version, even if it means creating an emulation layer. They aren't mandated by the government to do it, they do it because of market forces.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:3, Informative)
there are ways to adjust the head lights on cars. They have been there for years. Some newer cars have head lights that change direction a little when you turn. For the most part, cars with fixed (not auto turning) head lights are supposed to light up the road straight ahead (a little but to the sides but nothing more). If your head lights are lighting up more of one side of the road, they are out of adjustment.
Your road sign reasoning is wrong. On the roads around here signs are to the left, right, and overhead. Which would mean that head lights should shine on things over your car, to the left, and to the right at the same time.
Re:Market forces = backward compatible (Score:2, Informative)
I disagree 100%. Over the past 70 years, the NTSC standard has evolved from a mono sound, black & white picture to include color, stereo sound, second audio program and closed captions. These non-trivial changes were done without breaking backward compatibility with the original standard, not because of government protection, but because of market forces.
You're absolutely wrong. The NTSC color standard was mandated by the FCC. It was developed to be 100% compatible with monochrome sets, which is why the color is "funky" compared to PAL or ATSC (broadcasters used to joke that NTSC stood for "never the same color"). The closed captioning was also mandated by the FCC, and was fought against by the TV manufacturers because "it would significantly increase costs." Surprise, surprise, it didn't, but the "free market" was happily selling expensive closed captioning equipment for years before that! FM radio was also mandated by the FCC.
There's really no other way to get the broadcasting world to move forward. The only problem this time is that the ATSC standard is not backwards compatible with NTSC color as all previous standards were. Signal reception is also iffy compared to good old NTSC. They could have made a much better standard.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:3, Informative)
Beam patterns are like this
LHD = ___/```````
RHD = ```````\____
Both lights have the same pattern, so even if one headlight was out it would project this pattern. It doesn't matter where the signs are where you live... all headlights are designed this way.
Go import some replacement headlights for your car off of a similar Japanese Domestic model... no amount of adjusting will correct this and I doubt the other motorists (or law enforcement) would be very happy about the change.