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)
TV's will still "work", just not for over-the-air (Score:2, Redundant)
They will work fine for Cable TV, and as monitors for video games, DVD's, VCR's etc. The only thing that happens on 2009-02-17 is that the local broadcasters will stop providing an analogue signal for these sets to pick up via antenna.
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Does anyone know do these converter boxes work for cable operators who don't provide an analog signal, specifically verizon fios?
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I know what they are intended for, but not all cable operators still provide an analog signal even on a wired connection, I was wondering if these boxes would convert a wired digital connection, probably not.
Btw a troll mod was a bit harsh
This summer's headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
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This summer, Congress will conduct hearings on the massive waste and fraud in the program surrounding scores of bogus vendors each selling tens of thousands of fictitious boxes, all with "valid" coupons.
Actually, after the program went live, the agency in charge did kick out a bunch of vendors for fraud.
So I'm pretty sure they got that problem sorted out months and months ago, as I heard them discussing it during a congressional hearing broadcast on CSPAN over the summer (2008). The congressmen on the sub-committee seemed inclined to give them more money for the program if asked.
The coupon people's biggest worry was that lots of people would put it off to the very last minute or would wait till the deadlin
Clarification (Score:2, Redundant)
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.
Voucher/coupon returns? (Score:3, Insightful)
So...is there a way I can *return* my voucher? I ordered one, thinking I was going to use it for my old tv, but then I went out and actually bought a nice new tv for which I don't need the converter box. I'm sure only a precious few people would actually bother to return the voucher once they discover they aren't going to use it, but it seems there ought to be a mechanism in place. I don't want to tie up this money indefinitely, even if it is just a drop in the bucket.
-G
Re:Voucher/coupon returns? (Score:4, Insightful)
The vouchers automatically expire after 90 days. I recall some doom and gloom about this program running out of money some time ago, based on the rate at which vouchers were being issued. Lots of people ordered them immediately, not realizing the expiration date, and discovered there wasn't much hardware you could spend them on yet. But since many of them weren't used that allocated money went back into the available pool again, just like your voucher will after it expires.
The main thing that's different now is that vouchers ordered recently won't expire before the DTV transition, so if the program runs out of money now there won't be a chance to recycle recently issued but unused vouchers until after the deadline.
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I requested coupons for a couple of older TVs, but never received them. I inquired but they said they were sent out and there is nothing further they could do, and suggested getting an unused card from a friend or relative who had to many. Perhaps a trading site could be set up to match people who have extras with people who didn't get any for whatever reason?
If you have nothing better to do with it, I could send you a stamp to send it my direction. ;-)
Jeremy
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Every coupon that was issued has an expiration date on it. If the money does run dry and the government doesn't secure additional funding, what will happen is any new requests will go on a waiting list. As old coupons expire, they will send out new coupons to the people on the list.
Site's report when trying to apply (Score:2)
For what it's worth, this is what the site reports when you try to sign up.
We have determined that your household is eligible to participate in this program. However, at this time program funding is not currently available to fulfill your request. Your application has been placed on a waiting list. You do not need to apply again. When and if funds become available, coupon requests will be fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis.
Maybe kids will play outside, (Score:5, Funny)
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Perfectly good CRT TVs (Score:5, Insightful)
(Relevent report on that from 60 Minutes [cbsnews.com])
Digital TV: inferior in some ways (Score:5, Insightful)
The bad part about digital TV is the method of transmission they used is inferior in some ways to analog TV. It requires a very strong signal to get any video at all, and it's very suspectible to multipath interference. Analog TV would degrade gracefully, so that if you didn't get a strong signal you could at least hear it, and see black and white video. Digital TV is all-or-none. Also, portable TV antennas no longer work (at least, not while you're moving), so you can't stick one in your car or your Sony Watchman. Digital broadcast TV is a pain at this point...
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Internet Killed the TV Star (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth of DTV is that it's an excuse to force most of the population to cough up $500-$900 in a short period of time. It creates an artificial demand spike so that a select few corporations can profit from mass-exploitation. The fact that the vouchers are running out just confirms that people don't care about the Great New Wonderful High Definition Quality Orgasmic Display Technology Of Much Goodness BUY IT NOW. And why did it run out of money? Because they told the FCC that everyone wanted new TVs... I mean, who'd want to be saddled with last year's technology, right? Well, that would be us poor mother frackers who don't care to spend that much money for some passive display tech when we could just as easily go and buy a laptop and watch videos on THAT instead. And, big surprise, what's the major advertising point right now on a lot of laptops? Multimedia and a DVD drive. Go. Figure.
I hope television dies right here and now and consumers start downloading massive quantities of video online, choking the crap out of our ISPs and prompting a digital crisis as the commercial infrastructure of the internet burns. Those same corporate interests then will be scrambling to explain to congressional oversight committees why everything went to hell. And the beautiful part is that by strangling the internet, it'll force companies to compete for a limited resource -- they won't be able to ally themselves against consumer interest anymore.
The digital transition means less for television than it does for the future of the internet. Interesting, isn't it? Maybe they'll make a song about it -- "Internet Killed the TV Star?"
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Re:yaay (Score:4, Funny)
Re:yaay (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the approx 20,000,000,000 commercials.
Not like it matters. The program will get whatever extra money it needs. No way will the feds deprive Joe Bob of his basic right to free programming. Panem et circenses for the 21st century.
Re:yaay (Score:5, Funny)
Just wondering.. (Score:3)
Also..what are the better brands/models to get?
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Err...let's see...the public's money...that comes from taxpayers, right?
I'm a taxpayer (you'll have to take my word for this, and I do pay a LOT of taxes).
Therefore...I am entitled, authorized and fully qualified to take some of this money back in whatever form, just like
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I"m sorry..just have to agree to
Re:yaay (Score:5, Funny)
I'd love to compare the current U.S. to the faltering Roman empire but there's a football game on. Has anyone seen my welfare check?
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No way will the feds deprive Joe Bob of his basic right to free programming.
I'm not really a big defender of pork in general, but I will defend this program. The government made a lot of money selling that bandwidth, and I don't really see why it end up coming out of the pockets of people with old TVs. That just would amount to a tax.
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I'll call shenanigans on that comment. There are a lot of younger folks that are neither "poor" nor "elderly" that just aren't seeing the benefit anymore to having 500+ television stations filled mostly with reruns of television shows that were popular 30 years ago, B movies, and enough advertisements to make your head spin. We've realized that a good amount of TV content is now available online, with less ads, and on-demand
Depends on how "entitled" you are (Score:2)
The converter boxes aren't that expensive, about as much as a new game
Tell that to someone living on $500 a month.
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Not to mention that someone living on $500 a month probably doesn't have time to watch TV. And if they do, they probably could be living on more than $500 a month if they didn't watch TV...
I live on more than $500 a month and I don't OWN a TV.
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They do, I wasn't talking about them though. I was assuming we were talking about those that are working for their money, not the "special cases" for lack of a better term.
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I don't know many people who only make $500 a month that live on their own... You could make twice as much working at McDonalds.
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Lot of nice blanket generalizations there. Assuming that they're able-bodied, of sound mind, and don't have children or disabled relatives to take care of, they probably could do better than 500 bucks a month.
Lets just say, in the blanket case, that if some poor bastard is stuck living on 500 bucks a month, which is certainly possible, I don't begrudge them a digital converter so that they can watch a little TV.
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"There was a great segment on the news about a new place that's hiring people in my field at great wages, but since the government stole my TV signal, I didn't get to see it, so I'm still working part time at this gas station for minimum wage."
Remind you of any commercials you've seen lately?
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Tell that to someone living on $500 a month.
If you really *are* living on $500 a month and TV is your biggest concern, then you have a priority problem.
Re:Depends on how "entitled" you are (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Depends on how "entitled" you are (Score:4, Insightful)
Because of this silly notion that "the people" own the airwaves...
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I'll answer your question with a question...
Is the government "entitled" to take away the free television so that they could sell the spectrum?
Re:Depends on how "entitled" you are (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you "entitled" to be such an elitist douche? Free OTA analog television is paid for purely by advertising. It has nothing to do with entitlement. The only direct cost to the consumer when OTA goes digital is the converter box. It's still a freely watchable broadcast assuming you have the correct equipment.
Either you are a complete fucking moron who is confusing cable/satellite with OTA programming, or you are a pathetic excuse for a troll. Either way, you fail.
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The trash. Go out looking on trash days in the mornings. When I was in college I got 3 free almost new Tv's (1 was a 52" projection tv that simply needed a bulb), 2 free VCR's and later in life a free 40 foot tower and free Tv antennas and 120 feet of RG6 coax.
Tv is 100% free, you just gotta get off your ass and put some effort into going to get the free tv.
if you're a part of the snooty types then freecycle will have a few free tv's floating around. In fact almost EVERYTHING is free if you look for it
Hidden Cost & Annoyances (Score:5, Interesting)
The converter boxes aren't that expensive, about as much as a new game, sure it sucks to be forced to buy new equipment but there are other things one can do besides watch TV if they are so unwilling to suffer the cost of the boxes.
This is true, my grandmother bought one for $30. Not too expensive. However, when I came home for Christmas, she asked me to hook the box up. She needed the TV to record soap operas on her VCR while she was at work. That is all she used it for (we're talking technologically inept middle of nowhere country folk here). Ok, so I run the coaxial cable into the back of the converter, then put the RCA cables into the input on the back of the VCR (which then turned into a coaxial cable to the back of her TV as her TV is 20 years old and that's all it has). Everything is working fine but as a side result, she can't program different channels because the converter box determines the channels. Ok, not a big deal to her.
... I tried a few other VCRs at my parent's house and they all seem to do it.
But then we record something and I notice a very peculiar thing with the color. I seem to recall that if you had put a DVD signal through a VCR, the color would modulate so that people couldn't dupe videos (or maybe there is a technical restriction). Anyway, she said she would put up with it but after watching 10 minutes of TV I wanted to throw the damned thing through the window.
So tell me, how do you record on these things to a VCR with no color modulation
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If it's using Macrovision, you can buy little boxes that sit inline to remove this, I think they're normally called macrovision removers or somesuch.
Re:Hidden Cost & Annoyances (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.converters.tv/products/colour_correction_225.html
Re:Hidden Cost & Annoyances (Score:4, Insightful)
It does not sound like macrovision unless the VCR is from the mid '80s to early '90s (before everyone started using the same system for AGC). With macrovision you only see a color image about 5% of the time, then B&W for about 10% and then it is so dark you can hardly see a thing with the AGC scheme that has been in common use on VCRs for the last 15 years or so.
I simply think that the converter box or cables are of very poor quality. I've seen this happen with cable boxes in the past. Try shorter better RCA cables or plug the ANT OUT of the converter box into the ANT IN of the VCR and the ANT OUT of the VCR into the TV ANT IN.
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She should have purchased a DTVPal (mfd by Dish Network), which has the ability to control a VCR for recording shows on different channels.
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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/topi [videohelp.com]
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Shouldn't this be ARM?
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it will work just fine...you just can't watch a digital signal without a converter. DVD's, VHS tapes, game consoles will all work just as before. The TV itself is fine...it's just YOU that's shit outta luck.
Collect some cans along the road and turn them in to buy your converter.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Funny)
Collect some cans along the road and turn them in to buy your converter.
I'd rather collect some TVs along the road and turn them into a sculpture of a triceratops.
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Are you insane?
Let me break it down. TVs have four sides. Triceratops have three horns. NOW do you see the problem?!?
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:4, Insightful)
question
"Nobody owns the airwaves"
"As a society we decided to allow government to divy up the airwaves"
if nobody owns them then nobody has the right to decied on who gets to rule them.
last i checked no one owned Air it's self.. lets hope we don't decied to let the government divy it up.
my outrage is that a body of government that was put inplace to "regulate" has restorted to being basicly a distributer
orginaly they where in place to prevent people from just pumping more power in to over power others.. now it doesn't mater if you where there first or what your using it for.. if the guy next to you is willing to give the more $ they you will lose it. That is basicly what is happening here.. cause i assure you that if all the normal brodcast stations had gotten together to outbid for the c block that the FCC would have awarded it to them apon the check being cashed. and they could have kept right on brodcasting how they where...
now i also agree in progress in socity.. it makes sence to use them digitaly instead of analog.. BUT i also don't think that a the FCC has any biz being a fore profit intity.. if as you say as a socity we agreed to let them regulate it.. then as a socity they still belong to us.. so then why is this regulating body making money while forcing socity to spend money .. all so some company can use it for what ever they want with no benifit to socity other than another pay for x service?
sorry but if the government wants to build a road accross my land (has happened) they will pay me for it as they should. every penny spend on buying the spectrum should go driectly to the tax payers.. and as we all know that isn't going to happen ever.. the least they can do is pay for my grandmother who is on a fixed income to get a converter box.
once the cost of the convert box program meets or exceeds the money made by the FCC from the auction.. then we can argue aobut this.. but for now even being over budget it is still far less than what they are making.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it won't. Because of something the government did.
If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
This is the entertainment equivalent of that. Everybody's old TVs that work fine are being obsoleted, not by the market, but by the government saying, essentially, "Your old TV is now illegal."
Certain things you can get away with doing that, if it doesn't affect a majority of people. You can restrict handgun calibers to 0.30 and lower, and most people will say "Well, what do those gun freaks need all those .38 and .44 guns for, anyway?" and the government gets away with it.
Try to do it with TV or cars, and the 90+ percent of the population that's affected will be rather annoyed, to say the least.
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If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
No, it doesn't. You don't need to convert your car (or add any converters to the car) in order to drive in the left lane, as evidenced by multi-lane one-way streets and passing lanes not requiring on-demand reconfiguration of the car.
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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 ove
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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 adjustin
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No it won't. Because of something the government did.
Be happy. If pure market forces decided you'd have likely had to replace your TV's 4x as often.
If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
I fail to see why changing which side of the road you drive on has anything to do with converting cars. The side that the steering wheel is one doesn't really matter (and plenty of people already drive cars with the steering wheel on the other side anyways - most postal carriers do as a matter of practicality, but people driving some imports do too).
This is the entertainment equivalent of that. Everybody's old TVs that work fine are being obsoleted, not by the market, but by the government saying, essentially, "Your old TV is now illegal."
"Illegal" is a stretch and you know it. They're not taking you
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 inst
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If the US government decided all of a sudden to change from driving on the right hand side to the left hand side of the road, don't you think people would be rightfully pissed about having to buy a new car, or get theirs converted?
(Look! A car analogy that works!!)
Unfortunately, your car analogy does not work. For one, all left hand drive cars can be driven on the left side of the road without modification. Secondly, cable TV penetration was at 58% in 2006, and everyone with cable does not have to be concerned about this.
So before you get all excited, car analogies never work.
http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/snl-kagan-cable-subscription-data-contradicts-fcc-chairman-kevin-martin-2634/snl-kagan-cable-summary-data-2006jpg/ [marketingcharts.com]
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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.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, paying for another mode of reception doesn't insulate you from the DTV switch.
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I have cable and won't be getting rid of it anytime soon, so this is a total non-issue for me.
Are there any requirements for cable companies to down-convert broadcast channels to standard definition signals in their analog tiers at their end or are cable subscribers still going to have to rent a box from the cable company to do that (which over time will be far more expensive)?
Since the broadcast channels have to be carried unencrypted on cable, one of these converter boxes could be used with cable to down-convert the digital channels to analog without monthly rental fees.
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.
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This is the concept of profit.
I am intrigued by this concept, "profit". How may I subscribe to your newsletter?
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:4, Funny)
2. Read newsletter
3. ????
4. Profit!
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The government sold off the old channelspace and made billions. I believe the auction netted $19B and the coupon program is budgeted around $1.3B.
This is the concept of profit.
Your confusing this with the private sector.
This is the concept of overhead.
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The government is not a for profit entity, especially when we're talking about "profit" gained by selling a public property.
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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...
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It will be felt, but they'll forget about it after they sit in front of their brand new TV.
I mentor a 11 year old girl who's the second youngest of five children (brother, sister, half sister, step sister), these kids are fed McDonalds or delivered pizza every night. Her mom/step-mom/not-any-of-the-above-because-they're-not-married sits at home and plays MMOs all day. Her dad works 12 hours a day at an auto-shop. They recently (over the summer) had their electricity turned off because they hadn't paid th
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Sure, because if one poor family spends money frivolously, that must mean they all do, right?
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No, but quite a few do. Drive by a trailer park and look for satellite dishes. The number with them will most likely surprise you.
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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.
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Minimum Wage = $6.55/hr
After Taxes and Health Insurance, it can easily amount to $5 or less an hour. Some people have to do it because they don't have the education or skills to meet the jobs available in their area. Likewise they don't have the money to move elsewhere.
It happens, I've seen it. Now take that and try to raise a family.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
New TVs are not that expensive
WTF are you talking about? I paid a thousand dollars for mine! And not only that, throwing away a perfectly good TV is immorally wasteful, even if it's only a nineteen incher you paid a hundred bucks for.
The government is paying to fix a problem that THEY caused. You and your wife's $60k incomes togather may make a thousand bucks "chicken feed" but my forty grand and no wife can't afford to replace an otherwise perfectly good television.
Ask Gumby whose employer is being subsidized by the government by its giving Gumby a LINK card (making it possible to pay Gumby less; food stamps are a handout to the poor's employers) if he can easily afford that forty dollar converter box.
Its amazing how ignorant the upper middle class can be.
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Walmart? No, thanks. I'd rather eat red-hot nails than shop at an establishment that's destroying America.
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Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:4, Interesting)
New TVs are not that expensive. Even pensioners could buy a new one. I don't think the government should be paying for any of this.
The Government, along with the major media conglomerates, would very much like to continue their effective propaganda campaign against US citizens. An easy way to do this is to is to continue providing lazy Americans with free TV in their house, ensuring that the message delivery system that is piped directly into homes stays intact.
It's quite brilliant, really. I am not a tinfoil hatter (don't even get me started on those "contrails kill!!" idiots) but I believe this.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
New TVs are not that expensive. Even pensioners could buy a new one. I don't think the government should be paying for any of this.
It's very simple. Go back to the reasons for the "digital only" conversion. First, strike out the myth that it's to give HD. Digital HD. Second, remember that the market was not demanding digital TV.
So what's left? Two things. First, the government wanted to sell off the bandwidth that normal TV uses. Second, the *AA lobbies loved the idea of digital because they could put their "broadcast flag" in it and implement DRM.
Neither of these two reasons are in the public interest, and again, the market did not demand the conversion to digital TV. The Bush admin controlled FCC knew that they would have a lot of pissed off people if they forced people to buy new TV's so they came up with this converter box to pay for their hidden agendas.
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot one important justification for the DTV changeover: ending a massively wasteful use of spectrum.
A single analog TV channel uses a 6 Mhz of spectrum. And most channels sit vacant to avoid interference. Just four channels--24hz--is enough bandwidth to run a full-fledged mobile 3G network. You tell me what's a smarter way to use that chunk of spectrum.
Besides, relatively few people even get television from an antenna anymore. Technological advances have always caused some to lag behind--why should TV be any different? I don't get why people just assume that it's in the public's interest for broadcasters to control massive quantities of spectrum when pretty much every engineer and economist has demonstrated that broadcasting analog television signals is a complete waste of spectrum.
I see why you might think that market didn't "demand" a conversion to digital broadcasting, that's only because the people who benefited from the analog era had no incentive to move on.
Command-and-control spectrum allocation is on the way out. Letting politically powerful lobbies like the National Association of Broadcasters dictate how the public airwaves are used is unacceptable. We need to figure out a way to use spectrum intelligently, and the DTV conversion is a good step in that direction.
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You forgot one important justification for the DTV changeover: ending a massively wasteful use of spectrum.
I'm all for efficient use of spectrum. Now you tell me what better use that spectrum is going for. As far as I can tell, if you're not a Verizon customer, you get jack.
Just four channels--24hz--is enough bandwidth to run a full-fledged mobile 3G network. You tell me what's a smarter way to use that chunk of spectrum.
By all means, run a 3G network on it. Just don't sell the public spectrum to Verizo
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It's not a question of who needs spectrum, but rather how we should allocate the airwaves in a way that gives the most utility to the greatest number of people. The key is getting as much value for society as possible from a resource that only can go so far.
Television broadcasts aren't the only possible use of spectrum. What about wireless broadband? Or digital terrestrial radio? Or mobile phone service? Every chunk of spectrum occupied by an analog TV channel is one less piece that can be used for somethin
Re:Why is the government even subsidizing this? (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably has something to do with the massive amount of lead and various other environmentally hazardous material found in televisions: the gov't doesn't want it all in landfills. Especially, for that matter, right away: when TVs all stop working at once, everyone is going to dispose of their old ones immediately (not leave them laying around). Such a thing could overwhelm sanitation services (due to the weight of the things) temporarily.
Also, there are a LOT of people out there who don't like throwing things out. So there are still quite a few 30+ year old TVs out there with the analog 19 channel dials.
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Why yes, only an arrogant bureaucrat would be so mean as to mandate an unnecessary change that would require everyone to go out and buy new equipment, promise to give out coupons when they realize there's public outcry, and then screw up the coupon system so many don't even get a chance to use them.
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Every coupon is numbered and they can tell whether coupons sent to a home expired without being used.
Unless, of course, the same bureaucratic incompetence that you're complaining about also led to them not keeping track of any serial numbers on their end......
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I doubt very much that STNG's alternate universe is that accurate. Yes, if you have a holodeck, your holodeck is an interactive 3D TV. And note that Kirk's Enterprise had no holodeck.
Note also that Picard's crew staged plays. You don't think that the plays would be recorded, and that even more elaborate plays with special effects, professional actors, etc would be recorded (a TV show)?
Data's data were faulty.
Another thing - McCoy coudn't fix Kirk's age related presbyopia (farsightedness), but my surgeoun,
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Actually, I want to know why my cable company is so anxious to tell me through ads on cable channels.
The *channel* is probably sending the ad, not your cable company. They're just passing it through, just like they pass through the ads that DirecTV puts on cable channels.
My cable company scrolls an overlay over the digital transition ads that basically says: "You can ignore this ad! But just to be sure, sign up now for a more expensive digital package!"
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I used to chuckle at such ideas, but I'm getting there myself. I watched Jericho seasons 1 and 2 over the past couple months thanks to Netflix streaming. Just about everything is released on DVD these days, even short lived series (Firefly and Wonderfalls had nice boxed sets). Even silly Adult Swim stuff. I have enjoyed the first two seasons of Dexter on DVD without ever paying Showtime a monthly fee.
The trick is to get past the "gotta see it now!" feeling from decades of living with live TV. There's also t