R U kidding me with the DTV crap?!

[sucka4chix]

Millions caught off guard by the switch to digital TV????!!!!
WTF??? Are we a country full of morons? We're fuckin' doomed!!

[BLKGSXR]

Millions caught off guard by the switch to digital TV????!!!!
WTF??? Are we a country full of morons? We're fuckin' doomed!!

they warned everyone...BTW it was first sceduled in feb...the extended it because those boxes had problems...wiring burnt up too quick...

[Nowhere]

Relax, they're mainly old folks, many who are half senile. Considering how many times i've seen dishes on projects, how many people outside of them using "rabbit ears" are affected by this? Not much.

[Nashvegas]

i have seen AT LEAST 1000 commercials for this. that doesnt even feel like an exaggeration. these people must be morons

[sucka4chix]

I get the old people, but I just watched a story on the news and they said help lines were bombarded with calls. I didnt realize so many people used over air either but damn. Those commercials I thought were overkill and the extended deadline made me laugh, but people still waited 'til their tv went out! That's incredible to me.
At most we live among idiots. At the very least, we're lazy sacks of shit.

[hwbs]

u see a lot of the cable companies trying to take advantage of folks along with some TV makers....all u need is a digital converter and don't need a HDTV ...they even ran test runs almost like emergency broadcast to alert these people...shit the govt will even give u a coupon for it...

[giovanni_hotel]

Who's dumber, the folks who didn't get the memo that the TV broadcast standard was switching exclusivley to digital, or all the dumb fucks ( like ME!!!), who allowed the cable and television manufacturers, in collaboration with the FCC, to force everyone to abandon the analog TV signal and buy cable TV subscriptions?

The FCC made this decision beehind closed doors without any input from Congress whatsoever!!

So who do think is getting paid off this deal; big business or the American consumer??

Stay tuned, radio is coming up next....

U.S. citizens are getting raped on the daily!!!

[TylerDurden68]

I have a friend that works for Time Warner
Cable in Ohio. He told me thay have 3000+
cable installs pending just in his region.

Dipshits waiting til the last minute.

[tsslutboy]

LOL

[SarahG]

Who's dumber, the folks who didn't get the memo that the TV broadcast standard was switching exclusivley to digital, or all the dumb fucks ( like ME!!!), who allowed the cable and television manufacturers, in collaboration with the FCC, to force everyone to abandon the analog TV signal and buy cable TV subscriptions?

The FCC made this decision beehind closed doors without any input from Congress whatsoever!!

So who do think is getting paid off this deal; big business or the American consumer??

Stay tuned, radio is coming up next....

U.S. citizens are getting raped on the daily!!!

That's really all this was about; the money. The FCC loves policies that give their agency more funding, even more if they don't have to do a whole hell of a lot to get that money. Big business usually profits off of these practices, but I am not convinced that's the intention on the FCC's part. Example; the reason why clear channel owns everything is because, no matter how rural you are, the FCC is no longer handing out broadcast-band commercial radio station licenses (at least, with FM, idk about AM). Meaning, if you can't afford to buy out someone else's license/station (aka what clear channel does), the only way you CAN broadcast in these band spreads is illegally, which the FCC will then "detect" and fine you for.

The FCC wanted everyone to switch to digital so they could sell off the old analog bandspread to the cell phone companies- they auctioned (literally auctioned) the old analog band off before they even did the switch over.

But that seems to be as far as the money factored into this. Sure, the cable companies and tv makers have gotten HUGE profits off of this (mostly because people really ARE morons and are incapable of realizing that this was only regarding OVER THE AIR broadcast TV... although I wouldn't be surprised if the cable companies slowly phase out analog service in the coming years on their own) but it seems that this was all an unintended consequence that the FCC truly didn't care about, one way or another. The FCC doesn't care how many people jump on cable tv, they don't even care about how many digital tvs sell.

Are people idiots? Absolutely. Look at how many of the people rushing out to buy new TVs or to get cable subscriptions already had tvs capable of receiving digital broadcasts. Many of the TVs made in the last few years, even as far back as the last generation of CRTs- are capable of receiving digital signals. The way this was done was by having an analog tuner unit with a digital converter circuit inside it. There are even HD-capable tvs out there that are, electronically speaking- analog tuner circuits.

When circuit city ran out of business a few months back, I curiously stopped in the local one to see if things really were that much cheaper. What shocked me were two observations; first, people were buying TVs like crazy thinking if they didn't the switch over would "cut them off"; most of these people had no idea whether their existing tv could receive digital signals; and most were cable subscribers anyway who wouldn't be effected by the switch over! The second surprise was that, in lifting the "sale" price stickers off of the old stickers, it seemed that (at least in the case of TVs) the old prices were often cheaper then the so-called "going out of business sale." Yet the place was packed by a mob of consumers who bought virtually every tv in the store (presumably thinking they were getting a good "deal" without even knowing what their purchases list prices were!). There were definitely some things listed below retail/list price, don't get me wrong- but it seems most the people flocking to buy TV sets were not getting the best deals in the store, and were in many cases paying MORE than they would have but a few months earlier, for the same models, in the same store.

...These panicking consumers who mobbed the store thinking they needed new TVs to continue to watch their precious American Idol were paying for them using charge cards. One can only guess how many of these consumers could actually afford new tvs, and how many were simply going further in debt for it.

I'm not really excited about the switch over, for the most obvious reason of so few people using over-the-air-tv anymore.