DTV Delay.

I think it would be better to wait until summer repeats. Local stations stand to lose advertising revenue if people without converters can't get commercials.

about this DTV thing for over a year. If people are too f-----g stupid to figure it out by now they never will. At this point I think they should just go on with the switch and if people don't get TV that's their problem.

http://www.cantonrep.com/business/x1722732167/Digital-transition-delay-would-cost-PBS-22-million



It is costing individual tv stations thousands of dollars a month to continue transmitting both an analog and a digital signal. There will certainly be many who will shut down analog on 17 Feb. if they can and there will certainly be others whose analog transmission breaks down and no parts can be found. People have had months and months of warning about this. Evidently you not only have to lead the horse to water, you need to open its mouth and pour the water into it.

february 18 you just might start to wise up and sense the urgency...

fancy new antenna to go with it that probably won't even be available around the time of the change.

Some stations are going to broadcast their DTV signal on UHF instead of VHF, so you may need a UHF antenna to pick them up, but UHF antennas are not new and they are certainly not fancy...well, maybe if you are a radio geek. :)

There's no such thing as a DTV or HDTV antenna. The "digital" signal is still using RF and an antenna made 50 years ago will work.

As of now I get a no signal message. That is after hooking it up correctly and scanning for channels. I thought some channels were already sending out a digital signal.

First, have you always been able to receive broadcast TV over the air? If not, then you might need some other type of antenna setup. I live 60 miles from my "local" markets and must use a deep fringe UHF/VHF combo antenna mounted outdoors on a mast. It works well and the DTV channels are stunning but the old analog channels are snowy. If I lived within 10 miles of those stations I could probably get away with rabbit ears.

For the past few years nearly every station has been broadcasting DTV simultainiously with their old analog signal. My local ABC affiliat has used VHF channel 5 for decades. They are broadcasting their DTV signal on VHF channel 7 and will continue to use that frequency when the analog goes away. My NBC station uses VHF 4 but I think their DTV simulcast is on something like UHF 34. I don't know if they will switch their DTV broadcast back to 4 or keep it on the UHF freq. My PBS station is analog 13 but the DTV signal is on 32. I know they will put the DTV signal back on 13.

So, you might have been getting all your local's over the air with nothing but a VHF antenna for decades but could not pick up the DTV simulcast because they were on UHF channels. The stations have all filed permits with the FCC and the future channel assignments are known, but I'm not sure exactly where to find that info on the internets.

The stations are not going to just light up a new DTV broadcast at midnight on the day of the transition. They have been broadcasting DTV for several years now. If this transition is delayed it will cost the stations a fortune in electricity to keep transmitting the same signal twice, as they have been doing for several years now.

nobody seems to carry a selection of antenae.

digital channels crystal clear on a set of cheap rabbit ears. I get a total of 16 channels and several are in HDTV with digital now I was only able to receive 1 analog channel before. I just can't figure what is so damn difficult about this. If you have cable or satellite you don't need to do anything. If you use an outside antenna or rabbit ears you need a box if your TV doesn't already have a digital tuner built in, how f----g hard is that?

Another thing Why in the hell is this in that stimulus plan? Stupid stuff like that is what the Republicans pick up on and frankly I don't blame them, how does that create even one job. They got money for family planing abroad, hell in the hell does that make even 1 job? They have money for the Smithsonian, how the hell does that make any jobs? Millions to re-seed the Whitehouse lawn? They just look like more earmarks to me. More millions for the Endowment for Arts! Family planing?

:shrug:

should we really put this off until each and every fucking american procrastinator gets on board with the program? down to the last guy?

fuck that.

shut it off. and fix up the folks that get the ax after the fact. have them call 1-800 i wasn't paying attention for the last 10 fucking years and now my tv don't work. we can then send a technician to their house to resolve the problem.

simple...