Here’s a “practical” reason for supporting a delay until June that I haven’t seen mentioned. When the switch occurs, some channels will relocate from UHF frequencies down to VHF frequencies. I have a rooftop antenna I’m using for HDTV that’s only designed for UHF. I have no idea how well it will perform for VHF, and I may need to modify or replace it to receive VHF digital channels. I live in Michigan, and that isn’t going to be possible in February.
I don’t know what first responders you’re referring to, but as I understand it, the crux of the Qualcomm argument put forth by Lauer is that they’re ready to be using this today, and had planned to flip the switch on Feb. 18 in those 25 markets to increase their MediaFLO service.
So at least for them the plan is for 24 hours after the scheduled cutoff of analog TV.
How about all the stations that made a business plan, invested the money in the equipment, and now can’t generate the ad revenue because the government backed out of a hard date.
I don’t understand why a program to set aside money for X number of converters would be delayed when they ran through their estimated allotment. A year was set aside for people to make the transition, not a day or a week or a month. A year. If someone can’t make the effort within that amount of time then they need to take responsibility for it.
Thank God one of the houses can make a decision.
You had a year to figure it out and unless you’re visiting from another planet you can’t say you didn’t know it would be cold in February.
But FWIW, I use an FM dipole antenna indoors and I get everything I got before using the same antenna. I suspect you’ll have little problems with your external antenna.
I can’t test how well it receives digital VHF transmissions because there are none. I can try and use it to receive VHF analog stations, but I don’t know what amount of snow is roughly the cutoff between receiving and not receiving a digital station. Also, it doesn’t say anything about how good my ATSC tuner is (I know the one on my HDTV is worse at receiving HDTV than the one on my digital tuner box, if I connect it to the roof top antenna.)
So no, I haven’t had a year. Even if I could go on my roof right now, I couldn’t “figure it out”.
I live roughly equidistant between three major markets (Detroit, Lansing, and Toledo) which means I’m near the fringe of all three. If you live in or near Dayton, your experience isn’t really relevant.
You’ve got me on the VHF aspect of it because I don’t know what new stations are waiting in the wings in your area but your current stations are already broadcasting digitally so what you got now isn’t going to change. Maybe you’re unaware that some of your current analog VHF channels are broadcasting in UHF digitally (they retain the channel reference number and will display as such). It’s not something that is going to be sprung on you in 3 weeks. Your converter should display the actual channel along with the call sign channel. I’ve found that my converter pulls stations in better then most built in tuners. I also found much better reception with the digital signal but most of my stations are within a 10 mile arc. In your case you’d have to use an external antenna and since your in the middle I would suggest a rotor set-up.
It looks like you’re slightly NE of Ann Arbor so you’re 30 miles from the WWJ channel 62 transmitter (Detroit) and 49 miles from the WSYM channel 47 transmitter (Lansing). If you can pick up channel 47 then you’re doing better than I am. I can almost pick up a station 44 miles away on a good day using an indoor antenna. No amount of tweaking seems to make a difference from inside the house (I’ve experimented trying to pick up the Cincinnati station).
When there is an unavoidable conflict between the needs of large businesses (which most – admittedly not all – TV stations are these days) and poor people, Republicans choose big business, Democrats choose poor people. We won.
–Cliffy
I believe this is just a bump – there’s talk that the bill will be brought up again under regular order. I’m no expert on House parliamentary procedure, though, so I don’t know how long that might take.
–Cliffy
You are wrong here. Here is a list (PDF) of the post-transition frequency assignments
Right now, all digital transmissions are in the UHF band. Channel 2 from Detroit is currently broadcasting digitally in the UHF band, on channel 58. In three weeks, both its current analog transmission and its current digital transmission will cease*, and it will begin broadcasting digitally on channel 7 (where channel 7 from Detroit is currently broadcasting in analog).
Channel 10 from Lansing is currently broadcasting digitally on channel 57, but after the transition will be broadcasting on channel 10, its current analog frequency.
Channels 11 and 13 from Toledo are currently broadcasting on channels 17 and 19, but will move to 11 and 13 after the transition.
None of the Dayton channels are moving to VHF, so you should be OK.
(All that said, I’ll take my chances if it means I don’t have to endure four more months of digital transition announcements.)
- I’m assuming this. They emphasize that the analog broadcast will end, but whether the temporary digital frequencies are also turned off at the same time gets glossed over.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of stations are still transmitting their ATSC signal at low power. So not only will many stations be changing frequencies, they’ll be boosting their transmission as well. In short, what you experience today is not necessarily what you’ll experience after the transition date passes.
Wait, do you know something that’s going to happen in February that makes living here impossible? I’ve survived a lot of michigan Februarys, I didn’t realize this one was going to be so bad…
Ice on my roof. I can live through February or I can try to go on my roof. Doing both is problematic.
OK, I understand your problem. Your link was quite useful for research. I didn’t realize the juggling back and forth and I’m not sure why the trading back to VHF. I assumed that the UHF channels sold off were already taken into consideration in the switch but apparently there are not enough channels to go around and the channels sold off are not active yet. Is there a list of the UHF channels that are being sold off to explain this? I know 55 was sold to Qualcomm but I haven’t seen a good breakdown on frequency distribution.
All my stations stay the same except for one UHF channel which will revert back to it’s original frequency. But thanks to your link I figured out what the mysterious blank transmission is on channel 41-3. It’s the frequency that Channel 7 is using and that suggests they’re going to broadcast on 3 digital channels versus the 2 they are using now.
So just how much are these converters really worth, anyway? By which I mean, it seems that with (near) $100 laptops being produced nowadays, a box with a coax input, coax and composite output and a converter chip really should be retailing for less than $50. Are the prices being completely propped up by the $40 coupons?
Many of the electronic items with built in tuners don’t work as well as the stand-alone converters. Not sure why. It’s frustrating to buy something with a tuner and then have to turn around and buy a converter just to get good reception.
Uh huh. So how many years do you estimate it will take for the poor to afford a $10 converter? They had a year to plan for this.
On the flip side, Qualcomm based a business plan on legislation that set a specific day and spent millions gearing up for it. Money was borrowed and spent based on this date. What do you think will happen when the revenue stream for this is removed for 4 months? Put another way, what do businesses do when they lose money?
The United States government realocated frequencies and specified a hard date for the change to take affect. These frequencies were sold at auction. If businesses cannot rely on contractual relationships with the government then who can they rely on?
Blah blah blah, man. I’m not discounting the real harm to some companies that will be involved. But I’m saying that when the choice is between harming big businesses and poor people – wait, didn’t I do this bit already?
If you want to blame someone, blame the Bush Administration for being morons and getting us into this mess in the first place. It’s very liberating.
–Cliffy
The tasks that the receiver chip set performs are very complicated. I’m amazed that they can sell them at such a low price.
Why? Aren’t microchips cheap to produce?