Change internet for Satellite tv and you have Canada.
Declan
All of which is wholly vital information that obviously everyone learning it from a sitcom needs to know, and they would have no way of finding out such tidbits if not for TV.
Personally, I’m just kind of pissed that my taxes are being spent to enable people to watch TV, because I don’t buy that it has irreplaceable value. It’s not the government’s responsibility to ensure you have pretty moving pictures to stare at when you get home from work, and I personally don’t give a fuck if someone can afford it or not. Not my problem if you can’t, buddy, and if you can’t afford forty bucks to buy the converter on your own, maybe you should pick up a second job or try learn some skills so you can get a better job.
If the point is to ensure that people can access emergency information - which is stupid to begin with, because emergency information on TV tends to be “some pro athlete was accused of a crime!” - put the money into free wifi and a coupon good towards a netbook. If the point is to ensure the accessibility of entertainment and knowledge, put the money into libraries.
Except in the cases where it is “Huge storm heading your way right now, here are the roads that are closed and here are the roads that are insanely dangerous.”
This will never work in most of the country. Near-universal Municipal WiFi is so far from reality in most of America it can’t even be contemplated in this presidential administration.
This I can get on board with, except it doesn’t solve the “Huge storm heading right for you” problem TV does.
To paraphrase some previous posters, would it make you feel any better to rephrase this as “taxes being spent to enable people to continue to watch a TV they bought and paid for that would otherwise be a rather large paperweight solely due to legislative fiat”? Or not?
And again, TV is not the only place to get this information. There is a huge overlap between “people who get broadcast TV and can’t afford a converter box” and “people who have access to the internet” and “people who have a radio” and “people who have access to a telephone.”
We need to stop pretending like TV is the source for emergency information, and that millions of people will die without it.
No.
Legislative fiats sometimes make perfectly good equipment unusable without spending money to upgrade that equipment. And usually, people don’t bitch about it. Except when it’s their TV!
I think the point is that the government ought to help pay for it because it’s the government that is taking away their analog TV.
Presumably, it was written into the original bill. I imagine a bunch of lawmakers in districts with lots of low-income households or seniors refused to vote for it otherwise.
Such as?
Well, one such example is right there in a quote from Vinyl Turnip, right above where I said that.
That’s not an example of perfectly good equipment becoming useless through legislative fiat.
Not at all, because television is a luxury. Yes, it might on rare occasions have some utility, but only if A) you happen to have it on at the right moment and B) you have no other form of communication with the outside world. Personally I have never received any truly critical information from the TV; the closest I’ve come has been a banner warning of a thunderstorm, which I could also tell by, you know, looking outside at the clouds piling up. If the weather is bad, you shouldn’t need a TV to tell you so.
Does it suck that you will have to pay a one-time fee to continue being able to use your TV? Sure. Is it in any way anyone else’s problem, and does the government have some sort of moral obligation to ensure you can continue to stare at your idiot box every night? No, because it’s a luxury and it’s not anyone else’s problem.
IIRC, you live in New Mexico, where presumably severe weather warnings aren’t exactly a life-or-death issue.
Uhh… yeah, effectively, it is. That car has to sit in your driveway and not be driven on public roads until it gets an inspection or renewed registration. In some states, a caveat of getting that (and thus, not have it be a two ton brick in the driveway) is an emissions test.
IIRC, television is not the only place one can receive severe weather warnings.
The government wants the populace to watch HDTV because of the subliminal messages the government broadcasts on the subcarrrier. With the recent change in the administration from republican to democrat, it will take a few months to change all the pending subliminal messages. That is the reason for the delay in implementation.
I’m in the middle of upgrading my sarcasm detector…was that sarcasm?
Do you really have to ask?
Beware the cultural vacuum cleaner.
Is it really that simple? To get digital TV here in the U.K., I had to have a new aerial. Which had to be paid for. And I had to get someone to install it for me.
This may be completely off topic, if so I apologize.
I live in rural Alberta, 2 hours from any major center that broadcasts. I don’t watch a lot of TV, so I just have an old outside antenna that picks up 2 channels, CBC and CTV. I haven’t really been paying attention to the digital changeover, I know it’s going to happen here soon enough too. It’s my understanding that you can pick up digital broadcasts if you are close to where they broadcast, I’m not. I may be completely off base too.
So short of having to buy satellite TV, is there any point in me buying an amplified antenna? Or am I going to eventually lose my 2 channels?
There are electronics made here, just by non-American companies. They’re shutting down plants, actually, but Sony was manufacturing televisions in Washington County, PA (outside of Pittsburgh) for the last decade.
There are a couple of minor errors in your post, so I’m going to nitpick. Sony did manufacture televisions in the US near Pittsburgh. Their plant is located a few miles south of Greensburg, PA along US 119 in Westmoreland County. They manufactured large rear projection televisions beginning in 1992. When LCD became the wave of the future, Sony started manufacturing those in their New Stanton plant, and cut huge numbers of jobs because it doesn’t take as much manpower to make the LCDs as it does to make the rear projection TVs. They will cease production in that plant at the end of this month, which means 560 people will be without a job.
Prior to it being a Sony plant, the space was originally built and operated by Volkswagon. Now the state is talking about a couple of other companies that are interested in locating there.