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Delay Of June 12 DTV Transition?

M

Madmansam

I am curious? Can Congress delay the DTV transition again? Or was that delay a one time thing only? If Congress feels that there are still alot of people who don't have a convertor box, can they delay it again? Can they delay it INDEFINATELY?
 
I would not be surprised one bit to see this happen. If you delay it once, you can delay it over and over (until you feel that enough of your constituency has made the switch, to be sure). Once again, politics gets in the way of needed communications advancements. Blah.
 
JayR said:
whitfm said:
Blah.
Click to expand...

"Blah" is correct.

Cut the crap!

I'm tired of this nonsense.

Shut down analog NOW!
Click to expand...
I agree.

I mean look folks, there will come a time in which even Congress will just simply tell Americans Look, we have bigger fish to fry than the DTV transition issue. If you haven't taken advantage of all the options available to you - TOUGH NOOGIES.

The economy keeps them busy enough as it is.

JMO...

Cheers :)
 
whitfm said:
I would not be surprised one bit to see this happen. If you delay it once, you can delay it over and over (until you feel that enough of your constituency has made the switch, to be sure). Once again, politics gets in the way of needed communications advancements. Blah.
Click to expand...

Meh...politics didn't get in the way of rendering perfectly good equipment either totally useless for practical reasons or in need of an upgrade. How about letting the market dictate these things? Oh, wait, Congress saw a way to collect money to offset their wildly imbalanced "budgets," free market be damned.
 
I hope the congress doesn't delay the transition again, everybody should have gotten the message by now. Can you imagine watching those transition commercials for another 4 months. Just think how much it has cost the broadcasters already with the first delay.
 
Unlike the situation with the old 2/17 date, I've heard no credible discussion about another delay. Money has been released to finish up the converter box coupon program. And another delay would turn the whole process into a total fiasco.

Besides, hundreds of stations have already made the switch. The rest are tired of waiting, plus fed up with the electric bill for two transmitters. Time to stop the thumbsucking and move forward. If you wait for "everyone" to be ready, it will never happen. Light a fire under the stragglers. The sun will still rise in the east, cows will still give milk, chickens will still lay eggs.
 
The real fear is that people won't believe it anymore--like crying wolf! "Your tv won't work! Your tv won't work!"

granting the "Uh huh, right! You said that before!" response.

So therefore, the June deadline should NOT be extended!

Last thing the networks need is to have ratings crash due to too many viewers not bothering to get their tvs updated.
 
We've (half jokingly) discussed putting up a crawl on our analog channel, saying that "This ANALOG CHANNEL will GO AWAY".....but make it a bigger, and more distracting font every day, until it completely obscures the picture.
We might even consider turning the audio level down a notch each day, or more and more adding noise to it.

(Of course, some stations would get Cable TV to sponsor it, with on screen ads and everything ::) ).
 
Madmansam said:
I am curious? Can Congress delay the DTV transition again? Or was that delay a one time thing only? If Congress feels that there are still alot of people who don't have a convertor box, can they delay it again? Can they delay it INDEFINATELY?
Click to expand...

IIRC the only way they could get the delay was to promise it was a one-time only thing. If they ask for another they will be proven to be hugh liars, though they are politicians and I don't think anyone would be surprised by that. :D

IMHO until they shut off analog it will remain the primary TV standard and must be protected from interference from DTV thus impairing DTV ability to serve. :'(

Once we have an all DTV situation reception should improve. And for those who will get nothing rather than snowy pictures I'm sure the affected TV stations will look to start translator service where before they thought it wasn't worth it. After all, you were getting a picture albeit a snowy one. :p

As always, IMHO YMMV. ;)
 
I don't put anything past this congress or this president. Judging by the various markets that have already made the switch, there will not be a political downside to letting everyone switch on June 12. It's been pretty smooth.
 
Although I was for sticking with 2-17 since that was the original planned transition date, if it had to be pushed back 6-12 makes more sense. It's on a Friday, so the actual transition will be on a weekend, and not in the middle of the week like 2-17 would have been. The only date that could have been better would have been one where the first or end of a month fell on a weekend.
 
There's really two separate questions here:

1. Can the Congress delay the digital transition again?
2. Will there be another delay, or will June 12 stick?

The answer to the first question is "yes" -- the transition date is set by legislation, and can be changed by legislation, as we saw in February.

The answer to the second question, however, is almost certainly "no". Remember, we were hearing suggestions about the need for a delay several months before the previous February 17 transition date -- and this time around, there is no political build up for another delay, so I just don't see it happening.
 
MarcB said:
They're gonna blame Walmart for delaying the June 12th deadline. I don't know about elsewhere but here in CT I know of at least 3 stores that were out of stock since February due to supplier problems. They did get a fresh shipment in earlier this week.
Click to expand...

Which/who has the best box?
 
Well here in Columbus Ohio there are two Low Power stations are getting ready. WCLL CA is the O and O of Daystar affiliate was showing the NAB DTV infomercial. They have a CP to broadcast digitally on UHF 35, and I did notice a text crawl on WCPX LP (in espanol) for the Azteca America affiliate.

WTTE DT, WWHO DT, WOSU DT, WDEM CA, and WSFJ DT no longer broadcasting in analog. WCMH, WSYX, and WBNS are the last full power stations to broadcast in analog. The stragglers are low power GTN23, an repeater on UHF 43 broadcasting HSN, and an small independent religious station on VHF 8 that broadcasting at 83 watts.


The best Digital to Analog Converter Box IMO are the following:

Zenith DTT901
Magnavox TB100MW9
DTV Pal Plus and DTV Pal Plus DVR
 
The good thing about the delay is that now stations are getting their acts together and actually explaining digital TV. Whereas before they were warning you that you'd lose your TV without a converter box.

The converter box, of course, is the least of your worries. And Sears only had one antenna left that would help my situation. Radio Shack had outdoor antennas, but that's expensive and complicated. Now I do have one digital station that won't be able to solve its problems until June 12, though they could always shut off the analog earlier. I didn't experience any problems during my first weeks after the upgrade, though I still watched this station in analog a lot of the time just because changing digital channels is a little more complicated. By that I mean my VCR won't select a channel to tape. I have to remember to have the channel set before the VCR tapes. And upgrading this is quite expensive. Cable was cheaper.

But last night another digital station went bad and I don't know why. I hope this is temporary. It has not given me trouble since Feb. 21 when I upgraded. And I went ahead because that station and a co-owned station, which have given me very little trouble, turned off the analog. These aren't stations on my cable system.

I have cable for most of my stations, and I had to resort to that last night.
 
kenglish said:
We've (half jokingly) discussed putting up a crawl on our analog channel, saying that "This ANALOG CHANNEL will GO AWAY".....but make it a bigger, and more distracting font every day, until it completely obscures the picture.
We might even consider turning the audio level down a notch each day, or more and more adding noise to it.

(Of course, some stations would get Cable TV to sponsor it, with on screen ads and everything ::) ).
Click to expand...
Last night they ran the crawl during "American Dad" when the Japanese guy was talking. :mad: ::) In fact, he had a friend from China who was also talking. Why don't they consider the possibility there will be information? Sometimes they do it over the credits.
 
TexasTom said:
There's really two separate questions here:

1. Can the Congress delay the digital transition again?
2. Will there be another delay, or will June 12 stick?

The answer to the first question is "yes" -- the transition date is set by legislation, and can be changed by legislation, as we saw in February.

The answer to the second question, however, is almost certainly "no". Remember, we were hearing suggestions about the need for a delay several months before the previous February 17 transition date -- and this time around, there is no political build up for another delay, so I just don't see it happening.
Click to expand...

There will not be another delay. Most of the issues that caused the delay appear to the be fixed or there is a plan to fix them shortly after the transition date.

If there were another delay...then the problem of the laggard would be much worse. Laggards would believe that the transition will never occur...only to turn on the TV the day after and find out the hard way. There are a few people that believe that the analog signals will never go away for one reason or another, and they will be finding out the hard way come June 13th.
 
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