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Don't start making DTV transition party plans just yet!!!

dhett

dhett

Just when everyone thought the DTV transition schedule was set, here come the Democrats, threatening to delay the transition.

Why? Because the Republican plan only provided for government-funded converter boxes to OTA households. And they just weren't spending enough on the plan.

TVWeek article: http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11084
 
<rant>
Congress, whoever is in charge, needs to stop this stuff and instead work on getting a very cheap but workable converter (with minimum stuff). If it's under 20 bucks it'll be affordable to almost everyone, and the analog turn off can start</rant>
;)
 
I'll start with an opinion: TV is not a necessity, it's a luxury. If you want to watch it, you need to pay for your own TV and your own converter. The government shouldn't do it for you - even if they've mandated a change to digital.

But for the sake of argument, let's look at how many people this will really effect.

The latest date that I've seen shows that 86.1% of households in America get TV from either cable or satellite. That means that only 13.9% get it over the air. I would bet that most of those households are rural, but not poor. I would also bet that most of the poor fit into the 86.1% that have cable or satellite and will have no need for the converter.

All this means is that the vast majority of the people who will be impacted by the switch will be able to afford the converter without much hardship at all. Republicans allocated $1.5 Billion for this converter voucher program. Now the Democrats want to step in and buy more votes by boosting that number even higher. No thanks.

If stations and networks want to keep viewers who might otherwise lose their ability to watch TV after the digital switch date, they need to pony up the cash to give away a lot of converters on their own. If they don't, a lot of those people will find they can live without TV altogether.
 
tested said:
The latest date that I've seen shows that 86.1% of households in America get TV from either cable or satellite. That means that only 13.9% get it over the air. I would bet that most of those households are rural, but not poor. I would also bet that most of the poor fit into the 86.1% that have cable or satellite and will have no need for the converter.
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised at how many OTA households aren't rural, but just choose not to spend money each month on a luxury like TV, especially when there are 15-20 decent-quality OTA stations available, which is the case in many larger cities, and in areas served by translator TV, even some smaller cities and towns.

tested said:
If stations and networks want to keep viewers who might otherwise lose their ability to watch TV after the digital switch date, they need to pony up the cash to give away a lot of converters on their own. If they don't, a lot of those people will find they can live without TV altogether.
Click to expand...

Ah, the free enterprise system once again rears its ugly head! Lemme see, maybe a convertor box emblazoned with your station's logo? Or where the competition seems to be: your station's news logo? Areas with large Hispanic populations would probably see competition between Univision and Telemundo to get their boxes into homes. Just watch out for the old Microsoft trick - a Univision box that just can't seem to pull in the Telemundo station without a lot of interference! :D
 
BRice16 said:
Why are you guys so adamant about the transition? What's the big deal about delaying it?
Click to expand...

It's already been delayed. Once set for December 31, 2006, now February 19, 2009.

Now that the wheels have been set in motion, there are a lot of things riding on the Feb 09 date:
  • Most full-power stations are running two channels, one analog and one digital. This is by government mandate and poses increased costs for the stations. Delaying the transition now increases those costs.
  • Some of those stations are in the 700 mHz band (chs 52-69), which the government has set aside for other uses. This includes 2 channels set aside for public safety use (63 and 69, IIRC). The longer the transition is delayed, the longer these additional frequencies will be unavailable.
  • The FCC has begun assigning channels for LPTV to use. Some have chosen to incur the added cost of a digital companion channel, others have chosen to turn off their analog signal and turn on digital at the transition (called a "flash cut"). The former will have the added expense for longer; the latter will remain analog longer in a time when more and more TV sets will be digital.
  • The government has auctioned off many of the frequencies being abandoned by TV for other uses (that's another thread right there), and the longer the transition is delayed, the longer these additional services will be delayed in hitting the market, adding to the cost of their rollout.

In the meantime, most people will have replaced their TV sets within the next 2+ years, and by March 2007, IIRC, all TV sets sold in the US will require digital tuners anyway, so there will be no need for a converter box for that TV. IOW, there's no need for delaying the transition, and no need for adding money to the program. Reasonable people may disagree whether or not the government should have gotten involved in the way that it has, but the fact remains that they did, so let's get this thing over with finally and stop playing politics with it. And stop increasing the costs for everybody involved.
 
dhett said:
It's already been delayed. Once set for December 31, 2006, now February 19, 2009.
Click to expand...
If I recall, the original date set back in the 90s was in 2003, or was always intended for 2006? In any case it is going to have to happen sooner or later-the government is expecting lots of money from the spetrum auction, especially if tech companies buy it up.

dhett said:
In the meantime, most people will have replaced their TV sets within the next 2+ years, and by March 2007, IIRC, all TV sets sold in the US will require digital tuners anyway, so there will be no need for a converter box for that TV.
Click to expand...

Personally I think they should have mandated that earlier, although TV sets hooked up to cable or satellite services should work fine no matter what. We'll just have to see how word gets spread and the price people are willing to pay for converter boxes; otherwise digital television would end up looking like a flop.
 
Some people in northern parts of the United States who can get Canadian channels over the air will still get by without digital tuners. And with the higher quality of world news from CBC over the American networks, who can blame them? Others, such as CTV and Global, are already rebroadcasting American programs, so CSI will still be readily available in analog (namely northern Vermont, parts of upstate NY, northern Michigan, and northern Washington State). At the rate Canada is going, they will still have analog TV decades after the United States gets rid of it, and border viewers will be laughing.
 
tested said:
I'll start with an opinion: TV is not a necessity, it's a luxury. If you want to watch it, you need to pay for your own TV and your own converter. The government shouldn't do it for you - even if they've mandated a change to digital.
Click to expand...

So you're saying that if something is a "luxury", the government should be free to render it obsolete without providing any sort of compensation? That's an interesting precedent, and not one that I'm sure we would want to have.
 
Television isn't a necessity, but what is? You have to be realistic. Roads and other improvements could easily be paid for by tolls. So let's toll every public road and let the people who use them pay for them. No rurall area would be be able to afford a road. So that argument is somewhat iffy, but I agree TV isn't a necessity in the broadest sense. It's the same old I shouldn't use my taxes to pay for things I don't like.

Let's look at it from a better standpoint, that 80 some percent of HOUSEHOLDS is over all, some markets are MUCH LESS. Some markets are much more. Also I can have 1 TV hooked to cable in my den and 5 TVs in other areas that are getting OTA reception. But they count my household in that 80 some percent statistic. Even though 1/6 of my total TV sets don't get cable.

Look at it from a broadcasters standpoint. If you chop 15% of the household's off that is 15% LESS people the advertisers have to view their ads. Therefore TV stations will get LESS money for the ads they charge

Finally any congressman who doesn't vote for an appropriation is gonna get hit hard at election time. Try taking away people's TV and see how well they react.

This is why I said you need to get the cost of that converter down to $20 or less. This way it really won't need to be "given" to anyone.

More to the point, ask people about digital TV. I asked 4 people today and not one of them had any idea it was coming. Not to mention all the stores misleading people into buying sets that are digital and not HDTV. People will be overpaying for sets that don't due what they thought they did.

Or they will be buying a $3,000 HDTV and hooking it up to cable and not getting HDTV, but thinking they are.

Plus there are a lot of different kinds of tuners as well and some are garbage and some are great. I grew up in the old days having to use a "fine tuner" on each channel I got OTA, but how many people today even know what a "fine tuner is?"

It'll be a challange
 
Mark said:
Look at it from a broadcasters standpoint. If you chop 15% of the household's off that is 15% LESS people the advertisers have to view their ads. Therefore TV stations will get LESS money for the ads they charge
Click to expand...

This is why tested's point about corporations getting involved in getting converter boxes to the masses makes so much sense, gov't subsidy or no. Because of this potential for lost revenue, you would think that broadcasters and advertisers would make sure people get their converter boxes.
 
I agree that the cost of the converter needs to come down. I also agree that many people, perhaps most, don't understand what's about to happen. I just think the broadcasters should take a bigger role in making sure this transition happens in 2009. The more the government is involved in it, the bigger a mess it will be.
 
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