With the January 2009 analog TV cutoff date only 2 years away, I have to wonder why there is not an abundance of OTA HDTV converter boxes available. I have two of them at home that I got on Ebay and they work great. But they are hardly available at any stores, and even on Ebay the prices are still on the high side. It will really be something to see how the public reacts in 2009 when their analog TV signals are cutoff and there are few people with the converters to see the new signals. There are still many homes with analog TV sets that have no cable or satellite, despite what the media is telling us.
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ota hdtv tuners
- Thread starter alg2468
- Start date
alg2468 said:
I'm guessing they're waiting to see what the vouchers will pay for. Congress allotted a bunch of $$ to subsidize converters, but there will be some strings on what will be paid for. I'm thinking they'll finalize stuff once the FCC (or whoever ends up running the subsidy program) finishes the rules.
I think it's real simple: most people have no use for any OTA equipment. Most homes get their television from cable or satellite and won't be effected at all by the switch. There's not enough demand for these devices yet to make them widely available. I suspect that close to the deadline there will be a good supply of converter boxes, but it won't be hyped much. The bigger hype will be in trying to get people to buy new TV sets with built-in tuners.
The Republican congress allocated $1.5 billion for the voucher program. Democrats say it's too little and have hinted they might try to delay the analog cutoff date if the administration doesn't agree to a much larger program. Personally, I think any money for vouchers is too much. TV is not a right, it's a luxury. Taxpayers shouldn't pay for people to watch TV. The people who should pay for the vouchers for the poor should be the networks and local TV stations. Not us.
The Republican congress allocated $1.5 billion for the voucher program. Democrats say it's too little and have hinted they might try to delay the analog cutoff date if the administration doesn't agree to a much larger program. Personally, I think any money for vouchers is too much. TV is not a right, it's a luxury. Taxpayers shouldn't pay for people to watch TV. The people who should pay for the vouchers for the poor should be the networks and local TV stations. Not us.
Bad news: let's speculate for a moment that Congress has an epiphany, decides that subsidizing converters is a bad idea and decides to cut off funding for it. (I wish.) Networks and local TV stations agree to pay for vouchers for the poor, but do they absorb a cut in profits to do that? Of course not, they pass the added cost along to advertisers in the form of rate increases. Do the advertisers absorb a cut in profits then? No, they pass the added cost along to consumers in the form of price increases. So who pays? Us.tested said:
Oh, and on top of the additional money we pay for the products we buy, the government gets a cut in the form of higher sales tax revenue generated by the higher prices.
No matter how you slice it, we pay. I just want to see the federal government out of the process completely - it's not their responsibility, per the Tenth Amendment.
The politicians need to get their message(s) out to the masses in 2010, therefore they will subsidize the convertor boxes.
$1.5 billion is plenty - assuming the boxes cost a nice round $50, that will buy 30 million boxes. That is enough for 1/3 of households to get one each. Sounds plausible.
$1.5 billion is plenty - assuming the boxes cost a nice round $50, that will buy 30 million boxes. That is enough for 1/3 of households to get one each. Sounds plausible.
tested said:
At least 15% of households are OTA-only, which works out to a minimum of around 17 million households. That's a pretty decent sized market -- but I think you hit the key word when you said "yet" in what you wrote above. Today, most of those viewers still have a minimal awareness at best that they're going to need to do something to continue receiving TV after February 2009. I would expect that will not change until the deadline is almost upon us, which means that the possible "flood" of outboard OTA tuners is likely to not appear until shortly before the analog shut-off.
And, if I had to make a bet, my suspicion is that they won't sell in great numbers until the day *after* the shut-off happens.
tested said:
The other side of this is that the primary reason for the analog shut-off is to allow the government to resell the spectrum at a sizeable profit. There is otherwise no real reason why analog and digital TV broadcasts couldn't coexist until such time as the overwhelming majority of TV viewers have replaced their analog-only televisions with ones that have built in digital tuners. That's the approach that the British used when they phased out their old 405-line B&W TV system in favor of a newer 625-line color (or should I write that as "colour" since we're talking about Britain) system. They continued broadcasting with both systems until 99% of the population had 625-line tuners...
If the U.S. government decided to follow the same approach that Britain used in going to the 625-line system, then I would be in full agreement with you. But the U.S. government wishes to accelerate the conversion in order to pocket the money from those spectrum auctions sooner, rather than having to wait until attrition takes it course. Since the government stands to make a lot of money off those auctions, it isn't unreasonable to suggest that some of that money be used to help ease the transition for at least some of the poorest viewers.
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