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Congressional TV Digital Receivers---2009

post #1 of 32
1/9/08 at 12:41pm
Thread Starter 
I'm sure you've all heard that TV signals will be 100% digital in the US by 2009.
I'm okay with that, whatever.

But in the bill (which I still don't understand why Congress has to spend their time messing with cable TV, and steroids in baseball instead of real issues the country needs to focus in) it says that the government will provide 2 $40 subsidized coupons for upgrading to a Digital converter box to each household.

From the census bureau website:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

I can see that there are 126,316,181 households in the United States. At $80 a household, that's $10,105,294,480 potentially. I realize that probably 20-25% of the people in America already have digital cable, and let's say that 10% of those housing units don't even have families living in them. So that leaves 65% of the 10 billion, which is $6,568,441,412.

Am I the only person here who thinks that that is an insane amount for the government to dish out so we can all get fat watching out Tv's? Seriously.
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post #2 of 32
1/9/08 at 12:52pm
Yes. If they spent the money on personal training sessions, or healthy foods, the cost of healthcare would be reduced by at least the money spent, if not more over the long term. I have already asked this question before, but what's up with American politics and non-issues?

Jon.
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post #3 of 32
1/9/08 at 1:27pm
As I understand it, the subsidy is only available to low income households--though I'm not sure what the cut off is. This is a pure lobbying gig by the cable industry. Now, they can cut off the analog signals without and focus on just digital ones. They've managed to get the government to subsidize the cost of upgrade for their customers. Really awesome, isn't it?
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post #4 of 32
1/9/08 at 1:43pm
No, the coupons are available for anyone.
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post #5 of 32
1/9/08 at 1:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dakota rube View Post
No, the coupons are available for anyone.

motherf&*@%r
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post #6 of 32
1/9/08 at 1:54pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkNWorn View Post
motherf&*@%r

Wish you'd have waited to save $80? lol

The thing that pisses me off is just how ridiculous it is for this to happen at all.

Seriously, potential TEN BILLION dollars!

That could go so, so far in almost ANYTHING else, but what do we spend it on? TV.

Fuck cancer or stem cells or fighting crime.

They'd rather us be able to watch these things happen on the news w/ digital signal than actually try to stop them from happening.
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post #7 of 32
1/9/08 at 2:42pm
The thing is, the American people are too stupid and/or too lazy to a.) bother to apply for the coupons or b.) to discover that this option even exists. My statement above is based on the presumption that these coupons need to be "applied for" and will not just be doled out. I haven't read the bill yet so I could be totally wrong. Anyone have a THOMAS link to this?
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post #8 of 32
1/9/08 at 2:45pm
Keep in mind that any television hooked up to cable or satellite doesn't need a converter. Only required for sets receiving signals through the air. Further, the coupons expire in a relatively short amount of time (a few months IIRC).
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post #9 of 32
1/9/08 at 2:48pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dakota rube View Post
Keep in mind that any television hooked up to cable or satellite doesn't need a converter. Only required for sets receiving signals through the air.

Further, the coupons expire in a relatively short amount of time (a few months IIRC).

Whether or not the coupons expire doesn't really matter to me. I think it is just insane that we'd take on a potential $10 billion for people to have digital signal.

I know obviously that in reality we won't pay anywhere near all 10, or probably even half of that, but it just seems so useless to me to even face that potential when there are so many other things (basically everything) that are more important.
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post #10 of 32
1/9/08 at 2:53pm
Looks like there is a two-stage $1.5 billion cap on available coupons.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/pre...ule_031207.htm
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post #11 of 32
1/9/08 at 2:58pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by retronotmetro View Post
Looks like there is a two-stage $1.5 billion cap on available coupons.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/pre...ule_031207.htm

That's better, but I still don't see why we did this.

Of course, there's always the possibility that not enough people sign up and we only use the initial $990 million (or less), but still, I don't get it
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post #12 of 32
1/9/08 at 3:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwilkinson View Post
That's better, but I still don't see why we did this.
:

The why is easy: Cable companies pay lobbyists big money to get results like these. Cable is a massive industry.
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post #13 of 32
1/9/08 at 3:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Connemara View Post
The why is easy: Cable companies pay lobbyists big money to get results like these. Cable is a massive industry.

Cable companies paid lobbyists to make it easier for people to watch free broadcast TV?
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post #14 of 32
1/9/08 at 3:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Connemara View Post
The why is easy: Cable companies pay lobbyists big money to get results like these. Cable is a massive industry.
I dislike cable companies as much as anyone, but Conne, cable has nothing to do with these converters. A television hooked up to cable has no need for a converter.
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post #15 of 32
1/9/08 at 4:54pm
There's legitimate reasons to switch to digital broadcasting. The FCC opened up the bandwidth that is going to be vacated by analog broadcasts for sale, which is really valuable and useful because it travels well over distance. I think wireless internet companies were the highest bidders (maybe Google). I'd rather have wireless internet than analog OTA TV, since internet protocol TV will take off anyway. Some of the frequency space is going to emergency services.

Regarding the numbers--this link has 15 million households getting TV OTA in 2004 and half of those in 2009. Low power stations in rural areas are exempt from the deadline. Sure, some people will lose their TV watching ability due to ignorance of the change, but I have a hard time getting that excited about it.
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