Many are unaware of the DTV transition, or ready to spend money on unnecessary add-ons.
When you go nestle into your couch or La-Z-Boy tonight and tune into “American Idol” or the hours of election and/or Super Bowl pre-game coverage, think of the little people—those who haven’t yet experienced the magic of HDTV.
Yes, there are plenty of them out there, and apparently they don’t have a clue about the upcoming digital transition. Consumer Reports just finished a study that says that many have misconceptions about what’s coming in 2009.
The study shows that 74 percent of survey respondents did know about the transition. However, 36 percent of Americans living with TVs didn’t have a clue that anything was coming. Other interesting figures:
“Confusion about the digital television transition will cost consumers a lot of money for equipment they may not want or need,” said Joel Kelsey, policy analyst for Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports. “Based on these survey results it is now clear that the government and every media company that profits from consumers watching television must do whatever it takes to help consumers keep getting broadcast TV, without paying a dime more than necessary.”
The federal government has allocated $5 million, with $1.5 million in public education funding to the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), respectively. Overseas, the UK is expecting to spend a whopping $450 million on its public education campaign.
A total of 1,013 interviews were conducted telephone for the survey. The switch to DTV is scheduled for February 17, 2009.
Rodney,
The digital signals will be picked up by standard rabbit ears or roof top antenna, depending on your distance from the source (broadcast). If you get decent signal now the same antenna will *probably* work fine for HDTV transmissions. In my experience the idea of getting specialized HDTV antennas is a misleading, and unnecessary expense, as a standard terrestrial UHF/VHF antenna is the same animal.
you talk about what the box you need, but no one is telling us abou ant to use
Digi converters are at wally world…
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8343230
49.99 RCA
> Firstly, I’m Jealous! How did you get Lost on Wednesday?
It was an annotated version of last season’s final show. It was interesting in that the captions provided a number of clues and pointed out the Easter Eggs.
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The following references an article comment thread found on the website ElectronicHouse.com:
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/comments/consumers_are_clueless_about_dtv_transition
Regarding the comments made in response to the January 30, 2008 article by Rachel Cericola entitled “Retailers Comments: ‘Consumers Are Clueless About DTV Transition’ ”
The level of ignorance and arrogance suggested by the responses to J Kessler’s comments (by people who claim to be tech savvy) is appalling!
J Kessler is absolutely correct! Thank god there is at least one intelligent, informed person out there who has recognized the dirty little secret of the “DTV Revolution”: Our right to free broadcast television has been surreptitiously taken away.
J Kessler’s comments are dead-on accurate. She states: “Why don’t any of these stories discuss the plight of those rural folks who live in fringe areas and currently receive marginal but watchable analog TV? These people may not have access to cable, in quite a few cases satellite is unavailable due to hills and trees. Even if cable or satellite was technically available, poor folks may not be able to afford to get them. These folks will simply lose all access to television programming when the switch is made.”
Here is my response: DTV broadcast signals (meaning antennae, a.k.a over the air) will only travel 30 miles by line of sight vs. up to 200 miles for analog. And if the viewing area is mountainous, rural or remote, digital signals are unable to transmit even a fraction of that distance. Apparently people living in urban, metropolitan areas don’t believe it, but a significant number of people still receive their television over the air via antennae, especially in rural, remote, mountainous areas. These also happen to be areas where emergency, weather and road condition info is the most critical information provided by television, and which will no longer be available after February 2009.
I live 50 miles east of Sacramento, CA in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. We have a local independent phone company (AT&T;does not serve this area), and we do not have cable available. We have a top of the line Philips antennae with a rotator placed high in a tree on our property (this is the usual and customary for almost all folks who live in these types of areas). We can receive all the major broadcast TV stations from Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.
We have already applied for, received and used out converter box coupons, only to discover that we will be unable to receive over the air DTV due to distance and topography.
So our only option is to subscribe to a digital satellite TV service for a minimum of $55.00/mo. With some creative budgeting, we might be able to afford this, but I can tell you unequivocally, many of our neighbors cannot.
The fact is, a converter box will not work for anyone living more that 30 miles away from a digital broadcast point of origin. Why do none of the public service notifications, distributed by industry or government address this issue? And why won’t anyone investigate this monumental oversight?