Coming HD TV Transformation - Why Is Government Offering $40 Rebates

TV? What's that? Oh, the programming stuff ... My telescreen works just fine hooked up to my computer. As was in the book/movie, "Running Man," these boxes may hold the key to breaking the matrix. Good luck Gentlemen. I wish you all well in your upcoming efforts. I would love to walk into work and hear the crying from the sheep that they can't watch their favorite fiction anymore. There has never been anything on the TV.
Time will speak of a day when humans were transfixed to something that wasn't real. No less the same result as someone on LSD starring into nothing for 5 hours, except the one on LSD will have more thoughts.

to just "say no" to mass media and their corporate conglomerate propaganda masters.

Don't convert. Stop watching.
Do something useful.

If millions tune out, then we will be hitting them hard.
And improving the quality of our lives in the process.

Make it a priority.
It makes sense on so many levels.

Edit:
LOL! Gnat60 and I were posting the same idea at the same time!
2 great minds!

This is great news and a perfect opportunity to "Un-Plug".
I just moved and decided to NOT hook up to cable. I feel free!
Down with the propaganda machine.

http://redtape.msnbc.com/...

Think you don’t have anything to worry about in the switch from analog to digital television? Think again.

Consumers have been told that the upcoming transition TV changeover would mainly impact viewers with old TVs using ancient rabbit ears for reception. And those stone-aged watchers need only purchase a new set-top converter box, subsidized by coupons from the U.S. government, to continue watching. And everyone would go on their merry sitcom-watching ways.

Turns out, that’s not the whole story.

There actually are two analog-to-digital transitions going on. One, you've heard a lot about – the broadcast changeover. But the other – the analog cable to digital cable transition – could leave up to 100 million TVs in the dark, unable to display any cable TV channels at all without adding extra equipment.

The cable version of the analog-to-digital jump will impact anyone who takes a coaxial cable line from the wall and plugs it directly into a TV set. There will be no government coupons to help pay for the millions of new set-top boxes or converters that will be needed to make them work again.

The cable industry has produced countless advertisements about the coming conversion reassuring consumers that they had nothing to worry about.

Come February, though, millions of TVs will no longer be capable of displaying cable TV channels without new equipment – even basic channels, like ESPN, Comedy Central and The Food Network.

Kevin Findlen of Modesto, Calif., says he got the bad news recently from his cable provider, Comcast. He had seen the reassuring advertisements from the cable industry. But a few weeks ago, he decided to call Comcast and double check. The answer he got surprised him.

Most of Findlen's TVs will no longer be capable of displaying cable TV channels by next year, he says he was told.

"TVs that are connected directly to the cable connection will cease receiving programming on the conversion date except for the local channels," Findlen recalls being told by a Comcast operator. While his main TV in the living room with an attached set-top box would be fine, every other TV in his house would lose all cable channel service.

Findlen is now worried. And millions of cable consumers should be worried, too. At some point, all of them will lose service unless they get a new equipment.

Comcast, the largest cable provider, said it will begin dropping analog signals in 20 percent of its markets by the end of this year, although it has not yet disclosed the impacted markets.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said consumers will receive advanced notice that their analog cable service is shut off and will be given a host of alternatives for keeping their TVs up and running.

What’s going on
D-day for the analog broadcast signal – a date some observers have labeled "Y2K for TV" – is coming on Feb. 17, 2009. That cutoff will be abrupt. But the death of cable analog television is arriving a bit more stealthily, and more piecemeal.

While one has almost nothing to do with the other, their coincidental timing and similar nomenclature are sure to make an already confusing situation worse.

The prospect of millions of TVs suddenly losing their ability to display cable TV channels at about the same time that antenna-connected TVs stop working entirely is a recipe for chaos.

Joel Kelsey, an analyst at Consumers Union, sees it as something even more nefarious than that. He said some cable industry advertisements around the issue have been "extremely misleading."

"There's a whole lot of confusion in the marketplace and this is adding to it," he said. Many cable consumers, like Findlen, can’t sit back and do nothing, as the ads suggest – they’ll need cable boxes or converters soon, Kelsey said.

In an attempt to head off some of the confusion, the Federal Communications Commission issued a Consumer Advisory in May.

“Cable companies are not required to switch their privately-owned systems from analog service to digital service,” the notice says, before warning consumers that cable companies may make the switch anyway, and may change consumers extra for the necessary equipment.

Reclaiming bandwidth
Most cable providers now offer two different types of service on the same wire – analog and digital. Currently more than half of cable subscribers already have a set-top box and digital service, easily identified by the presence of interactive menus such as an advanced channel guide which offers movies on demand.

Those consumers, when using a digital set-top box, have nothing to worry about. But analog users face looming changes that could be costly.

There are 26.5 million cable consumers who subscribe to analog service, according to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. Many other consumers use the digital signal on one TV but take advantage of the analog signal on other sets in their home by plugging their coaxial cable directly into their TVs. The FCC said last year there were more than 100 million televisions using the cable analog signal one way or the other.

The cable industry, though, plans to shut down those analog signals in an effort to reclaim space that can be used for new services, such as additional high-definition channels.

Analog cable is a bit of a bandwidth hog – as many as six digital channels can fit in the space being occupied by one analog channel. With the arrival of new competition from the telephone industry, such as Verizon's FIOS service, cable companies need the extra bandwidth to keep up. But it's unclear how the industry can turn off analog service without leaving millions of customers in the dark.

The cable transition will not be as brutal as the end of the analog broadcast, which will hit with one fell swoop in February.

Instead, cable operators will decide on their own when to make the switch. So far, some services – such as Time Warner – have indicated that its analog signal won't be shut down any time soon. Robyn Watson, spokeswoman for the company, said its 3 million analog "basic cable" consumers won't see any changes in service.

Legally, cable companies are under no requirements to keep serving up analog stations. The FCC has set a very low bar for protecting analog customers. Cable providers need only continue to transmit analog versions of broadcast channels (generally, the familiar channels 2-13) for the next three years.

When cable companies advertise that its customers won’t have to do anything to keep their televisions working after February 2009, they are promising only to keep those few, local broadcast channels available to all.

Comcast is taking up the FCC on its offer and is planning the most aggressive digital conversion of all the major cable companies – 20 percent of its markets will lose their analog signals by the end of this year. Comcast has not yet disclosed the impacted markets.

Other cable operators are handling things a bit differently. Cablevision recently dropped 9 channels off its analog cable line-up. That suggests the company plans to slowly cut back on analog offerings, rather than drop them all at once. Cablevision hasn't made additional channel line-up plans, according to spokesman Jim Maiella.

Cox spokesman David Grabert said his company has no plans to change its analog line-up.

"At the present time we feel offering analog service is a very customer-friendly approach," he said. While other video service providers such as satellite-based services require boxes for each TV set, cable analog signals give customers more choice, he said. "For us that's a strong competitive advantage."

'Free for as many customers as we can'
Derek Harrar, vice president of video services for Comcast, said his company will do a lot to minimize the pain of transition for consumers. That includes one free set-top box to every subscriber and the option to rent a low-priced converter for other sets at a cost that is considerably less than the regular charge for a full-fledged set-top box, generally between $5-$10 per month.

"Our objective is to make it free for as many customers as we can," Harrar said."The last thing we want to do is to have our customers be really frustrated with us."

But Findlen already is frustrated, and he fears he might be forced to rent three new digital boxes for a monthly fee of $6 each starting next year. To him, that's a hidden price increase just to maintain his current level of service. And he's upset that Comcast and the cable industry persists in advertising that nothing will change for him.

In particular, he takes offense to the message currently on Comcast's Web site, devoted to the digital conversion.

"If all your TVs are currently connected to Comcast, you don't have to worry about a thing. When February 17, 2009 rolls around, you can just sit back, relax and keep watching your favorite shows," it says.

But instead, he says, Comcast operators have told him otherwise.

"(I was told) you must connect each TV in your home to one of their converter boxes to continue receiving the same programming you get today," he said.

Brian Deitz, spokesman for the cable industry association, defends industry advertisements, saying they very clearly limit their promises to providing standard broadcast stations in cable analog formats in the future. He also says it's not accurate to link the end of broadcast analog signals to the end of cable analog signals.

"Cable's migration has been going on since the beginning of 2000," he said. The fact that some cable analog signals are being dropped at about the same time that broadcast analog signal are being dropped is coincidental, he added.

But Amina Fazlullah, a staff attorney at the Public Interest Research Group, is concerned that the cable industry will use confusion of the broadcast conversion as an opportunity to upsell new services, change channel lineups, and just generally make more money from subscribers.

"The advertisements say nothing is going to change, everything is going to be the same. Well, what's clear is things are not going to be exactly the same," she said. "The channels you chose from will change. The method you use to get cable could change, you might need a new box. A lot of different aspects could change."

The government wants the FCC to re appropriate the radio spectrum used by UHF and VHF TV signals. The re appropriation will generate millions/billions of dollars of revenues by reselling the frequency's. The VHF and UHF frequenters can penetrate structures better.

The government is pushing this for two reasons, one 911/emergency responders are on different frequency's and have a hard time communicating, re appropriating spectrum across the US would solve this. Second, money, reselling better and contiguous frequency to wireless providers is a cache cow.

Not saying this is right but you need to understand this has been in the works for years. I would question weather there are similar changes going on in Mexico and Canada.

In the end, your analog tv with its UHF and VHF receiver will get no signal from the airwaves, you will need to have a ($40 government rebate) converter receive the digital signal and convert it to VHF , your tv would be set to channel 3 or 4 just like when you connect a VCR or DVD player.

It will give an exact indication of how many of those converters need to be produced.

They are giving the rebates so people dont get angry about having to pay to switch to digital when they are already getting the same service from what they can tell... everything is going digital... that is what the Internet is doing for us....

I heard something about police etc were sharing this same frequency as everone else? Now they have their own. Also there are alot more emergency broadcast tests, Does this make any sense?

Somebody ought to invent some kind of enclosure or cabinet for these telescreen converters that would shield its users from any possibility of being spied upon through said device. You know, something that baffles or blocks the sound and light going to the box.

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Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty Money Bomb!

"We really do have...a once in a lifetime opportunity to take the Republican Party back to where it was." -Kent Snyder, 1959-2008

It has always been my understanding that the first thing you when trying to take over a country is to control communications and media.
So there ya have it.

I am a certified hypnotist, and what I learned about overloading people with information making them susceptible to hypnotic suggestion convinced me the television is primarily a tool to keep people in a pre-hypnotic state. This way they can be shocked into a trance at the drop of a hat - or a few buildings. HD TVs will send more information zinging into your brain, leaving you feeling vaguely overwhelmed all the time and making the masses into damn near zombies. The "sleeple" effect will become MUCH harder to break. I think it would scare the crap out of the NWO if everyone passed on the whole thing and just got rid of their TVs.
But then, I am just a crazy woman.

are being paid for from the proceeds the FCC has received from the new digital spectrum licenses, paid by the broadcasters.

I was in Europe in 1983 and they all had HDTV. I always wondered why they had it and we didn't..then over 20 years later it comes here..still I don't get it. LOL

They have some EXCITING new programming for you. muhahahahahaaaa

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"My role in the revolution is to wake up the lemmings of this country, who sit back and accept the pablum the media feeds them"
Jesse Ventura
Ventura/Paul 2008

And I returned my cable boxes today! So now my 37" LCD will become a computer monitor so I can watch youtube videos and read DP REALLY BIG! Also with our first month's savings we bought the complete seasons 1-3 of the original Scooby Doo and Tom and Jerry! All we ever watched was Adult Swim on cartoon network and Boomerang for all the other cartoons.

Screw the boxes, read, and inform your neighbors of what you have learned over the past year. We CAN overcome and defeat the neocons if we just get back to knowing our neighbors and being neighborly. With 300 million individuals all watching television we will continue to lose and will soon be enslaved. It's up to us.

Again, thanks for listening to my rant. :O) Have a great day all!

that every new development in technology brings with it yet another so called conspiracy theorum but here goes . I have learned that with the advent of digital imagining through tv the people who are sending the signals to your idiot box can see who is in the room watching. Then this lends to the theory ? Why is it so important for the media to dictate this new invention when the old way worked perfectly fine ? clearer imagery whether you like it or not ? think about it ? This is a blanket evolution that you have no choice in. You either participate or don't get to watch american idol ?
Do you know that just with your cell phone you can be monitored as a listening, surveillance, device evenif the thing is not on ?
and now with digital imaging they will be able to see what you are doing in your living room ?
I know it sounds like fun for the amateur Porn industry but do they have that right ? think about it !

can see what your viewing and send you subliminal messages? I got my coupon but decided not to use it. I'll do without, I refuse to get cable or satellite to watch 20 minutes of commercials each hour.

why is big brother making everyone change forcing them to get a box on there TV if they don't have cable or a satellite???

BIG BROTHER LOVES YOU.

YOU WILL COME TO LOVE HIM TOO.

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Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty Money Bomb!

"We really do have...a once in a lifetime opportunity to take the Republican Party back to where it was." -Kent Snyder, 1959-2008

to remove the plague of TV from your life forever.

The rebate check is to buy a box/ converter to watch T.V, since you won't be able to watch television from rabbit ears anymore after Feb.17.

"Observe the masses,and do the opposite."

...of government control. So naturally, government wants to make it as easy as possible for EVERYONE to stay connected.

Take the red pill and kill your television!

http://groups.yahoo.com/g...

"Observe the masses,and do the opposite."

The Revolution: A Manifesto, Lincoln Unmasked, What Has Government Done To Our Money and so forth. so make sure to get that hdtv so you can watch all the mindnumbing crap they show on tv

is akin to land lines vs. radio/cellular

can anyone recall MAX HEADROOM?

T.V. is just getting better folks! Your world, digitized!

--Cliff, Sioux City, Iowa

The rebates, as far as I know, are mainly there to help those who really cannot afford the changeover from analog TV signals to digital. Not that I agree with taxing some people in order to help subsidize television for others...