Digital Conversion Confusion: Dogs, Cats and Liberals Living Together, Mass Hysteria!
posted at 6:59 am on June 14, 2009 by dougpowers
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The government (you, me and future generations) spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion dollars on the “digital conversion” — much of it going towards a couple years worth of highly publicized (as mandated by the FCC) warnings about what to expect and how to prepare.
It was not difficult to understand, but, as was expected, there were problems from the “couldn’t find their own ass with both hands and a map” crowd:
Nearly 700,000 calls were received by a federal hot line this week from people confused about the nationwide switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts that occurred Friday.
[...]
The largest volume of calls came from the Chicago area, followed by Dallas-Ft. Worth, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Four of those five areas are on the “most liberal cities in America” list — as for Dallas, that area claims to be the “most liberal city in Texas” (Obama won Dallas County 57.5 to 41.9).
That the FCC got the most calls on the “unprepared, inattentive, confused ignorant moron hotline” from areas that were all carried by Barack Obama in the November election is a sheer coincidence. Really, it is. Probably… maybe…
Blowback
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And they’ve had several years to prepare for this???
New Orleans and Katrina come to mind for some obscure reason.
coldwarrior on June 14, 2009 at 8:32 AM
Ok. I live just outside of Dallas. If you live in the Dallas SMSA and you own a television and had it on for at least two hours on any local channel for the morning, nightly, or evening newscasts, for the last 6 months, on just one day one time, and you understood spoken english, then the switch came as no surprise to you.
With respect to the “spoken english” comprehension thing “Hispanics now account for 37.7 percent of Dallas County’s population and are the largest ethnic group, according to the most recent census data.”
I’ve not studied the real reason behind the digitization of television, but my first suspicions are to protect cable broadcasters and cable providers; secondly, to force the installation of an infrastructure that wires directly through any right to privacy. Having had the unfortunate need to have TWC come out and fix their cable, I learned that we are less than a year away from receiving basic services without their “box.” It was also demonstrated to me just how much more of a gadget the basic box is in addition to its ability to respond to the remote.
ericdijon on June 14, 2009 at 10:04 AM
The reason for the transition was for, you guessed it, money for the government (it cost the broadcast industry a fortune in prep work but the government gets the “upside” money, as usual).
By forcing TV digital, that opens up analog frequencies that the government is selling.
I find it comical that there are still people out there who think the change was made because the government cares about the quality of their picture.
dougpowers on June 14, 2009 at 10:10 AM
How long before these same cities are demanding HD tvs to be handed out because everyone should be able to equally enjoy digital tv to the max?
I for one would be happy to give them tvs if they would give up their rights to ever vote in any election! To not know this was happening, or to be confused is sheer stupidity!!!!!!!!
As Rush says, the most dangerous thing our nation faces is ignorance.
freeus on June 14, 2009 at 12:00 PM
In the Midwest, during tornado season, one could turn on the TV, if I recall from my much younger years, in the pre-digital pre-cable TV age, using analog TV only, and go to channel 1 (2?) and turn up (down?) the volume and if a tornado got within hailing distance, the TV would sing like a bird with a high-pitched whine. One could go to bed, and get a wake up call from the tornado before it hit your neighborhood. There was also a means to use a TV to give a visual warning, based on RF produced by the tornado to make a dark screen turn bright white the closer the tornado got.
Instant, and cheap, tornado alarm. Not 100% effective, but neither is the National Weather Service back 20-30 years ago.
[Any science guy types out there?]
So much for having your own tornado alarm…
In any case, this new digital only system has NO provision for analog emergency signals…thus that portable TV you got? If it isn’t hooked up to your cable with the electricity running…no TV signal will be received.
There are no portable digital conversion boxes…all have to be hard wired to a plugged in TV.
coldwarrior on June 14, 2009 at 12:13 PM
What an excellent point – I never even thought about the portable/emergency tv issue.
That said; this has been being talked about/publicized for at least two years. How is it possible that some have not made the conversion yet? Seriously, how much advance warning do you need?
Next time we do something like this, we better spend more millions on PSA’s, and do it for even longer, so that the dumbest, least prepaired of our citizens won’t get caught short.
massrighty on June 14, 2009 at 1:01 PM
If they can’t figure out how to keep their tvs working, maybe they’ll stop watching…and start DOING stuff, and THINKING…
That would be miraculous.
mrsbash on June 14, 2009 at 2:32 PM
the power of procrastination is strong.
Techie on June 14, 2009 at 3:45 PM
As long as there’s an Austin on Interstate 35, Dallas will never claim that title…
jon1979 on June 15, 2009 at 9:42 AM