[Electronic M]

I agree with Jim.

The 'you won't be able to get TV with an antenna' argument is flat out crap. There is no legislation on that pending that I know of, and after hearing that I'd not believe another word the TWC rep said...

They can make the box necessary by simply sending all their channels in encoded QAM. It is that easy...though they could be nice and send the lower channels in clear QAM (which some newer sets can tune), but then they would not make money off the boxes, and their signal could be stolen ('oh the humanity' :sarcasm: ).

However there is a good chance that in the next 1-3 decades ATSC DTV will disappear or change. If 4K HD becomes a big enough thing there will have to be changes that may cause ATSC to be replaced by a more 4K compatible format. If OTA viewership drops and the cell companies, and other entities 'lobby' hard enough to get the chance to buy the TV spectrum from the FCC then OTA may have the spectrum sold out from under it.

We all have to face it, as soon as they mandated that broadcast TV be a digital format they made it just as disposable and prone to obsolescence as every other digital device, and since they set the precedence of non-backward compatibility with the adoption of ATSC they can change the format as often as they want however they want as long as they don't piss off enough people to have a riot or a house cleaning called for higher by higher ranking politicians.

"Cause what they do in Washington...They just takes care of number 1, and number 1 ain't you. You ain't even number 2."---Frank Zappa