Commemorating the death of analog TV

[jazzwolf]

All I know is that you can't turn on a TV down here without constantly getting bombarded by those stupid digital TV commericials. "On Sep 8 TV will change as we know it.... blah blah blah etc,," I swear you would think that the damn bomb was going to be dropped here the way they keep slamming it down your throat. It is even on billboards. This is really going to be much about nothing as most people have cable, dish or Directv down here.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by jazzwolf

All I know is that you can't turn on a TV down here without constantly getting bombarded by those stupid digital TV commericials. "On Sep 8 TV will change as we know it.... blah blah blah etc,," I swear you would think that the damn bomb was going to be dropped here the way they keep slamming it down your throat. It is even on billboards. This is really going to be much about nothing as most people have cable, dish or Directv down here.

I live 35 miles east of Cleveland and have Time-Warner digital cable. Most folks around here have had cable for years (some went to satellite when it became available here and didn't even bother with cable--I see dishes all over town) because TV reception in this area is not that great.

Ironically, however, FM reception in my small town is fantastic--I get all the Cleveland stations, plus stations from 50-60 miles away on every one of my radios, just using their own built-in antennas. Go figure.

Channel 3 (NBC) in Cleveland doesn't reach here at all if you are using an antenna, 5 and 8 are so-so, 25, 43, 55, and 61 are better but still not 100 percent, and 23, the ION affiliate in Akron, 60 miles south of me, doesn't reach me either. The only UHF station I can get well enough to watch around here on an antenna is CBS channel 19.

I had analog cable until all the talk about the digital-TV transition started. The first ads around 2006 or so literally screamed "Your current (analog) TV will go black in February 2009!", not offering any options for people who want to keep their analog sets, most of which are nowhere near ready for the trash. Today, the situation is different, as I think the producers of the announcements for the digital transition are required to include an explanation of exactly what is going on, and how viewers who elect to keep their present analog sets can continue to watch their favorite channels even after the analog stations go off the air early next year--by subscribing to cable or satellite, or by using a digital-to-analog converter ahead of their TV's own tuner if these people want to continue using an antenna. For the foreseeable future at least, analog televisions will be usable with digital cable, as there are millions of analog sets in current use in this country.

I am convinced that the warning "your television will go dark in 2009!" is simply a ploy aimed at selling D/A (digital to analog) converter boxes and getting people to subscribe to cable or satellite; to simply throw out a cryptic announcement such as the foregoing without an explanation is a scare tactic used by the television industry, which would love it if everyone in the United States would throw out their "old-fashioned" analog TVs and get a new Texas-sized flat panel.

Of course, such a thing won't happen any time soon as, again, there are far too many analog sets in current use that are nowhere near ready for the dump. Advertising is a very aggressive business these days; one cannot believe everything he/she reads or hears in these ads, including the ones aimed at forcing people to go digital or lose their television reception (yes, forcing--remember, the government forced digital TV on us several years ago, and the TV industry is now in the middle of a very aggressive campaign to get everyone to go to LCD or plasma sets). I personally will not get a flat-panel TV until both my analog sets go belly-up, which I don't think will happen for some time; the RCA CTC185 19" TV in my living room is eight years old and has had only one repair--makes a great picture on cable (this is one of the sets that has RCA's troublesome onboard tuner, but once the ground points around the tuner are properly soldered, as the ones in mine were the last time I had it serviced, the set will perform flawlessly for years), and my Zenith Sentry 2 19" set in the bedroom is 13 years old, still works as well as when it was new.

There is no way I am going to trash these sets as long as they work as well as they do, the digital transition be darned. Time Warner Cable says that as long as their subscribers' televisions are connected to their service, the subscribers have absolutely nothing to worry about when all television turns digital early next year (by law, all cable operators now must say the same thing and be able to back it up). I have no reason not to believe it.