Gadget Of The Week: DTV Converters
I know, I know: they pushed back the DTV switchover to June 12. Sort of. While June 12 is the new deadline for television stations around the USA to stop broadcasting analog signals, February 17 (today) is still the kick-off date for the transition: stations can apply to the FCC to enact the switchover sooner, and as many as one third of the country's analog TV stations are expected to flicker out today.
And while I don't expect that many Homotron readers are the sort to still use bunny ears to catch their TV signal, or to apply for a coupon for a TV converter box, there are still over 6 million televisions out there that will, as of today, debut the last over-the-air broadcast they'll ever see (without a converter, cable or satellite): the snow channel. Forever.
tiny dancer
Posted to Gadget of the Week, Hot Stuff on 17 February 2009
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3D iPhone glasses. Why?
Seems like as good a place as any to tell my DTV Converter story:
On the day the "official" website began distributing coupons I applied for one (of the two I qualified for). I thought there'd be a rush, heh-heh, boy was I wrong about that. I got it in the mail in the specified time. I was surprised to see it was a credit card-like plastic card, hologram and all. HOW much is this program costing us?
What I didn't plan for was that no converters were yet available. Doh! I waited, and the card expired. C'mon, 90 days? Whatever. I figured that since I qualified for TWO, I might be able to apply for the second one, but knowing the government I doubted the website would be "smart" enough to allow me to apply a second time. Whoa, it worked. Kudos to the website designers for that one.
I got the card and started shopping (online). Having done the research, I looked for the top-rated product. No one carried it. Anywhere. Oh, sure, searches for that particular product led me to various websites, none of which had that particular product. I searched for the second best and found it everywhere, and cheap. Sold! Typed in the coupon's code and wound up paying just the S&H (thank you taxpayers for your generous handout).
I was worried all along about reception. Obviously, I use an antenna (having told the cable company to shove it a long time ago). The analog picture? Horrible! But I'm out in the far suburbs and didn't expect much, and besides, it's not like TV is as important as, say, the Internet. So I coped. I was afraid that assembling a digital picture would require MORE signal, especially since it would be in HD (among other additional information in the signal).
I hooked up my spiffy new box, let it search for channels (which took forever, for a while there I thought it was broken), and ... Great! Three times the number of analog channels I had been recieving, and all but two came in at 100% on the built-in signal strength meter. Perfect picture. Perfect sound.
Problems? Recording TV is a hassle (the converter I have isn't a DVR, though those are available). There's no "one" TV standard; various programming is in 480, 720 or 1080. Each channel's signal is in one of those formats, regardless of the original source material. That means black bars on 90% of what I watch now. That's annoying.
And, unexpectedly, now I watch too much TV! It looks good, sounds good, and there are at least twenty channels that were unavailable with analog that I LIKE TO WATCH (plus more that I'll never watch). I had been going through three or four Netflix movies a week, now one of those movies is still sitting there a month after I recieved it.
I'll get that sorted out eventually, but on the whole it's been a positive experience.