House Beats DTV Delay

3:34 pm EST January 28th, 2009 | News | 7 Comments

Good.

Bucking the Obama administration, House Republicans on Wednesday defeated a bill to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting to June 12 — leaving the current Feb. 17 deadline intact for now.

The 258-168 vote failed to clear the two-thirds threshold needed for passage. It’s a victory for the GOP members, who warn that postponing the transition would confuse consumers.

See, I can agree with Republicans sometimes.

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7 Responses to “House Beats DTV Delay”

  1. Aurona says:
    January 28, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    Wrong this time Oliver. The people affected by this are not the high rollers with their HD tvs; its people, like me, and many, many people who cannot afford to upgrade their tv. There are over a million people who will not have tv come February 17th.

    This is a stupid move and cuts out people who can ill afford a new tv.

    And I’m an Obama dem, too.

  2. drinkof says:
    January 28, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    In any event, this means we can blame the Repubs for anything that goes wrong.

    The converter only costs $50 and there’s a freebie if you apply, isn’t there?

  3. News Reference says:
    January 28, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    re: drinkof: “The converter only costs $50 and there’s a freebie if you apply, isn’t there?”

    I got the $40 coupon in the mail and before the letter had been opened the coupon had expired. Apparently that’s happened to a lot of people. And there’s apparently over a million people that applied and never received a coupon.

    My neighbor had to scrimp to buy a converter, $50 to people in neighborhoods where people are losing their houses isn’t cheap. And to someone making minimum wage it’s just about an eight hour day (more than eight hours if your paying taxes). To buy something to fix something that was never broke.

    But look at the upside for the minority Republicans that blocked the bill in the House: it’s a payoff to the big corps that they sold off our public airwaves to, and what’s the downside to them? If some elderly, poor person that can barely afford their home loses their local TV news station it’s far more likely they’ll turn on their AM radio looking for “information” than they will buy a newspaper. So there’s a 9 in 10 chance that they’ll be listening to some right-wing propaganda and won’t have the local news station (which is usually mostly fair) or PBS NewsHour (which is meticulously fair though engages in false equivalency) to tell them what’s going on.

    Ironically, analog actually comes in better than DTV (the neighbor loses two local stations with the DTV converter w/ antennae and the DTV comes in choppy in ways significantly worse than analog). The $50 converter doesn’t provide the kind of reception the pols advertised unless you also buy a rooftop antennae (and even that’s apparently a gamble), which is what, another ??$

    Me, I’m actually kind of relieved to get the 5+ hours back I’d been devoting to watching entertainment shows on NBC, CW, and FOX. To think of how many hours FOX was making money off of my eyeballs from their sponsors. 17 minutes of commercials per hour.

  4. Sean D. Martin says:
    January 28, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    Aurona: The people affected by this are not the high rollers with their HD tvs; its people, like me, and many, many people who cannot afford to upgrade their tv.

    Will they be better able to afford it by June?

  5. bryan says:
    January 28, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    We’re in the process at the moment, region by region. I swapped because you got more channels. Set top boxes here are about $40 (£23). I spent £90 on one that records stuff onto a hard drive, and can record two channels at any one time. “The 5000 fingers of Dr. T” never looked so good (it was on the other day whilst i was at work).

  6. Sean D. Martin says:
    January 28, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    drinkof: The converter only costs $50 and there’s a freebie if you apply, isn’t there?

    Coupons are good for only $40. TV converter boxes usually cost between $40 and $70.

    Each U.S. household may request up to two $40 coupons.
    The TV Converter Box Coupon Program has reached its funding ceiling and any further applications are added to a waiting list. As unused coupons expire, new ones will be issued to those on the waiting list.

    The coupon will not cover the full cost for many of the people that get them. Many people (not clear how many exactly) will not get coupons at all.

  7. Aurona says:
    January 29, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    Sean D. Martin says:

    Will they be better able to afford it by June?

    I think the point is – there will be no rebate of of a $40 coupon to help people pay for this. I bought my converter and ended up paying about $12 with the coupon. People who are UNEMPLOYED may not have the expendable cash.

    Sorry – this is a DEM issue, and I’m sad that people see this as a frivolous cost. People who can ill afford another expense and what may be the only thing they’ve got as far as entertainment.

    Its hard to separate the HD tv/cable/satellite people from what is still out there in the rest of the country, I know; but you’ve got to realize there are people all over who cannot afford this expense right now. Ahem. Its not like it was contraceptives or anything (\snark)