[opendtv] Re: News: DTV Converter Box announcements
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:28:55 -0500
At 10:31 AM -0500 1/24/08, Barry Brown wrote:
Since I'm a sat sub and have a digital TV, I haven't been paying too
much attention to the converter box program until this AM when I
read a story in the local paper about the conversion to digital TV.
In the Q&A section, this question was asked: "Will the digital
switch affect anything other than my TV". Answer: If you have a
portable batter-operated TV that receives free channels from an
antenna, you'll need to purchase plugs to connect it to a
digital-to-analog converter box. Since special boxes won't be made
for this type of TV, you'll also need an external power source for
the box."
Is this true - there are no battery operated converter boxes being
made available to those of us who watch portable TVs during power
failures? If so, it appears to be a major oversight!
Sorry Charlie, but you are screwed.
You can get an iPod Touch and watch You Tube if you are near a WiFi hot spot.
;-(
But you are not as badly screwed as the poor folks who own LPTV and
class A stations. None of the DTV convertor boxes have NTSC tuners
(the NTIA required that they be disabled). Some of these boxes have
an RF pass-thru feature with an A/B switch. All of the promos and
websites say your analog TV will not work after February 17. 2009.
But there will still be 2600 LPTV/Class A stations and 4400
translators operating after the full power analog shut-off. The NTIA
even has a $10 million program to equip translators with digital to
analog convertors to deal with the signals from full power stations
after the transition, but they made it very difficult for people who
buy the DTV convertor boxes to keep watching these stations.
Ironically, almost all of these boxes have chips tuners in them that
handle NTSC/analog cable/ATSC and QAM...
As for power failures, you might consider radio...it get's us through
Hurricane's (and their aftermath) here in Florida.
Regards
Craig
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