[opendtv] Re: News: DTV Converter Box announcements

Now, Craig.
There's no need to go cynical on us. The NTIA said that a DC powered STB with an outboard AC/DC converter was acceptable for the coupon program.
There may well be some boxes that use a 12VDC wall wart for power that can be adapted to a car accessory plug (formerly known as a cigarette lighter.) 

Or you can watch TV with your VCast enabled cell phone.

John
----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:28 PM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: News: DTV Converter Box announcements



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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