[opendtv] Re: 20050926 Mark's Monday Memo
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 10:05:48 -0400
At 11:16 AM +1200 9/28/05, Barry Wilkins wrote:
>Well, go on John. Say it anyway. It's always fun. It kind of reminds me of
>the movie "Groundhog Day", where Bill Murray says"Well, what if there is no
>tomorrow? There wasn't one today" Accordingly, there appears to be no
>reasonably priced properly performing ATSC receiver today...and tomorrow
>never comes (so far).
A reliable source in the Nation's capital informs me that he has one
of these new ATSC STB's, and that it works fine (with a silver sensor
antenna) in the urban canyons of DC, where lawyers ply the
politicians with cash for political influence. So ten years after the
standard was approved, it looks like it can be made to
work...marginally. We will need to wait and see what these boxes will
cost. Without a huge order subsidized by the U.S. treasury, it would
appear that there is no incentive to bring these boxes to market.
For the past few weekends I have been looking at the DTV ads from the
usual local suspects: Sears, Circuit City, and Best Buy. Each has its
own unique way of designating whether a set is HD ready or it
includes an ATSC/Cable tuner. Best Buy calls the integrated sets DCR
- Digital Cable Ready. Circuit City uses HDTV Monitor and HDTV
integrated. Looking through all of these ads, the lowest price for
an integrated set is still above $2,000. There are a few cheaper
CRT-based sets available, but they are rarely advertised.
The real question one must ask, is whether Joe Sixpack cares about
any of this. To be certain, if NTSC is turned off, some people will
be pissed. But the reality is that very few will bother to get a DTV
set-top box and put up an antenna at any price, including a highly
subsidized price.
The real question we should be asking is when we will shut down TV
broadcasting as we know it. Clearly the media - Fox news Channel
included blew it badly with Katrina. All it takes today to make news
is for somebody - anybody - to make a wild accusation, and the media
will fall all over itself reporting these rumors as facts.
The Police Chief of New Orleans resigned yesterday. Given the reality
of how his organization mishandled the disaster, this seems just. But
the media focus is on the fact that he spread lies and rumors, which
the media then reported as news. Today in our local NYTimes paper
there is story about all of the major misrepresentations of fact that
the media - TV, radio, newspapers et al - spread after Katrina. I
guess you could call this a "retraction;" one must question why it
took a month to get the real facts out, and only then in an article
buried on page six.
Having lived through at least six hurricanes when I was growing up in
South Florida in the '60s, I am forced to wonder how the hell we got
through all of this without the assistance of the Federal Government.
There were no billion dollar no-bid contracts from FEMA to help with
clean-up. I got $2-3 an hour to help clean up the neighborhood.
Within a day or two of the storm I would pile up huge mounds of
debris - piles 10 feet wide and 3o feet long in front of each house.
Like magic they would be gone in a day or two. LAst year after
Francis I put a similar pile in front of my house in Gainesville. It
too six weeks for the local government agencies to figure out how to
clean it up, with assistance from FEMA.
With all of those storms in the '60s - several were category 4
storms, we never suffered any significant destruction of our homes.
At worse I had to fix some fiberglass screens that were torn by
flying debris. The only evacuations that took place were the folks
with homes and apartments on the beach, who would come across the
bridges and stay a mile away from the worst that the storms could
dish out. I did see some cars that were sand blasted if left out near
the beach. The reason that there was little property damage was the
South Florida Building Code, developed in response to the
devastations of the big storms in the '30s and '40s. Our house was
concrete block with an 18" concrete header poured around the top with
steel straps to hold down the roof trusses. The roof was concrete
tiles; I think we lost two tiles in one storm when the sustained
winds topped 160 MPH.
After the intense cycle of storms in the '60s South Florida really
started to explode, and the South Florida Building Code was abandoned
because of the high construction costs. The destruction caused by
Andrew came as no surprise - as the Wolf told the first two little
pigs, I'll huff and I'll puff til I blow your house down.
So many things have changed in the past fifty years. How the hell did
we ever survive without big brother to lend a hand?
Regards
Craig
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
