I think even the most inexpensive VCR these days is able to use a remote and switch back and forth between RF and composite inputs. So I don't see that as a major hardship for anyone that owns a VCR.
I sort of wonder if all the very recent flap about disenfranchising low power stations is really about that, or just in hope they will instead be bribed to go away with some new cable must-carry rights.
Is that likely? - Tom John Willkie wrote:
Gary Shapiro is a very effective advocate for the membership of the CEA, and I tend to not agree with him much. However, this is a different case. Hell, they ignore me when I calmly have requested to participate in standards-setting work at the CEA.This whole situation is a FAILURE of advocacy of the latest “leadership” of the CBA.Back when I was a CBA member – most recently in late 1994 (I was a co-founder of the predecessor group) – there was leadership of the CBA that discussed and advocated for the interest of LPTV stations in the digital transition. I had more than a few face-to-face and telephone conversations with CBA board members who were very concerned about advocating the interest of the members through the transition to digital.However, since that time, the CBA has had several radical changes of leadership, and the “mission” seemed to be the absurd – phony Class A status – and the unattainable – getting must-carry for LPTVs on cable. Now, they have failed to the extent that the FCC chairman is advocating for the latter.THIS IS A FAILURE OF CBA ADVOCACY. They’ve failed so miserably that now the NAB – never a fan of translators and LPTVs – is advocating for their position.And, Bob, the lack of permissive use of other dtv technologies with LPTVs is not only a failure of the CBA, but YOURS as well. How is John Kerry helping you these days? The FCC took away the previously existing situation of permitting LPTVs and translators to use any modulation system approved by the Commission, in an open proceeding, where YOU and the CBA did not advocate for this position.You are quite foolish. Using a different modulation scheme would have caused MORE CONFUSION, not LESS.John Willkie------------------------------------------------------------------------*De:* opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *En nombre de *Bob Miller*Enviado el:* Saturday, March 01, 2008 7:21 AM *Para:* opendtv *Asunto:* [opendtv] Shapiro on LPTVShapiro Slams CBACalling it "the latest bump" on the road to a successful DTV transition, Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro Thursday took aim at the Community Broadcasters Association in a speech to the Media Institute in Washington Thursday.Saying he had never even heard of CBA, a low-power lobby group, until a few months ago, and adding that it reaches "fewer than one percent of the American public," he argued that instead of "rushing to provide DTV service to their customers, they are "trying to change the rules of the transition in the 31th hour."Low-power stations are not required to make the switch to digital in February 2009. Few are planning to do so by then, the group has said, and the government likely won't require them to before 2012, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said. But the problem CBA sees is that only a handful of the 40-plus converter boxes so far approved by the National Telecommunications & Information Association pass through the analog signals of all those low powers, which mean they could lose viewers when the boxes are installed.Shapiro says that in 2007 the group testified about the transition, but never discussed the pass-through issue. "They only discussed their desire for mandatory cable carriage." The FCC is currently considering helping some 600 low powers by helping them gain that cable carriage.Shapiro said NTIA allowed, but did not mandate, the analog pass-through function because it feared "reduction in the recieved signal level and an increased cost. The overwhelming 99% of Americans wouldn't even need this."Shapiro pointed out that the program was voluntary and said he thought that fact that it was terrific thing that manufacturers were participating given that it was a low-margin item, with no chance to upgrade because the coupons can only be used on an NTIA-approved box, which can't have bells and whistles like a built-in DVR, and it has a very short life.He says a mandate that all the converter boxes would have to have an analog pass-through function, as CBA wants the FCC to require, would be "technologically, economically and practically impossible and would mean a delay in the transition."But Shapiro wasn't done. He said CBA had done "absolutely zero to positively educate consumers about the transition and options available." He also said CBA should be switching to digital anyway, and criticized a CBA PSA calling the converter box program a scam."John Eggerton Broadcasting & Cable Phone: 202-659-3852 Fax: 202-659-2235 Bob Miller writes...This guy Shapiro the head of the CEA rears his ignorant head once again. At least this time he admits to his ignorance claiming that he had not ever heard of the CBA, Community Broadcasters Association, until a few months ago. I had an agument with him at the hearings on the DTV transition in 2000. He had stood up and shown his ignorance in the hearing room my announcing first thing in his statement that Sinclair had needed 8 MHz for the demonstration that he had just witnessed.He is one of the chief reasons we are saddled with 8-VSB. Without it LPTV stations would have been eager to switch to digital years ago since they don't have must carry and would have thrived in a DVB-T/MPEG4 world. Instead most of them face extinction as the DTV transition causes a drop in their viewers of 90% or better just because of the confusion let alone the fact the the NTIA didn't seem to know they existed up till recently.The incompetence and ignorance in high places in DC is only exceeded by the extremely sensitive antennae that its inhabitants have in detecting that their careers may be in jeaprody. See the rats leaving the NTIA. First Kneuer who was the head of the coupon program leaves a few months ago and now the acting head of the NTIA is leaving. Just yesterday the Acting Head of the NTIA and point person on the coupon program, Merideth Atwell Baker, who just replaced Kneuer left abruptly after smiling just a week or so and saying all is well on the Communicators.It wasn't so long ago that the last head of the NTIA, Nancy Victory, left abruptly. I had talked to her just before she resigned and she became hostile, very hostile within the first. What was I talking to her about? The fact that the converters were going to be a very big problem and the LPTV stations would suffer.http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6536613.html
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