President Obama signs DTV delay bill into law
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 11th 2009 7:39PM
posted Feb 11th 2009 7:39PM
posted Feb 11th 2009 7:39PM
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No change; only confusion, delay, expense, and creating solutions that are just bigger problems.
Welcome to your goverrnment, America. Good luck with that.
Agreed. Its going to be a rough couple of years:
http://www.infowars.com/economic-rescue-plan-more-debt-more-dollar-devaluation-and-more-government/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/11/politics/washingtonpost/main4792363.shtml
Thank you for wasting time and money on an issue that shouldn't even be on radar right now.
What a vagina.
I live in Iowa and all of our stations but one are cutting off the old signal next week. This delay is a mistake.
Looks like that DTV Delay Comment section was not needed on the White House website in the first place?
I can't stress enough how many people are fuming mad over this legislation, i think everyone would agree with me and say why should we waste the purposed 500 million dollars on the DTV changeover which was enacted 13 years ago and be overwritten time and time again?
This goes to show that most Americans are going to expect more delays until at least lets say 2012?
i guess i have to wait for everyone to go digital in order for me "The Taxpayer" to get the New HD Channels i have been waiting for and promised by my cable company for a long time while other markets get what they want i am left in the dust all over again.
People are fuming mad? Do you have any data to support this claim? (Note: The plural of anecdote is not data.)
And the DTV delay has nothing to do with your cable provider not getting you the HD channels you've been waiting for. That is solely your cable provider's fault.
Digital doesent mean HD
All HD is digital
But not all Digital is HD
You are not necessarily getting any more HD and if you have cable it wouldnt even affect you if we had been digital since 2006 so just relax your not getting hurt by this in anyway whatsoever
Oh well, everything but ABC will be off by the 16th. Fox has turned analog off almost 2 weeks ago.
No problem here, only that BB no longer sells the Insignia converter box and only the Apex box when I preferred the Insignia box *shrug*.
Dunno why everyone here is all up in arms. It shouldn't effect anyone who frequents this site...
Some people here think that the delay in the transition means a delay in HD channels not everyone knows that digital doesn't necessarily mean hd
I was hoping that one of my channels would turn off their analog antenna and then pump more power to their digital one so I could get their signal.
It does effect me and I frequent this site. Mainly so I know when I need to do a channel re-scan as several digital channels in my area are moving to their analog assignments when they switch.
All it means is instead of one channel scan on 2/18, I'll do about 5 between 2/18 and 6/13.
Yes, I come here frequently and only use OTA for all of my TV viewing needs...well, not counting hulu, sling, netflix.....
I've read that stations are going to increase their digital coverage after they drop analog.
Wow, more false hope. What happens now when people who thing they have till June, still loose their channels at the end of this month?
Of course if this were the worst decision he made I'd be content with that. Somehow I think not...
Keep up the good work Hussein!
Now that you are done signing and wasting money WHERE IS MY CHECK?
I just LOVE this guy!!!! Thanks for voting him all - HA HA HA!
Hope. Change. Oprah.
Uh, sometimes you guys disappoint me.
Not everyone who gets the coupons uses them. It's not so much that the program is out of money as it is that it can't cover any more coupons *assuming that they were all redeemed*. Now that those coupons are starting to expire there will be money to send out more.
I'm against this delay but all this hate towards Obama. Jeez!
Wait till all the hate he gets from that screwed up porkimulous plan and the universal health care stuff hidden in there.
Lets impeach obama now.
Yes, there is money tucked away in the stimulus bill. At least, there was, in the House version. Republicans consider it waste in the stimulus package.
But, it was a pretty substantial amount of money, $650,000,000. See http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:7:./temp/~c111lnFSBJ:e1068105:
Exactly. I hope it was cut out of the spending bill already, but I haven't kept up.
It's ridiculous they put this as part of the stimulus package, and even worse, that Obama didn't flag this as a wasteful part of the package. How about $650M for job training? FFS our government is really clueless (both past AND present administrations!!)
Well since everyone wants to bash Obama about this, I guess I have to say this...
I'm glad his big bad mistake was pushing back the forced DTV transition 4 months... I mean, lets be honest, he could have just started a few wars instead.
Seriously people, sure it was a waste of the governments time, but it delayed them from giving another trillion dollars away to the banks and stupid people who can't pay their mortgages. Lets be happy they took a break from printing money.
Be fair, the last pres only started one. A bunch of murderers started the other one...
thank you obama, one more piece of Barack BS at a time!
What a FAILURE!!!
This is negative change!!!
While I support the delay, I understand that waiting might be more expensive then the tv stations are willing to pay, I think the FCC isn't going to enforce the delay, so you guys just pull that bug out your asses and you can have your precious digital channels
This is a great example of government getting out of the way of business.
With this "delay," private companies can now choose to convert in Feb or wait.
This "delay" does not force any station to wait. In fact, any station that does wait is going it by choice.
The upside of the delay is that it means more people who need the coupons will get a chance to get them -- either because exhausted funds become available when existing coupons already in circulation expire, or because of the proposed additional appropriations for the transition that were in the House's stimulus package.
But I do agree with the poster that implied "isn't there more important stuff to work on" right now... like Wall Street execs getting taking billions of dollars in bonus pay for their great work.... which consisted of taking $700 billion dollars of my money to pay their debts.
So what's going to happen to the procrastinators come June when the newly replenished coupon fund runs out of money yet again, and the procrastinators are caught with expired coupons, and their thumbs buried up their collective asses? Congress won't extend this again, at least not without major protests from broadcasters, and wireless companies, and hopefully the american public (though I doubt it).
It is unfortunate that the powers feel we have to cater to the needs of a relatively small percent of the population that, quite honestly, has not been able to get it's act together despite ample time to do so. Digital broadcasts have been online for a decade, the analog cutoff has been set for three years, and the government has subsidized the converter boxes for the past eighteen months through the coupon program.
Always had a slight hope that someone in Washington would grow balls and just let the analog cutoff go as planned. So goes life. In the list of mistakes a President can make, signing this bill is very minor. Those of you bashing Obama for it are basically idiots.
Your venom is better aimed at the last administration. They were the ones overseeing the bulk of the digital transition, including administration of the coupon program. The poor management of the program is arguably the surface reason the analog cutoff was delayed in the first place (along with propaganda about the poor and elderly). The problems surrounding the coupon program were very clear, yet the last administration did NOTHING to fix it.
True enough Rich, true enough. The last administration was pretty much at fault for a lot of the current economic, financial and the dtv transition issues the US faces. Sadly, its not going to get much better with Obama's crackpot team.
First, the 900 billion dollar bailout play was approved by the senate so its a go. $900 billion tax-payer dollars to bail out big business and banks to help our system continue status quo for a little while before the potential/ineveitable collapse. Weeee?
Second, the secretary of the treasury today suggested providing up to $1 trillion dollars to buy 'bad debts' from banks. Aka taking forclosed houses and passing the bill to the tax-payer by buying the foreclosed properly from banks to the tune of $1 trillion dollars. ...What the hell? Thats more than the bailout.
It gets better though. He's also suggesting providing $1 more trillion dollars for banks to finance consumer loans including credit cards, personal loans and mortgages. Yes, another trillion dollars given out to consumers so they can buy cars, mp3 players, cellphones and tvs they can't afford! Cause as long as consumers keep spending money they don't have, the economy will be ok! ...What the hell? That's even more money than the bailout to encourage more consumer debt and spending?
Ugh. Were screwed. Don't believe me? Check the link below or check cbsnews.
http://www.infowars.com/economic-rescue-plan-more-debt-more-dollar-devaluation-and-more-government/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/11/politics/washingtonpost/main4792363.shtml
I'm sorry i got HD and DTV mixed up, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, (the reason i Got mixed up with both the DTV and HD was a Comcast rep told me that" the DTV trans would make room for more HD channels.")
A lot of people think high def and digital is the same thing. All I know is digital looks sharper then standard and HD look better then digital.
@gt1
No worries about the confusion.
In the midst of the OTA broadcast switchover from analog to digital, many cable companies are doing something similar on their own networks. They are moving the bandwidth hogging analog stations to their digital tiers in order to free up space for new HD stations so they can better compete with Verizon's FIOS and Satellite.
Here in the Seattle area, Comcrap will be moving channels 30-80 from analog to digital sometime beginning over the next several months.
The delay is not really about helping the procrastinators get ready for the switchover, that aint gonna happen until the plug is actually pulled and they can no longer watch Cheaters or Jerry Springer.
No, the delay really has to do with shifting blame when the above happens. Shift the blame from elected officials and their failures during this process, to the broadcasters themselves. Now when J6P goes looking for someone to blame because he can't watch the latest examples of inbreeding on Springer, his elected official can say "I voted to delay the changover, it was the broadcaster who decided to switch anyway."
You can count on the gov't to do one thing well: fuck things up.
The folks beating up on our new President... are continuously proving their ignorant bias.
This economy and all it's losses line up squarely on the shoulders of all republicans.
They have been lying and blaming it on President Obama since before he was even sworn into office.
They and Captain Rush cannot face the fact that their ignorant economic policies led their own president to socialize corporate losses onto the backs of the american worker.
They should be collectively ashamed... but instead they are brazen liars.
I sincerely believe they will rot in eternity... will the last capitalist please turn off the widget machine.
Jeff
I guess that is why the governments of conservative Republican supporting States remain financially stable while the governments of socalist Democrat supporting states are all but collapsing.
See what Democrat fiscal policy can do, look at California.
If you aren't from California do WHATEVER you can to keep what is happening there from happening to you. Keep your government honest, people!