With a week to go, Obama urges the remaining few to make DTV preparations
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jun 5th 2009 6:37PM
posted Jun 5th 2009 6:37PM
Just in case you were living in fear of another last minute switch on the digital TV transition date, be at ease, President Obama issued a statement urging those who aren't ready yet to prepare as there will be no further delays, and for those of us in the know to make sure that people around the way are getting the message. With a week to go (again) is there anyone still reading this that hasn't gotten their digital TV future straightened out yet?
Anyone that hasn't got it straightened out by now doesn't deserve to watch tv.
I urge you to buy a tin foil hat!
You got that right
Enough of this obama worship already. I see enough of him on the tv news cycle.
Posting a statement = worship now? Get a life.
My life is a great one. I don't waste it by fawning over ever word the anointed one says.
No one's "fawning" over every word he's saying here. This is a blog about HD/digital tv. Don't you think this is worthy of being posted, no matter who the president is it would be posted.
Give me a break Stevedee4. I doubt you'd see President Bush's picture on this post.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/01/23/rockefeller-details-dtv-delay-act-no-guarantees-this-is-the-onl/
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/08/04/senator-pushes-for-expansion-of-v-chip-video-censorship-techno/
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/11/11/john-kneuer-resigning-as-digital-tv-transition-chief/
Sorry if you don't read our blog much, it's pretty standard.
One of three people in the world still sorry Bush couldn't get a third term no doubt.
What the heck did that bozo do but turn the FCC into a sycophant for the cable industry. They set this country back a decade in terms of digital progress. Let along massive budget deficits.
We are so sick of Bush worship like yours, and the losers who are licking Limbaugh's feet because their party is completely bankrupt they can't even find one single decent leader.
Besides, the President promised to send someone over and fix my Mom's TV.
the President promised it would bring back Jack Benny!
What does OTA stand for?
Its short hand for over the air. This is the best method to get HD. Its in its full uncompressed HD goodness.
Under the ground
Gil - ATSC is not "uncompressed", it's just not recompressed. The satellite services and most cable companies will recompress the content for various reasons, Dish Network likes all of its HD to be in H.264 for example.
Most OTA HD stations use MPEG2 compression at around 10-15Mbps (the max is 20Mbps, but there's usually an SD channel sharing the bandwidth) By comparison. HD DVD and Blu-ray use the much better H.264 or VC-1 at around 20-30Mbps (BD can go higher but almost never does, it only has higher rates because originally it was intended to use MPEG2 too)
It's also a bit of a crapshoot when determining who, in practice, has higher quality video, as while recompression obviously adds artifacts, my experience is that pure OTA is more susceptible to reception issues than cable or satellite. Yes, it's annoying watching an area that's supposed to be black but has slightly different shaded dark blocks instead, but that's nothing to having the audio cut out and part of the screen turn into a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
I'm ready to rescan my tuners. Not only the the one DTV box, but the two HD TVs and my computer monitor. This isn't because the TV said I should rescan the tuners, but because I know WGN is moving to a different frequency. All the other stations, I think, are staying put. Although, I'm not sure about that Milwalkee station, but I'm also not sure how it comes in so clearly some days from 150 miles away.
Wait, you mean he isn't going to push to have it delayed again, wasting millions of dollars that could be allocated to a much better cause especially in this economy?
Not millions. Hundreds of millions. A year ago, that was a lot of money. Now, it seems like nothing. Funny how that works.
Welfare calling.
Oh NO! The digital transition! I knew nothing about this! I missed all the hundreds of ads, best buy promos and mailers that were sent out about this! Now I'll never get to watch TV again!
Anyone dumb enough to not be ready is either old or retarded. The old people should just die and stop taking up space and the retards will probably just sit and be entertained by the static.
Nick, to you old people include anyone past the age of 9. I say this because "retard" & "dumb" are words typically used by 2nd graders.
HAHA Lakeonaut, I thought the same thing. I don't think I've heard someone call someone else "retarded" since elementary school.
I think Gil might still use that word too
Let's get retarded in here
Doesn't the president have better things to do?
like what? troll around engadgethd.com?....
Switch? What switch? Ya mean the guvment made it so my Philco black and white TV won't work anymore?
So how long after the analog turnoff will we hear the outcry of racial and age discrimination causing "da gubmint" to throw more money at this?
A year a go Bush sent me a $300 check that paid for half of my 32 inch HDTV I paied the other $325. Then Obama last month sent me a $250 check which I brought a Pansonic BD-60 Blu-Ray player
I am set. lol
my mom called me last week about this, realizing the rv she just got a month ago isnt dtv ready.