new tv / hd tv / tv bad?

Alright, so all these years we've heard "TV is bad for you. TV makes you kill people. TV makes kids violent. TV IS BAD. Go outside and play."

Now, the government is mandating that all tv signals are upgraded to High Def. so that the quality of all the "sex & violence" is better to view.

Why is it so important that we all get HD TV? Who is making money off of everyone switching to HD? What are "they" pumping through that tv, or taking away form the tv?

Broadcast television signal is not HD. It's digital. HD is delivered by a digital signal and can be seen if you buy an HD tv.

You must upgrade to a DIGITAL signal because the FCC was running out of analog bandwidth.

Think about all the wireless crap we use at home and for indutsry use and its easy to see how quickly we used it up. Dumping analog TV signal freed up a shitload of airspace.

Digital TV has been in the works for years. The Catch 22 is that the TV makers wouldn't make the TVs until it was beng broadcast...and broascasters didn't want to send it out in digital until there were TV's

So the FCC stepped in and mandated the upgrade to the stations.

The FCC misjudged the amount of time, money and lack of transmitters and kept pushing back the date until Feb 09.

If you have Cable, Dish, Fios or whatever youre fine. But if you use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna your gonna need a box to decode the signal.

Oliver's Army wrote:
If you have Cable, Dish, Fios or whatever youre fine. But if you use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna your gonna need a box to decode the signal.

Which you can get just about anywhere and you can also request a $40 coupon that will be mailed to you to help off-set the cost.

What OA said...

All I know is that their running out of bandwidth is causing me to run out of walletwidth.

Fleek wrote:

Oliver's Army wrote:
If you have Cable, Dish, Fios or whatever youre fine. But if you use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna your gonna need a box to decode the signal.

Which you can get just about anywhere and you can also request a $40 coupon that will be mailed to you to help off-set the cost.

And be prepared to spend more to get a 'digital quality' antenna and some flag pole to jack it up in the air even more for best reception.

The bright spot in all of this is it really jumpstarted the TV market. You have to admit that in the last 5 years TV quality has gone thru the roof by comparison.

Oliver's Army wrote:Think about all the wireless crap we use at home and for indutsry use and its easy to see how quickly we used it up. Dumping analog TV signal freed up a shitload of airspace.

I like the concept of a conspiracy theory... but this makes sense and is the answer I was looking fer.

Thanks!

Oliver's Army wrote:

Fleek wrote:

Oliver's Army wrote:
If you have Cable, Dish, Fios or whatever youre fine. But if you use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna your gonna need a box to decode the signal.

Which you can get just about anywhere and you can also request a $40 coupon that will be mailed to you to help off-set the cost.

And be prepared to spend more to get a 'digital quality' antenna and some flag pole to jack it up in the air even more for best reception.

The bright spot in all of this is it really jumpstarted the TV market. You have to admit that in the last 5 years TV quality has gone thru the roof by comparison.

My aluminum 30 year old radio shack antenna worked perfect for picking up HD digital signal. Of course, it's a 5-foot outoors rooftop type.