HD TV Signal change

[groomporter]

I'm tired of being warned that the TV signal is changing next February.
-I have to admit however that I love the Twin Cities Public Television advert/announcement that says "even this TV from 1957 works with a converter box"

Any geeks out there? If you put a splitter on the cable coming from the converter box could you hook two TV's to the box the same way I used to watch my VCR from either my living room TV or the basement TV?

[Drake Starsong]

The signal isn't switching to HD - as long as you have cable you will be ok - basically the switch is affecting antenna users.

No more analog, all is going to be digital

[groomporter]

The free signal through the air is changing however. I don't have cable or satellite TV so I have to get the HD converter box to still use my "rabbit ears" antenna. SO I'm wonderin if I can split the signal from the HD converter box.

[Drake Starsong]

Ah sorry - ok I got you now - it would be possible to split but there would be an issue - the converter boxes act as the tuner as well so my two cents would tell me you'd be watching the same channels on multiple tv's at the same time.

[groomporter]

That would be no problem. I would just be nice to avoid buying extra converter boxes and I already have a cable running to the basement TV from when I had a VCR hooked to both TVs.

I just filled out the online application for the discount coupon ( https://www.dtv2009.gov/ ) for the converter since there was something on the news recently that it's slow to receive the coupons in the mail

[Drake Starsong]

Yeah the coupons will take a bit, and not all boxes will be coupon worthy to say. Do some research on the boxes to, for instance some will have rca jacks and a cable rf out - so you can hook up multiple devices without having to pickup a seperate unit to split from.

[Rage]

I am guessing that shortly after the switch the boxes will come way down in price. The last figure I saw was that only 25% of the population will be effected by this change. I did notice that they finally added "If you are on cable or Direct TV you will not be effected".... about time.

[Drake Starsong]

I doubt we will see prices dropping on the converters for quite some time, as long as the government is subsidising the converter companies then they have no need to lower prices

[Rage]

So inline with this topic, my cable started acting up. I called and they came 3 days later to fix it. LD was home and the guy told her a bunch of non-truths about what was wrong and what he did to fix the problem (related to the HD single change)...

Two days later same problems so I called complained. They were abit suprised by what what I told them and then even more suprised when they looked to see what he did.

So don't be suprised if the cable companies try to use this to make even more money off of you.

[groomporter]

For people who need the converter boxes Twin Cities Public Television is publishing the publics' reviews of the various boxes available at
http://www.tpt.org/program/dtv/reviews.php

[Lady_Glorianna]

If I read right, every household has a right to two $40 coupons. I terms of cable, I have noticed that reception of certain channels through "VCR converter" has been lost. I suspect that you will be ok with cable as long as you have the cable digital converter box.

[Cobaltblu]

I too am tired of having to watch these lame commercials.

If someone is dumb enough to not know of the change then so what?  One day they don't have tv and they have to go out and get a new tv.  Maybe they will spend less time indoors and go outside and get some fresh air or get a job and be able to buy a new tv.

We don't need government wasting money to pay for people with antennas to continue using their tvs.  We need to move forward with technology and not waste money on continuing to support old formats.  Besides for $40 we could probably buy a cheap new tv.  Why not sell them and make people buy them?

What would these people be missing if they unexpectedly find themselves unable to watch tv?  They can't watch soap operas and are no longer forced to watch commericals?  Jokingly is this some ploy by special interest groups in Washington who are scared they can't force product advertising on as many Americans?

Regards,

CB

[Noble Dreg]

I too am tired of having to watch these lame commercials.

If someone is dumb enough to not know of the change then so what?  One day they don't have tv and they have to go out and get a new tv.  Maybe they will spend less time indoors and go outside and get some fresh air or get a job and be able to buy a new tv....

Apparently you are not 97 years old like my shut-in grandmother...It's easy to say get off you duff and get a job to buy a new T.V. but she can't.  Also at her age change is not even close to easy.  She has an old B&W 'knob tuner' set we had to search high and low for.  There is a very small group of people who will be hurt by the change, not enough to stop progress but not so insignificant that we can just cast them aside as morons. 

[Dayna]

I also have a TV that has two dials, it Works Just Fine and as long as I can keep it out of the waste stream I intend so to do!

I used to be able to use my VCR to record one program while I watched a different one, until digital cable.  Now whatever the box is set to, that's what I'm stuck with, so I find myself watching a lot less (no harm there).

Dayna, doing her best to help the planet, one still-works-just-fine piece of electronics at a time 

[DT_Masters]

Let's take the question a little bit further.

The emphasis has been on analog tv's ........ but what are DVD/VCR's currently sold? Are they analog or digital?

In my communication history, I have gotten rather inventive at times. In the 80's, I recored on a VCR that was hooked up to a 1968 tv for it's antennaes. In the 90's, I fed the signal in to the big TV and VCR from an inoperative portable 1985 tv which I used for its rabbit ear and as a base for the loop antennae.

Now, I am on cable but it's my practice not to use the tuner on the tv but rather on the recording machines.

So the questions are:

1. Are the DVD/VCR's sold today with tuners digital signal enabled?
2. Will an analog tv be able to understand the signal from a digital signal enabled DVD/VCR as it is fed thru either the coaxial or A/V inputs?