I've been living off "The Grid" for awhile now. Netflix, Hulu, Adultswim.com and the Big 3 all have websites with watchable content.....I like to think I'm ahead of the curve but, I had to help my grandmother set up her convertor........she didn't ask how I did it and I didn't tell how I did it.

Saved us both a migraine.

Analog TV switch off day one. Did your screen go blank? Nope the computer still works.

I rescanned early yesterday and so far no issues I have a nice big new LG flat screen and it is working perfectly so no issues so far... except for trying to run a cable to it from my computer to dual screen to it when nothing interesting is on TV, but that's more me figure out how to run HDMI over 20 feet around the room.

Converter box gets on my last nevers. I got a outside antenna. befor the the switch. dig channels work, now i get 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 7.1 7.2. I dont even get NBC, WB, FOX. and i move antenna ever were still dont get NBC, WB, FOX.

Converter box gets on my last nevers. I got a outside antenna. befor the the switch. dig channels work, now i get 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 7.1 7.2. I dont even get NBC, WB, FOX. and i move antenna ever were still dont get NBC, WB, FOX.

Oh, the switchover happened? I didn't notice. The only T.V. I have watched since I cut the cable in 2004 has been online. I guess I will need to help my mom with her converter box the next time I see her,

*que Dr. Weird music* WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE!?

Didn’t even know that analog was still one, wasn’t the switch a while ago? Well anyways PC is the best way to go cable companies should be trembling...

Fools you will soon all subcome to the digital revoulution, revert or day

So Comcast lied (see their website that there would be NO impact if you plugged into their 'world'). And every tv must have an ugly box attached which sucks more electricity and adds to the wire jungle I'm trying to hide. AND there is no 5 in 1 that they can even suggest....so are back to 2 remotes...one to change channels and one to turn tv on and off b'cos itis not compatible with a Sony Vega

And no one is complaining....how we have become sheep

Living in the Hurricane Zone here in Florida, NO ONE has told us what we're gonna do here when the yearly storms hit and we have NO emergency TVs for getting weather and news after a Cat III or above disaster.

....you thought New Orleans was bad after Katrina, just wait until we have another Cat V like 1992's Andrew and NO ONE has emergency TVs......

@Gerry
oh ffs... try a radio. if you require video to tell you what to do with a hurricane on the way, you're the slow gazelle of the herd.

I still haven't figured out why this was mandated by the government. Why should they care? Glad my vote helped comcast...

@ roshinobi. The government cares because it clears up the analog airways for...whatever else they want to use them for. And you have to remember it was going to happen eventually weather the government said so or not. Which would have been bad. If the government had not stepped in to regulate it areas would have slowly merged to digital. Then we end up with individuals going why can't I watch fox anymore, all my other channels work. This would lead to a lot of confusion. Having the government do it leads to far less confusion, the only reason you would not realize you needed to switch would be becauseyou do not pay attention or you live under a rock. It has been well advertised on tv internet and even the newspaper.

Irrated? You really didn't have a cable box in every room already. I really don't see the problem with this. Power usage is minimal. You can buy a universal remote for next to nothing(and I am 100% sure the Comcast one does work with your Sony Vega)
I can't believe this switch was a big deal for anyone.

rather than mess with any of the conversion devices, etc, i just got a new TV and cable, it all works like a charm

Broadcast TV has been a desert of completely contrived "reality" shows, game shows whose questions wouldn't challenge a five year old, and boring procedural detective shows. As a result, my screen has been blank for quite a while.

Sure it was going to happen eventually, and it went fairly smoothly, but is it really the place of government to get involved in what format tv stations use? What's the limit on their meddling - will they force studios to stop manufacturing DVDs and force the switch to blu-ray? I wasn't affected at all, but the point is that this should have been left to the market, as there's no public good in the government interfering.

South Korea here, And there's not only still free tv signals being pumped up the ying, but also (practically) every car has a tv/gps rockin it out on the dash.

Resistance is futile

Switching to digital probably created one of the biggest wastes in human history.

1. People bought a converter box made of plastic
2. people threw away their old tv.

All this e-garbage for a few more lines of video resolution, and so the government can profit off the unused bandwidth.

Should have been consumer choice. FCC is not serving anyone's interest.

I get one local channel, ABC 9, using my digital converter box and a 7 year old RCA TV and RCA UHF indoor antenna.

As of today, June 15, 2009 I still get two other analog channels on the TV without the box. Fox 30 & NBC 53 ( I do not get these two channels with the box )

What a FUBAR!

The Federal government had over 13 years and spent billions on this conversion and it was a royal mess! I have scanning the news reports and they all speak of a massively foul up if you read between the lines.

For crying out loud, people have 3 year old TVs that don't work!

I needed a converter box, a new antenna, and new cables for the switch. As one woman said, "It's the government stimulus program for the cable TV companies."

If the Y2K conversion had been done the same way, Western civilization would have collapsed. And people want the government to take over health care? Give me a break.

You tax dollars at work.

The government knew what it was doing., but didn't start this. Digital TV was thought of by private corporations over thirty years ago (one was Zenith who gave us stereo FM). They took time to plan the conversion , and every corporate business involved with televison got into that plan, and made money. The Feds gave out two "coupons" (red plastic credit cards) at $40 each to cover the private citizen's costs. I paid ony $10 for my boxes (and I also have a LCD TV), because I have other analog TVs. Yet no corporate business would give me $500 to help me pay for my $600 LCD TV.

So, who is the bad guy now? Corporate greed! And not everyone need a digital TV or watch TV on their computer screens. I don't, and I have over 37 years in the computer business.

I am hooked to cable with a house full of analog tv's and no converters.
The thing I hate is the drop outs that occour that are happening between the tv channel and the cable company so the effect is a stuttering/freezing signal that we never had before with analog signals. The tuner in the PC with over the air has less macroblocking/dropouts, don't ya just love this new technology.

If your screen went blank, you either don't watch enough tv to worry about it, or you're an Obama voter that is still waiting for the Messiah to come over and do it for you.

XD

A question concerning battery TV you take camping? I am assuming they will no long work and that we have to purchase new ones? I hate to dig my old one out to check this, at least the radio flashlight part will still work I hope, unless they screw that up to.

Analog reception was perfect for me, with 58 channels. Now I get 65 channels, lost a few gained a few, from antenna, but signal glitches and catches now when wind blows at all. I don't think this was an improvement.

@mcleve - yeah, that battery operated TV you bought to take camping is now a brick. I'm in the same boat - I bought one a couple of years ago, not thinking about the digital conversion (and of course, the guy at Radio Shack wasn't about to say anything.)

The government and the electronics industry tried to spin the digital TV conversion like it was something the public desperately wanted and had been clamoring for, which is the furthest thing from the truth.

Most people didn't understand it and/or didn't care. That's why there were at least three different deadlines for the switch - we were originally supposed to switch over years ago. But digital TV got a lukewarm reception from consumers, at best.

Most people were satisfied with the picture quality they already had and didn't see the need to spend money to replace something that was already working.

It also didn't help that when digital LCD HDTVs came out, and consumers hooked them up to digital sources like DVD players - the picture quality was CRAP!

That's when people began to realize that the investment didn't stop at buying a new digital TV. If they wanted DVDs to be watchable on that TV, they were going to have to spend even more money to buy a BluRay player and BluRay disks!

I've hung on to my analog tube TV because whenever I go to friends/family houses and watch their LCD or Plasma TVs, I am amazed (appalled) at how bad the picture quality is, even from digital cable. If the source isn't HD, it usually looks like crap.

I live in the country. The digital switch-over showed that stations haven't invested in their repeater antennas and don't care about rural viewers. Stations disappear when there's cloud cover, or just the hint of it near the broadcasting station. Pictures freeze or flutter, sound is worth nil due to the oddities of signal gain and loss.

Anyone who blames the government should have been howling mad years ago. We let this happen; we allowed ourselves to give up something that worked so that a few folks could get rich.

Either we man up and start voting with our dollars and our politicians or we just roll over and take this loss of communication and information. Until we wrestle control from people who are only looking at one small portion of the US, we country-folk will be left behind in a digital, technological desert.

This technology change could have eliminated my 85 year old access to broadcast TV had I not spent $75 and several hours installing an HDTV antenna, coax, converter box, and new power outlet.

Mom lives in Manhattan and could receive all the analog TV stations with her TV's retractable whip antenna. According to the online reviews I bought one of the better DTV converter boxes. Connected to a rabbit ear antenna on top of her TV she could not receive reliable digital reception of any local station. Only by moving the rabbit ear antenna directly in front of a window could she receive some stations correctly.

Based on reviews I purchased the Winegard SS-3000 antenna. Only by building a small shelf on her window could this $50 antenna receive the digital version of all the analog signals she used to receive.

Channel 13, the PBS stations, had unreliable reception, subject to pixelization. Apparently their digital transmitter was going to be run at lower power until they turned off their analog transmitter.

The complexity of switching back and forth between analog passthru and digital was too much for my Mom to deal with. Now that the DTV conversion has occurred I think she gets channel 13 alright.

Many of my Mom's senior friends simple have no working TV anymore, because even if they purchased DTV converters using the government coupons, there is nobody to help them configure the boxes or determine what sort of antennas they might need to receive a digital signal.

After the DTV switch over I spent about an hour on the phone talking my Mom through the procedure of re-scanning the channels on her converter. Then I had to reconfigure her computer's tvguide.com profile to switch from analog to digital channel numbers.

Fifteen years ago you could go into a discount store and buy a TV for under $100. In contrast to most electronic and computer things costing less, I can't find a TV with a built-in ATSC tuner for less than $300. So I would say the DTV conversion has excluded many low income and technologically challenged people from receiving broadcast television, despite the $40 government coupon.

I live way out in the country. We got dozens of good local channels before.

When the new digital came along, we bought a new tv for the living room and a converter for the bedroom. We received many more (and in some cases, really cool) stations.

Then Spring weather came and we realized what the government did to us.

Any wind, any cloud cover, and particularly any storm and we lose almost all of the digital stations. And the ones we have left are too digitalized to see and we lose sound constantly. Okay, so we watch a DVD that night right?

NO. Because we live at the bottom of some foothills we are very prone to tornadoes and bad storms. And depending on the particular front, they can come from anywhere (over the mountains, both sides). We have lived here 15 years and I can read the radar for my house better than the meteorologist and I know if it will hit us badly. I know the curvature of the hills around me and know what directions bad cells will take as they come near. I can't see that radar moving on the radio, and now I can't see it on the tv either.

So before, I could know there was bad weather, look it up on tv and know to run for shelter or not. Now I just know there is bad weather, and depending on whether I want to spend 4 or 5 hours in the closet, I don't know if it will hit us - so I am a lot more likely to get killed.

I know there are those saying "look it up on your computer". That isn't an option here. The only computer/internet is phone line (bad anytime) or satellite (useless during bad storms).

So the government spent billions to tell me when a storm is coming and show me the wonderful radar and satellite system - and I can't see it when it is most needed, during a bad storm. How many more people will die when our systems get better?

Okay, those of you saying, "ZOMG MY 3 YEAR OLD TV DOESN'T WORK" need to pay more attention when you purchase things. Just because you purchased an LCD or Plasma television doesn't mean it has a digital tuner, especially if you bought an offbrand 3 years ago.

Also @Michelynn

Yes lets continue to use primative technology so that people who live in the middle of nowhere (probably like 3% of the population who even own a damn TV) can continue to watch their Golden Girls reruns.