Digital TV Switch Delayed Until June [Confirmed]
Looks like the brilliant US government delayed the digital television switchover until June.
People in the computing field have known of talk of removing the analog television waves for at least four years. The official switchover was announced over two years ago. Coupons have been going out for a very long time. If you haven’t applied for one by now, you’re out of luck (well, in my opinion). Millions have been spent on advertising. I used to see those commercials at least once every 30 minutes no matter what channel I was watching. Everyone knows about this; even if they don’t understand what it is. I had tons of customers come into Sears asking for them (back when I worked at Sears); maybe only a handful actually understood what it was. The rest came in due to the commercials. The commercials work and those who actually pay attention to what is going on already have these boxes or understand the consequences of not having one.
More fundamentally, why should the government even spend millions of dollars on this? If the government saved that money and deducted it off of everyone’s taxes, that would be just fine. Why should we allocate millions of dollars to spend on coupons when its not the government’s job to provide for the people?
I’m distraught about this. Everyone in the computing industry is ready for the airwaves to be freed up so they can develop and deploy new technologies in the spectrum (namely, widespread internet access). Get it over with. Get it done. Remove analog television. Let’s move on.
Ammendment: Looks like the house killed the bill. A 2/3rds majority was not achieved. I’m sure that plans will be attemped in orde to pass the bill again. Slashdot article.
Second Ammendment: It passed. Slashdot article. A waste of money.
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