Digital Television Transition

For some time now, we've all seen the commercials about the transition to digital TV on February 17, 2009.

Many of the commercials state that if you don't buy a converter or have cable or satellite, your television will stop working. They even show pictures of television sets used as planters and recylce bins.

In one respect their statement is true. Your television will not work in the sense that it will have no signal to receive. However, it does still work.

Don't let anyone make you believe that you have to rush out and buy a new television before February 2009. If you have cable or satellite, you are good to go and won't have any interuption in your entertainment. If you use an external antenna or "rabbit ears", then you will need to get one of the digital converter boxes. You can get a coupon for here (2 per household).

I personally use an over-the-air antenna to receive my local channels. I will warn you that you will likely receive a better signal if you have an external antenna on top of your house. It really depends on the area where you live.

I live in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm about 30 miles from the transmission towers and I have buildings and hills between us. Not to mention, I live on a high-traffic road with alot of trucks and other vehicles that cause signal disruption. I have an HD reciever attached to my HD TV set.

Using an amplified indoor antenna, I can only receive a few of the channels (Fox, NBC, CBS, PBS) somewhat clearly, but there is still interference and constant signal drop. I cannot receive ABC, CW or any of the other local channels currently broadcasting in HD. Their signals are not strong enough for me to receive under the current conditions.

When I lived in Austin, I did not have this problem. I was only about 10 miles from the transmission towers and picked up all of the station without any signal loss using the indoor antenna.

"Why don't you switch to cable or satellite?" I hear you say.

Well, there are a couple of reasons:

Cable: The cost of cable is outrageous for the service you recieve. They charge you an arm and a leg for anything above basic. Then there are all the fees that are tacked on. By the time they are done, you are paying 80$ or more for very little. Add to that, when they say they have HD available, they are not exactly being truthful. Yes, they are transmitting an HD signal, but it is compressed quite a bit because they have limited bandwidth in which to transmit it.

Satellite: Satellite is slightly better price-wise. They don't have all of the extra fees that cable does. The only problem is that they want (in most cases) to charge you extra for HD service. While that may have been fine when HD was just coming out, it's ridiculous now that most all stations are available in HD anyway. And, like with cable the HD signal is actually compressed for broadcast. It's not compressed as much as cable, so the quality is considerably better.

Of course, as it stands now, the only true HD you can receive is over-the-air. The signal is not compressed and the audio and video are truly outstanding. Colors are extremely vivid. On some sets I've seen, it looks as if you are looking through a window at what is happening.

The only drawback is that most over-the-air broadcasters aren't fully utilizing HD. Now they have the ability to broadcast sub-channels to their regualr programming. Some use their sub-channels to air a 24hr weather radar (boring!). Some actually use it to broadcast educational / children's programming or additional network programming. One of the local networks uses on of their sub-channels to broadcast music videos. The choices are endless.

Unfortunately, it is, as I said under-utilized.

As for your TV, you will get a really good picture with a digital converter box if you don't have cable or satellite. If you want to get a better picture, you can upgrade to an HD TV set. But, the choice is yours. Don't let anyone fool you into buying a new TV you don't need or subscribing to cable or satellite unless you want to.

My rule of thumb is to wait. Usually within a year or two of new technolgy being released, they find a way to improve it and offer it at a lower price. Look at DVD and BluRay. That's one I'll be waiting on for a while too.

If you're interested in getting satellite for your HD experience click on the banner below.

Republican Hypocrites

Listening to the news last night, I heard that several Republican senators were planning on killing the bailout to the automotive industry unless the union (United Auto Workers) agreed to cuts in their salaries and benefits.

The question that should be asked by everyone is this: Why should the auto workers have to accept cuts in their salaries when the people on Wall Street were not required to as well?

Wall Street and most of our largest financial institutions are to blame for the meltdown in our economy. Yet few have called for any of the people involved to be fired, let alone receive any kind of reduction in their earnings.

Once again, this is a prime example of Republicans (and some Democrats) wanting to punish the people who work the hardest and produce products in this country and reward those who sit on their lazy asses all day and rake in more and more money.

Where's My Bailout?

For weeks now, we've all been hearing on the news about the big economic bailout for Wall Street, AIG, American Express, CitiGroup and now GM and Chrysler. Am I the only one who sees this as incredibly stupid?

The bailout for Wall Street was 750 billion dollars. So far, it has been reported that only a fraction of that has been released to the banks (supposedly to get them to start issuing credit again) and the rest is still being held back because they suddenly don't know what to do with it.

Originally, as it was discussed, the Fed was going to be buying up all the bad mortgage debt and free up the banks to begin issuing credit again. Has this happened? Not the way it was expected.

Latest reports show little credit being issued to companies in need. In fact, there have been reports that many of the financial institutions that have already received money have used it to pay executive bonuses and dividends to stockholders.

Personally, I feel that there needs to be a complete revolution against this crap. CEOs and other executives of these failing businesses should not be receiving multi-million dollar salaries, bonuses or golden-parachutes. They should be treated as anyone else who does not perform adequately in their jobs. They should be fired without severance. Or if kept on, their salaries should be reduced to less than $100, 000/yr.

Think about it. If the average person didn't do his job and the company lost huge amounts of money or had to file for bankruptcy, would that person be allowed to continue working, get raises and bonuses and be given a multi-million dollar severance package when they decided to leave? I think not.

Where is the outrage from the public? The shareholders? Why aren't we holding these people accountable and demanding they pay back the money? What did they do to earn it? What do they actually do and is it worth what they are paid?

Instead of paying these people so much, the salaries should be capped below what the President of the United States earns per year. The money saved could go to pay employee benefits, expand the business, etc.

I think the money should be divded equally and given out to the public. Think about this. The money would:

Pay off mortgages and credit card debt - The financial institutions would still get their money, just not directly from the government. Plus, it would help consumers get back on their feet at the same time.

Buy new vehicles - People could by newer, more fuel-efficient or hybrid cars.

Purchase goods and services - People would go out shopping for items they need (or want) or go out to eat or whatever. This could increase the number of jobs and maybe expand businesses.

Open new small businesses - How many of you would rather invest in starting your own business and be your own boss instead of being stuck in a hum-drum job that you could lose when the economy tanks?

Invest - Some people would invest their money in stock or bonds for the future.

Or countless other things could be done. The above are just some examples.

As President-Elect Obama has stated, we need to build the economy from the bottom up. Giving the money to the taxpayers insted of the financial institutions and car makers would be a start.

After all, if the banks and car makers and insurance companies and credit card companies hadn't conducted business as they did, they would not be in their current situation. Not that they are totally to blame (the consumers have to take some of the blame too), but these businesses ran themseleves down.

The banks lent money to people who could not afford it to buy homes they could not afford.

Credit card companies gave credit to people they knew could not afford it and then tacked on late fees and outrageous intrest rates when they could not pay.

Car manufacturers have continued to build and push vehicles off on the public that are expensive and mot overly fuel efficient. They've known for years that better improvements needed to be made to the technology and we needed to migrate from oil and gas to cleaner fuels.

And, we also have our government to blame for this as well. They could see for all these years where we were headed and could have legislated better laws to protect all of us from what happened.

Constant deregulation of the banking and oil industries have brought us to the edge of this cliff.

Congress could have mandated tighter controls over banking and investments. They could have mandated higher fuel efficiency for the last 30 years. And they are to blame for two pieces of legislation in the last few years that have made it almost impossible for people to declare bankrupcy and allowing the credit card companies to double the minimum payment due (to help the consumer pay of their debt faster - yeah, right).

As I said more needs to be done and it needs to start with us. Unless we put pressure on our legislators and the businesses affected, it will likely continue to be business as usual.

If they fail, so be it. Maybe others will learn from their mistakes and run their businesses correctly.