I've said before to most people I see using the old rabbit ears on the televisions that at some point the FCC is going to be stopping the broadcast of analog signals. What this means is that those people using older tvs that aren't using Cable or Satellite are soon just going to be seeing snow on their TVs.
Now, the date was originally December 31, 2006 - which is what I had been telling people for a while - but this date was updated this February to now February 17th, 2009.
Source: http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html#whatisdate
"Congress passed a law on February 1, 2006, setting a final deadline for the DTV transition of February 17, 2009. Most television stations will continue broadcasting both analog and digital programming until February 17, 2009, when all analog broadcasting will stop. Analog TVs receiving over-the-air programming will still work after that date, but owners of these TVs will need to buy converter boxes to change digital broadcasts into analog format. Converter boxes will be available from consumer electronic products retailers at that time. Cable and satellite subscribers with analog TVs should contact their service providers about obtaining converter boxes for the DTV transition."
I really don't think if you have cable or satellite anything is going to have change since they can convert this in their equipment before it gets to our houses.
I'm hoping we'll have a new tv before then so we don't have to worry about it. The only question is - how does this affect my htpc since I have 2 tuner cards that accept cable input?
Anyhow, everyone just keep this in mind if you are getting analog broadcasts.
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2 comments:
Don't be surprised if that date gets bumped again. There's a lot of people watching broadcast/analog TV that aren't going to want to buy a converter box, and I seriously doubt the originally proposed program to subsidize those boxes is going to have the money to do so in two years.
Your two cards will have to be scrapped.
I'm not meaning to be negative but you need a cable card in order to be able to watch pay channels on your HTPC and there is only one card out there right now (the ATI OCUR) which isn't even available to the public (and for what I understand, is M$'s intent to keep that way).
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