Here in Maryland were starting to get commercials about Digital TV *finally*. The commercials talk about the shutdown and recommend going to dtvfacts.com for more info.

I was wondering if you guys were getting these commercials as well?

I went to the website and a few things are going on.. Like for example, Best But won’t allow the use of the $40 coupons until April of 2008, 3 month after they’ve been issued. And the coupons only last up to 90 days from the date you order them…

Here in Maryland were starting to get commercials about Digital TV *finally*. The commercials talk about the shutdown and recommend going to dtvfacts.com for more info.

I was wondering if you guys were getting these commercials as well?

I went to the website and a few things are going on.. Like for example, Best But won’t allow the use of the coupons until April of 2008, 3 month after they’ve been issued. And the coupons only last up to 90 days from the date you order them…

So far, not yet in Pittsburgh. As to Best Buy, I'm not a big fan of them, maybe because they seem to cater to a younger crowd, I'm 41 myself, but if Best Buy doesn't honor them, I would go somewhere else. Circuit City always treated me OK. I still hate to see analogue TV go, but barring something big happening, it looks to be done deal. I plan on getting three, one for the 1982 Zenith, one for my 1984 Commodore Monitor (I'm using a dead VCR as a tuner) and my 1964 Sony B&W (or 1970 Zenith when I get her running). I know each househ as coupons for two boxes but I'll see if I could buy #3 on my own.

Time Warner, the local cable company, has started airing commercials about the conversion here in Texas.

We've been getting commercials for Discovery HD on the Discovery channel for a while. They were even running a couple of competitions to win a HD LCD set.

I find these commercials strange because the cable network doesn't carry anything in HD. Judging by the banding and pixelation on present on many channels as it is they barely have enough bandwidth for SD, so I doubt we'll be getting HD anytime soon.

Honestly I'd rather they didn't start playing around with HD and instead improved the quality of the existing SD service.

my dad's got Charter digital cable with HD, only like 10 HD channels thow, but they are realy high quality HD, not pixelized at all which i was worried about after reading some horror stories on here about cable companies getting greedy and overcompressing stuff.

Satellite services and broadcasters do plenty of bit-starving, so it is good to hear that your cable company does not do that.

The digital TV commercials are airing here in Virginia. I plan to buy four of the small DTV converters when they become available. Two of them will be for 5" portable sets that we have in daily service. It would be nice to have a "floater" to connect to my vintage TVs that are not in regular use.

I still hate to see analogue TV go, but barring something big happening, it looks to be done deal.

I can imageine someone putting up a few pirate analog TV stations in places like Newark NJ, just like the pirate FM radio stations that keep popping up like weeds around this area. :nono:

I can imageine someone putting up a few pirate analog TV stations in places like Newark NJ, just like the pirate FM radio stations that keep popping up like weeds around this area. :nono:


Hmmm, it could be quite possible either as a way to broadcast one's message or just asa protest against the forced conversion to HDTV. In fact, if I wasn't a ham radio operator, things like this would really be a no-no for me :nono: because I should "know better" than the average yokel, but it would be a cool idea to keep analogue alive. I think HDTV and the analogue shutoff is a done deal unless we hit the skids economically into a depression (one of my concerns politically, another time and place) or if we write someone like Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson on how it will affect the poor. I've had the idea of writing a letter to both and "dropping the dime on this" and see how far it would go. :scratch2:

I think HDTV and the analogue shutoff is a done deal unless we hit the skids economically into a depression (one of my concerns politically, another time and place) or if we write someone like Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson on how it will affect the poor. I've had the idea of writing a letter to both and "dropping the dime on this" and see how far it would go. :scratch2:I have to agree with you, analog is going to shutdown no matter what, but protesting about it is just a waste of time. There are already commercials about the shutdown, so the FCC is sticking with their plans, I'm just curious who's going to benefit from the extra bandwidth.

I hate to see analog go, but with every TV show switching to widescreen format, I would like to have full control over the overscan. I just hate those damm black bars on the top & bottom of the screen, I'm losing like 2 inches of space, and with a digital tuner I’ll have full control over that.

I think these analog shutdown commercials are not advertised well. I don’t know if you guys are getting the same commercial as I am.

In Maryland, they start off the commercial by talking about the benefits of digital TV, but when they get to the part where they ask “is your TV ready for digital?”, they show an early 70s Zenith as an example.. I know most of us on this forum (including myself) have these sets, but most people don’t use these sets anymore. That sends the message that you only have to worry if you have a manual control TV, that’s miss leading, even my mother fell for that.

This is what the TV looked like in the commercial.
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=50693&d=1180889417