As we’re headed toward possible economic depression, we’re expected to convert our free analog television reception to digital only. The cost to for conversion initially appears to be only a slight nuisance and the picture quality is better.
However, I suspect that there may be a plot to separate us from our money at a time when some of us may not be able to afford a (possibly) expensive conversion.
Personally, I’m opposed to costly cable/satellite contracts as an alternative. Since I don’t need more channels to use up my precious personal time, why should I have to pay for something I’ve always gotten for free?
I’ve already acquired the government coupons, purchased digital converters, and tried to install the converters on my televisions. The television broadcasts explaining the ease of installing the converters to analog TVs never tell the whole story.
The biggest problem is setting up an antenna to receive the digital signals. First, I tried to use the rabbit ears and rooftop antennas that I’ve used for decades.
However, in order to achieve a good digital signal from each TV station, you have to view the signal strength meter of each channel processed through the converter box and then adjust the antenna.
Just when you get one channel right, you’ve screwed up another channel’s signal, and this goes on over and over again.
Why didn’t the manufacturers of digital converter boxes design their contraptions so that you could view the strength of all of the digital signals simultaneously?
I’ve spent hours tweaking the antennas to the point of exhaustion, and I’m convinced that I’m going to need the use of several televisions (with antennas facing in different directions) in order to receive all of the channels.
All I have to do is travel to a different room in my house each time I want to watch a show on a different channel.
I pity the fool who owns only one television! By the way, I’ve purchased, tried out, and eventually returned 6 different brand new antennas, including some expensive power amplified antennas, but there was little, if any, improvement in reception.
Now for the big surprise!
Since millions of TV viewers nationwide own video cassette recorders, I believe that many viewers are not aware that their VCR’s will not work exactly the same way when digital takes over.
The great majority of VCR’s in use today have analog tuners. Yes, you guessed it! If these analog VCR owners want to record one TV station while watching another, that’s not possible. The digital converter box only allows one station to be tuned in at a time.
To make matters worse, if you program the VCR to record several TV shows while you’re away from home, those different shows better be on the same channel, otherwise you’re out of luck.
Unless you own several TVs, each with a digital converter box tuned to a different station and a separate analog VCR set to channel 3 permanently, you’re going to miss some of your favorite shows.
“Well, isn’t that special!” In addition, if you’ve already purchased a new digital TV, an analog VCR will still not work with it in the way you had hoped for.
You must connect the antenna to the VCR first before you can connect it to the digital TV. After doing that, the analog VCR will receive no readable signal after June 12. In other words, without a digital converter box connected to them, those analog VCRs will be unusable.
You could go out and buy a brand new VCR with a digital tuner, and the problem would be solved. In fact, if you own a digital VCR, you don’t need a digital converter box for that TV. The digital VCR will perform that function. The only drawback to this scenario is that new digital VCR’s are expensive ($200+).
If you’ve already purchased digital converter boxes, you could now buy closeout/discounted analog VCR’s, priced from only $30 for each analog television you own.
After all that I’ve gone through, I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort if I would have just bought an expensive cable or satellite connection contract as most of my friends have done.
OK, I could purchase just basic cheap programming, which is pretty much what I’m supposed to get for free with digital conversion and my own antennas. Boy, isn’t new technology great!
Howard Rollin lives in Denver. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
