Q: Two questions: I received a postcard from Comcast saying I’d need a converter box if I wanted to keep watching certain channels. I thought the digital conversion didn’t affect me. And what happened to gallon and half-gallon ice cream?— Mary Ann Lueckel, Denver
A: Many people contacted me about the Comcast postcard, all of them as confused as you and for good reason.
The June 12 conversion to all-digital television broadcasts affected only those viewers who relied on an antenna to receive over-the-air signals.
If their television set was the old analog type — nearly all newer sets have built-in digital tuners — they would need a digital converter box, which changes the incoming digital signal to an analog one that the TV can display.
Satellite and cable customers are unaffected by the switch.
However, Comcast opted to move two basic-tier channels — TruTV and ION — to their digital package. Informing their customers, Comcast used the verbiage it has always used for the set-top boxes: digital converter.
The box Comcast refers to is not the same as you’d buy at the store for the DTV switch but one Comcast provides for free. Why move the channels? It’s more to do with their transmission source — digital — than Comcast’s decision. Plus you get extra stuff such as on-screen guides.
Ice cream. It’s been a few years, but the big names of the yummy stuff, in response to increasing costs of packaging, milk and other ingredients, chose to make the packages smaller — half gallons are now 1.5 quarts — and keep the price the same rather than raise prices for the same size.
Basically, it’s the same in the end, though prices have indeed crept up ever since. It’s been calculated that a 25 percent decrease in size is actually a 33 percent price-per-ounce increase.
Some makers still offer the old gallon sizes, but typically they are off-brand varieties, which many say are just as tasty.
