Friday, February 11, 2011

Who's Making Money

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Time Supper Club, Halloween 2009 by Jazmin Million


bench craft company

An octet of science <b>news</b>

Perfect Perfume - a video for Valentine's Day - A bit of fun for Valentine's Day as the team combinesto ...

Facebook Changes <b>News</b> Feed Settings, Some Users Only Shown Close <b>...</b>

Facebook recently changed the options in its news feed settings so users either “Show posts from: friends and Pages you interact with the most” or from “all of your friends and Pages.” Some users have unknowingly been defaulted to the ...

Beth Knobel: Why CBS <b>News</b>, and Everyone Else, Needs to Remember <b>...</b>

The future of journalism is bleak: too many journalists are satisfied parroting wire service copy instead of doing original reporting. The problem lies in the two vicious cycles this trend creates.


bench craft company

Time Supper Club, Halloween 2009 by Jazmin Million


bench craft company

An octet of science <b>news</b>

Perfect Perfume - a video for Valentine's Day - A bit of fun for Valentine's Day as the team combinesto ...

Facebook Changes <b>News</b> Feed Settings, Some Users Only Shown Close <b>...</b>

Facebook recently changed the options in its news feed settings so users either “Show posts from: friends and Pages you interact with the most” or from “all of your friends and Pages.” Some users have unknowingly been defaulted to the ...

Beth Knobel: Why CBS <b>News</b>, and Everyone Else, Needs to Remember <b>...</b>

The future of journalism is bleak: too many journalists are satisfied parroting wire service copy instead of doing original reporting. The problem lies in the two vicious cycles this trend creates.


bench craft company

An octet of science <b>news</b>

Perfect Perfume - a video for Valentine's Day - A bit of fun for Valentine's Day as the team combinesto ...

Facebook Changes <b>News</b> Feed Settings, Some Users Only Shown Close <b>...</b>

Facebook recently changed the options in its news feed settings so users either “Show posts from: friends and Pages you interact with the most” or from “all of your friends and Pages.” Some users have unknowingly been defaulted to the ...

Beth Knobel: Why CBS <b>News</b>, and Everyone Else, Needs to Remember <b>...</b>

The future of journalism is bleak: too many journalists are satisfied parroting wire service copy instead of doing original reporting. The problem lies in the two vicious cycles this trend creates.


bench craft company

An octet of science <b>news</b>

Perfect Perfume - a video for Valentine's Day - A bit of fun for Valentine's Day as the team combinesto ...

Facebook Changes <b>News</b> Feed Settings, Some Users Only Shown Close <b>...</b>

Facebook recently changed the options in its news feed settings so users either “Show posts from: friends and Pages you interact with the most” or from “all of your friends and Pages.” Some users have unknowingly been defaulted to the ...

Beth Knobel: Why CBS <b>News</b>, and Everyone Else, Needs to Remember <b>...</b>

The future of journalism is bleak: too many journalists are satisfied parroting wire service copy instead of doing original reporting. The problem lies in the two vicious cycles this trend creates.


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bench craft company

Time Supper Club, Halloween 2009 by Jazmin Million


bench craft company
bench craft company

An octet of science <b>news</b>

Perfect Perfume - a video for Valentine's Day - A bit of fun for Valentine's Day as the team combinesto ...

Facebook Changes <b>News</b> Feed Settings, Some Users Only Shown Close <b>...</b>

Facebook recently changed the options in its news feed settings so users either “Show posts from: friends and Pages you interact with the most” or from “all of your friends and Pages.” Some users have unknowingly been defaulted to the ...

Beth Knobel: Why CBS <b>News</b>, and Everyone Else, Needs to Remember <b>...</b>

The future of journalism is bleak: too many journalists are satisfied parroting wire service copy instead of doing original reporting. The problem lies in the two vicious cycles this trend creates.


bench craft company

I'm sure that by now, almost everyone knows about the "DTV Transition" that takes effect February 17,2009. For those that don't, in simple terms, the Federal government has issued a mandate requiring all television broadcasts to switch from an analog transmission to a digital transmission. If you don't have cable, or satellite, or some other form of "pay" service, and you only have an antennae to receive your stations, like me, unless you have a digital tuner, you will no longer receive a signal on your TV. The government is helping by giving $40.00 coupons toward the purchase of Digital Converter Boxes for those in that situation. If you have cable or whatever, you don't have to worry, your service provider will take care of you're signal conversion. If you have concerns, you can go to http://www.dtv.gov to get answers, and find out how to get your $40.00 coupon. Digital television is a crystal clear picture, with incredible sound. They can even "piggy-back" multiple channels on one signal allowing for more variety of stations. Our local ABC affiliate sends out a FOX and CW channel on it's digital signal which we can't get on analog.

When my wife and I got our income taxes this year, we decided to buy ourselves a new television. We decided on an RCA 20F514TD from Walmart. It had good features at a good price. It has a built-in DVD player, analog and digital tuner, lots of inputs and outputs, all in all and very nice TV for the cost (just under $200.00).

The first day we hooked it up and went through the auto channel search, we were impressed. Also a bit upset. We bought the TV in mid February. We found that we could now watch the FOX network with the digital tuner. If you recall, FOX carried the Super Bowl this past season. We weren't able to watch it because there is no local FOX station that sends out an analog transmission where we live. If only we could have gotten this TV a couple of weeks earlier... My son was also pleased because we now got the CW network as well. He's a huge fan of Smallville. Before, he had to mess with the antennas for a half hour just to get a snowy picture he could barely see. Now he could watch it in crystal clear digital. We also found that out local PBS station has 3 different channels on digital. We were all very pleased with this new digital tuner. All the channels were co clear it looked like a cable transmission. I was impressed.

That was then...

Over the last six months or so, I've become very skeptical about the whole DVT transition. While the picture and sound are extremely good quality, I've found it to be very fickle. With analog, the signal may weaken and you get "ghosts", or some snow, with bad weather, but you can still watch it. Digital, however goes out completely. If it's raining, or windy, you lose the signal altogether. Just last night I was watching football through the digital tuner and because of the weather it kept cutting out on me. Have you ever tried to watch a football game and miss important plays because you lost the signal? I ended up putting it on analog just so I could watch the game. Here in East Mississippi, we are currently getting the outer bands of tropical storm Fay. A lot of wind and rain. Because of this, our digital signal is constantly cutting out. It's very annoying trying to watch a program and having it cut out every few seconds. As I said, it doesn't fade in and out like analog, it cuts out completely.

Here's my question; Who's making money off this DTV thing? Is there some special interest group who lobbied for this? Why is the government forcing digital transmissions? Why would they care how clear the picture is with just an antennae? Most people have cable or satellite, so it won't make a bit of difference to them. The only ones really effected will be the lower class who can't afford pay TV service. You can't tell me they care that much about how our television signal looks. There has to be more to it than that. Is it more cost effective? Maybe, but I have my doubts. After all, stations will have to upgrade their systems and that will cost them money. This may even put some stations out of business all together because they may not be able to afford the systems needed to put out a digital signal. And what about people who still tape certain shows? Most VCRs don't have digital tuners and you'll no longer be able to set your timer to tape a specific program at a specific time. You could still tape your show if you have a converter box, but now you'll have to make sure you VCR tapes from the appropriate channel (usually channel 3), but if the converter box is on the wrong channel you're screwed. And you won't be able to tape 2 different channels at all, unless you change the channel on the box before the second show starts. How is this better for the consumer? Is the "DTV Transition" really a good thing?

I'd like to hear your views on this. Please leave some feedback. Thanks.

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