[BC] Subsidy For Digital TV?

[Scott Fybush]

At 12:13 PM 10/21/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>By the way... Has anyone seen a DTV tuner advertised? It'd be interesting
>to plug it into my TV and see what happens. I see LOTS of televisions
>advertised as being high definition, but no DTV tuners...
>
>Harold

Head to radioshack.com and plug in item # 16-3499. That's their "Accurian" 
brand DTV set-top box, which was on clearance, last I checked, at $89 - if 
you can still find one.

I picked one up at that price and have had quite a bit of fun playing with 
it. Outputs almost any format you can think of - everything from composite 
NTSC to component RGB to full HDMI, if you have a monitor, which I don't. 
The tuner's not bad, either. I have no trouble seeing Buffalo (70 miles) or 
Syracuse (80 miles) with a rooftop antenna here in Rochester.

The set-top box will turn out to be a brief technological blip, rather akin 
to the old underdash FM converters for cars, if the electronics industry 
lives up to its promises to begin integrating DTV tuners into most new sets 
Real Soon Now...

s