[BC] HDRadio

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 08/05/2006 11:22:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
kwinrich at gmail.com writes:

> No, not at all.  Give me life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and
>  guarranteed TV?  Sorry I dont see where I must pay for people to get their
>  TV.

Well, we don't get very much say in how Uncle Sam spends our taxes, so that's 
life. "Remember in November" and vote accordingly.

>  Why people are still buying the standard TVs is beyond me.

You've answered this question yourself, below...

>  Yes there are a
>  lot of people that are not informed about this situation yet.  It might be
>  in the best interest of the broadcasters to start getting this information
>  out to consumers.

Remember- we, in this Forum, are all *vastly* more techically astute and 
aware than are John & Jane Q. Public. You'd be absolutely *amazed* at just how 
stupid "Larry Lunchbox" and "Aunt Bee" can be! In the (thankfully) rare instances 
when WFIF goes off the air unexpectedly, we usually get calls asking if 
something is wrong with their radios! When we had to operate ND at reduced power 
for tower replacement, (twice in my tenure) invariably, people who were getting 
a much weaker than normal signal called asking us what happened to their 
radios. We love our listeners, but sometimes some of them can come across as being 
rather unintelligent. (Especially in anything slightly technical.) This is 
typical everywhere, of course, not just here.

>  I can see where the Best Buys of the world will still be selling analog TVs
>  925 days from now.  And people will buy them because they will be so cheap.

BINGO! It all boils down to that very lowest common denominator: the 
Greenback! This is why I strongly suspect IBUZ to be a dismal failure if they can't 
come up with pocket portables in the $20 range. With an *obscene* $40/set 
"license fee", that will obviously *never* happen. That factor, alone, could doom 
the whole thing to failure.

>  But then again, if you have cable or sat TV, it will not really matter.

True... for a time. Eventually, they're going to want to dump the NTSC and 
start sending the all-digital format. Without converter boxes, the old sets 
won't work anymore, except on DVD,VCR, and console video games. So, when you think 
about it, NTSC TV sets will still have *some* value for displaying the output 
of those devices. There are a LOT of people out there who have extensive NTSC 
DVD libraries, and will still want to watch them.

Until the prices of HD TV sets get a lot lower, we're perfectly happy with 
our NTSC set. (Admittedly, the prices are *almost* reasonable, now, but still 
not justified, in our opinion.)

Willie...