[BC] Uselessness of HD

[Scott Bailey]

I am going to jump in and submerge from slence this one time.

Why are all of you complaining about "Over The Air TV". Where I live, it's dead. We can all thank the Federal Government and Congress for pushing HDTV down the consumers throats. We all knew this was going to happen, and the big day came and my elderly people were confused.

I had an elderly lady call me at night, and she asked me how come she could get any of the TV Stations in the market anymore over the air. I was polite, understanding, I tried to explain to her what had happen. She said she had hired a man to come up and put an new HD TV Antenna outside here house, and she bought the 2009 Converter Box that the Federal Goverment told here to buy. She lives in a rural area of our large county where at the time, there was no Cable TV System that came to her neck of the woods, and satellite was too expensive for her.

I called out State's Association of Broadcaster's office the the President of the Association told me he would look right into the situation, being I didn't know what to tell her.

Bottom line is, these TV Station's that were on VHF in our market were running 100,000 watts loved it when they turned off their analog transmitters that night. I am on Comcast, so I really didn't see anything change that night. All I saw was a dark screen, for a few seconds, then David Letterman can back on.

Just my opinion, for a consumer's point (not a broadcaster) is that the Feds really screwed us TV Viewers. When I am at home at night, I'm not thinking about my Daytime AM Radio Station, it's off as far as I am concerned, and I am a consumer then, and I want to watch TV. Many of you know I am probably on of the biggest CSI Miami Fans out there. I have had to accept what has been done.

I bought a HDTV a year ago, used the rabbit ears that the girl at Wal-Mart debated with me that it would work. I could only get on channel out of our market to stay on, and I think they had already upgraded thier TV Transmitting Plants to where you could receive a good signal. I have given up on OTA TV. The TV Stations love it because they can operate at lower power, Comcast/Xfinity can slap any price on thier packages, but they have the Satellite Companies like Direct and Dish to compete with. AMC Network is upset with Dish Network because Dish is dropped them from thier choices of networks to watch.

I think for us consumers, the days of OTA TV are gone. The LPTV stations should hang it up, unless they can get the cable comapny to carry them. I don't like the price I am having to pay for TV now, it's like I am being "Taxed" just to watch local TV Stations. You people that can afford it, stop whining, and pay the cable/satellite bill. For the elderly and poor, I thnk the feds should do something about this, but I don't want it to turn into a situation like we have to pay for thier TV Signal coming into thier homes through higher taxes and social security, unempoyment, etc.

Heck, this mess is so screwed up, I don't know what to think, but I am not whining when the cable bill is due each month. I have had Cable TV for about 30 years now, so I have, as a consumer, pay the bill, and go on. O.K., I will shut up now, and back to underground silence.