I've been reading about the digital conversion on the fcc's website and a few other places online. Based on what I've read, here are some assumptions I've got so far. Please help clarify if some of these assumptions are false and/or what direction I should be going ...
1. The analogue channels go dark in February 2009
2. The Federal Government will have a voucher program for you to receive (2) roughly $40.00 vouchers per household for tuners starting in January 2008.
3. It's not been defined yet whether you can use the vouchers together for purchases (i.e. for (1) 80.00 purchase or if it has to be (2) 40.00 purchases)
4. IBM will actually be delivering the vouchers since they won the federal contract.
5. The Government actually didn't allocate enough money to cover everyone in the entire country, so they are hoping that the folks on cable and with dishnetwork or directv, etc. won't go for the vouchers - which is probably a major mistake since people will want free stuff, and won't necessarily want to be on pay tv forever.
6. The voucher program will likely be on a first come first served basis starting in January 2008.... which could make buying tricky since the downconverters that will convert hd/sd to analogue won't actually start being sold til 2008 so folks buying in the first quarter 2008 may get hosed since they are buying new technology that will be more stable and bug free later in the year, but by buying early they are getting a better chance to actually get the vouchers... which are rumored to only be good for 3 months... so you couldn't get a voucher in January and wait til Black Friday to use it, etc.
7. The voucher program will primarily be aimed at getting digital to analogue converters that will automatically downconvert hd and digital signals to analogue so that they can be viewed on normal analogue tvs that folks already have... (but could be used for other stuff too like a new digital tv with built in tuners)
8. The downconverter tuners mentioned in number 7 don't actually exist yet but will start being sold in 2008 by companies like Sony - these converters will negate some reasons to get expensive hd tv sets, etc. since the converters will let normal analogue tvs see hd programming.. albiet with fewer pixels but the full screen will be viewable on a normal analogue tv, which is NOT the case if you get a normal digital tv that just can recieve sd, but not hd... so in theory you just need either
a. a downconverter+analogue tv to get sd and hd local digital channels
or
b. a hdtv to get both hd and sd local digital channels
9. most local channels will go to sd, and stay that way, but there's a chance down the road that they will eventually go hd.
1. The analogue channels go dark in February 2009
2. The Federal Government will have a voucher program for you to receive (2) roughly $40.00 vouchers per household for tuners starting in January 2008.
3. It's not been defined yet whether you can use the vouchers together for purchases (i.e. for (1) 80.00 purchase or if it has to be (2) 40.00 purchases)
4. IBM will actually be delivering the vouchers since they won the federal contract.
5. The Government actually didn't allocate enough money to cover everyone in the entire country, so they are hoping that the folks on cable and with dishnetwork or directv, etc. won't go for the vouchers - which is probably a major mistake since people will want free stuff, and won't necessarily want to be on pay tv forever.
6. The voucher program will likely be on a first come first served basis starting in January 2008.... which could make buying tricky since the downconverters that will convert hd/sd to analogue won't actually start being sold til 2008 so folks buying in the first quarter 2008 may get hosed since they are buying new technology that will be more stable and bug free later in the year, but by buying early they are getting a better chance to actually get the vouchers... which are rumored to only be good for 3 months... so you couldn't get a voucher in January and wait til Black Friday to use it, etc.
7. The voucher program will primarily be aimed at getting digital to analogue converters that will automatically downconvert hd and digital signals to analogue so that they can be viewed on normal analogue tvs that folks already have... (but could be used for other stuff too like a new digital tv with built in tuners)
8. The downconverter tuners mentioned in number 7 don't actually exist yet but will start being sold in 2008 by companies like Sony - these converters will negate some reasons to get expensive hd tv sets, etc. since the converters will let normal analogue tvs see hd programming.. albiet with fewer pixels but the full screen will be viewable on a normal analogue tv, which is NOT the case if you get a normal digital tv that just can recieve sd, but not hd... so in theory you just need either
a. a downconverter+analogue tv to get sd and hd local digital channels
or
b. a hdtv to get both hd and sd local digital channels
9. most local channels will go to sd, and stay that way, but there's a chance down the road that they will eventually go hd.
:
