Originally posted by: PSYCHO_DAYV
THERE WAS AN ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY STATING THAT THOSE WHO CAN'T AFFORD TO UPGRADE THERE TVs TO HD WILL BE GIVEN A CONVERTER BOX FOR FREE. IT'S LIKE WELFARE FOR TV.

That's not what it said and you know it. What it said is that you'll get a $40 voucher toward the purchase of a digital tuner. While I agree that it's lame to subsidize the conversion the way they are, please don't twist the message to suit your needs. Anyone who decides to stop watching ota broadcasts at that point just won't buy a box and won't need the voucher. It also doesn't affect anyone that's already got cable or DirectTV/Dish Network, since that's all digital now anyway, whether their TVs are or not.

I'm with zombie on this. The transition isn't going to do anything but piss a lot of people off. A lot of people will think they need to get an HD television in order to get the new signal and I'm sure many stores will not have a problem selling it like that. Only afterwards, when they talk to someone that really knows, will they get the whole story. Then they'll be pissed that they spent so much money on a TV when they really didn't need to.

Then, on the other side, you'll have people that already watch very little TV, so unless the commercials start running 24/7, they won't notice them and will get pissed when they're looking at snow on the cutoff day. I watch a lot of TV and I've only seen the ad once. If they're really trying to inform people, that ad needs to be running constantly.

The government should've kept their nose out of the transition. The marketplace will decide. The marketplace was already deciding. Let the analog broadcasts slowly fade away until there's nothing left broadcasting. But no, they had to force a transition to reclaim the spectrum.