Free television = thing of the past?

I used to be able to go to the dump, find an old tv in the recycle area, bring it home and jam something into the back of it and be set.
I could have ten working tvs for the price of the electric bill if I wanted.
I could be a dirty drunk homeless guy living in the back of a warehouse, but I could be happy with a little tv and a cat or something.

Now I'm going to have to set up an account with the digital providers for any tv set I want to watch more than two channels on, and portable tvs are basically obsolete. Am I going to have to pay monthly/annual fees now too?

What's next?

Before the no television crowd gets excited, I understand your stance, and it's yours, not mine.

Are law enforcement agencies really having enough trouble communicating that they need to take our goods and our money, where people have been free to roam for longer than most people reading this have been alive?

I think by forcing you to become a subscriber,
you are forced to be entered in their system.
This keeps you on their grid, and what you are
viewing could possibly be traced via computers.
Possibly to see what content people are viewing.
Are they a threat or not?!

I would not be surprised if there was some electronic
coding on DVD's so that these new flat screen, LCD,
1080, hi-def, hypnotic tv's can record the code in your
TV. This could be stored in case an investigation
were put into action against an individual to show
they watched Anti-government movies, documentaries
or illegal porn etc.

Obviously a stretch, but I think the technology to something
like this is not that out of the realm of possible.

Television has not been free since the FCC took control of it...

It hasn't really been free since before these cable TV companies came along and started clogging up the markets...

What are you talking about?

All you need to do is get a digital to analog converter and you got all the free over the air tv you want. There is no subscription either.

Or simply buy a digital tv or find one behind some trash can in an ally. Tho you might have to wait on that one for a few years first.

Is that what this is all about? Because there wont be any more freebie junk tv's to find for awhile so you are all miffed by that?

Poohoo. Get on ebay and buy a converter box for 40 bucks and that will be the end of it.




Cheers!!!!

It litterally costs nothing to set your TV to digital. The goverment sends you $40 coupon cards (2 per household, so $80 total) to buy a converter. I dont' watch TV, but I still bought two of them just incase. Stores like Target sells them for real cheap (there was one that was $5 that worked perfectly fine).

If you use the $40 one on a $40 converter, you pay nothing.

To sign up for the coupon cards, go to www.dtv2009.gov


I bought 2 receivers for $40 each with the coupons and it cost me nothing but the gas to drive to the store.

TV hasn't been free for me for years - in my city, you can't get even local channels without paying for basic cable. I cancelled my cable some time ago. If I want to watch something, I watch a DVD.

TV has never been free in the UK. Courtesy of the BBC, all Brits with a TV have to have a TV licence, which funds BBC television, radio, internet sites etc.

The frustrating thing is that you cannot opt out of the BBC channels... meaning that you have to pay in excess of £100 per year to watch TV at all. Despite the fact that the BBC channels constitute a mere fraction of available channels. In essence, I have to pay the BBC to watch channels that I don't have to pay a license to watch

Originally posted by RFBurns

All you need to do is get a digital to analog converter and you got all the free over the air tv you want. There is no subscription either.

Or simply buy a digital tv or find one behind some trash can in an ally. Tho you might have to wait on that one for a few years first.


Poohoo. Get on ebay and buy a converter box for 40 bucks and that will be the end of it.

All I need to do is buy more stuff? Wow, a revelation! Yes I'm miffed about not getting any more freebies, that's the point of this thread.
This initiative is being imposed on us and we're the ones funding it.

I'm perfectly content with four channels that get fuzzy sometimes on my rabbit ears, I don't want to buy some add on that may or may not have a camera in it or a new tv, and I know plenty of people that plain can't.

reply to post by alaskan


Well let me give you some info from a degreed EE who happens to also be a 20 year television broadcast engineer.

Those converter boxes, and digital tv's dont have any camera inside them to monitor you. The only thing that is of any concern to anyone is being able to pick up their over the air tv come Feb 17th.

There is no plot to watch every single person who watches tv, quite simply because there is no ability for any converter box that is designed to receive, to be transmitting through rabbit ear antennas or roof top antennas. That would make the price of those converter boxes, if they were able to transmit and contain a camera, go from 40 bucks to well over 400.

The digital tv's are nothing more than a receiver, just like all those junk analog tv's you collected. Are you aware that its easier to use a CRT with a bit of modification to have it also act as a pick up tube than it is to have an LCD or Plasma display act as a pick up device???

Bet you didnt know that.

So in effect, you may have been watched for years and thought you were safe behind the world of linear circuitry.

There isnt any conspiracy friend. Its just an improvement to the television broadcast industry..thats all. And you can get your converter for free by simply applying for the coupon. And dont worry, applying for one is not signing up to some watch list. If you got a DL, or a SSN card, or even a birth certificate, your already on a "list"..



Cheers!!!!

reply to post by lizziejayne


And I thought it was bad here in the US. I was pretty hopeful that this wonderful new digital broadcasting was going to bring a few new "free" channels but not in my area. I refuse to pay $60 a month to Time Warner for basic cable with no movie channels. I pay $9 a month for local channels and the community broadcast stations, I get lucky and get cnn though very poorly.

I guess the phrase there is no free lunch can now be applied to television. One consolation, there usually is nothing on all those channels on the weekend anyways. lol

I never said I was on a list or that there was a conspiracy or any of that crap, I just said i don't want to be forced to buy something if I want to watch tv.

I'm sure you're probably a super inteligent person or whatever, but the first paragraph in the link I posted goes like...

At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who’s in your living room.

What part of that spells out the impossibility of cameras in digital recievers/tvs?

I remember when you paid for cable, you got all the channels. You paid for NO commercials. That has changed.

I was thinking about this myself. No free tv.
Where I live, no local channels. You can subcribe to cable, or dtv, or you can subscribe to some company here that will put an antenna on your house for regular channels cheap. None free though.

You may get 10 "watchable" channels now but after it goes digital you may get only 1 or 2. Unlike analog you have now digital is all or nothing. No fuzzy channels. You get a clear channel or nothing at all. If you do not get clear channels now you may very well find you will get nothing at all after the change over. It is going to be different for sure. As for portable TVs I have yet to see a portable D/A converter. I would hope someone is making one.

DC powered D/A converter box


This is a DC powered portable D/A converter. They even have a battery pack for it if needed. The thing is the TV needs a ANT jack. Do not know if a simple wire and gator clip will work on a portable TV.

[edit on 1/22/2009 by fixer1967]

[edit on 1/22/2009 by fixer1967]

I don't believe Radio waves will be free much longer either.
We will all have to pay to recieve any transmitted signals.

Thats already started with Satellite radio.

reply to post by RFBurns

There is no plot to watch every single person who watches tv, quite simply because there is no ability for any converter box that is designed to receive, to be transmitting through rabbit ear antennas or roof top antennas.

Although they may not be transmitting via the traditional rf technology, with your Electronics Engineering background do you not think that it's possible that a chip, a computer microchip, could be broadcasting some type of data from the box via a reverse link on the cable? Much like your cable modem uses...

There has even been talk of using advertising dependent on the number of people in the room, using a small camera linked to the advertiser.
Here's
one..

They can now listen in on peoples cell phones when they are off and without the person opening the cell phone.

Technology is way ahead of its time and you only hear of a small portion of it. you can't think that the average EE is going to know what is on-board those "mostly proprietary" chips that are in those TVs, modems, HDTV converters, Digital converters etc...

Even if they could find out exactly what was programmed on the chips, I'm sure its possible to program the chips while receiving data via the internet. They are programmed remotely from the cable company using IP. Thus, a chip could be used for another purpose following a purge and reinstall of memory on a chip.

I think your thinking may be from the old school and not using much from the new technologies...


IMHO.
Rgds

Can everybody say..
"Big Brother"
And how did Orwell know it could come to this?

(I just hope to heck that"Soylent Green"isn't here yet.)



[edit on 24-1-2009 by azureskys]