Feds start wait list for DTV converter box coupons | KOMO News — This is going to be a fiasco, you can see it coming down Broadway.
Consumers who apply for federal coupons to pay for converter boxes ahead of next month’s transition to digital television broadcasts are being placed on a waiting list and may not receive their vouchers before the switchover, the Commerce Department said Monday.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the arm of the Commerce Department administering the coupon program, created the waiting list on Sunday after hitting a $1.34 billion funding limit set by Congress.
The agency will send out coupons to those on the list only as unredeemed coupons currently in circulation expire, freeing up more money for the program. The waiting list already has requests for 103,000 coupons.
Found by Aric Mackey.
Confused old people with no TV = start of the end of the world. Massive riots will start and by the time they end it will be too late!!!
Another opportunity for, The Church of England.
How many are like me who had the coupons expire unused? Are they saying they are out of real money or the potential liability?
There’s gonna be a huge outcry when D-day comes.
“Im calling my mayor/congressperson/preacher! DID YOU KNOW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN???!!!! WHERE IS MY TV?????
Watch for the FCC to allow or order the broadcasters to keep analog working for another 6 months.
This isn’t even a zit much less a mole hill as problems go so would you guys stop trying to make a moutain out of it?
20$ converter unit and they need a coupon? The crisis is worse than I thought. Nice way to spend tax dollars.
Oh I can imagine some oldtimer with a 20 yearold Magnavox TV trying to install one of these and learn how to use it. Then I multiply that by several million and try imagining the customer service hotlines of the manufacturers of these units. … the horror … I don’t even want to imagine having to work one of those lines.
Maybe they can just pick up a book….Reading is FUNdamental.
It ain’t just the old folks who will suffer; Think of the children!
Wait, what? So do I need one of these converter boxes to make my xbox work?
So why they hey, is the goverment so concerned about everyone about everyone being able to get a digital signal? And how much is this costing the taxpayer? Well in light of whats going on right now (bailouts etc), Im sure that answer to that last question would be “chump change”.
Seriously kill your effin TV. 8 years TV free for me. Dont miss it.
I was in one of the test markets this Fall that switched. I have satellite, but I still ordered a coupon. It came in about two weeks and was easily redeemed at Amazon. The TV stations and FCC call centers took a big hit for the first two weeks. Flat screens TV sales went through the roof because of confused customers. Of course Best Buy took real advantage of the ordeal. This was a small market of about 200,000.
I ordered the coupons too early on. When I got them the converters were never in stock and they expired. They’re better stocked now that the date is closing in. The time limit on them was just way too short.
I ordered two coupons after Thanksgiving, they came in three weeks. The reply said something about them being available to ship Dec 12….sounds like the waiting list has been in effect for a while. BTW, the Magnavox converters at Walmart are crap.
I’ve always predicted that the NTSC shutoff would be delayed, and I stand by that.
#9 – Not so long for me, but I don’t miss television AT ALL. I’m sure an awful lot of people would quickly find the same but they’re too scared to turn off the idiot box for 1 evening let along a whole year.
Stupid fuckers!!
I can’t wait for this. Every day, KOMO shows a scrolling banner along the screen during Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Seriously. Every day. For an entire round, sometimes. I wrote about it in my blog back in May (http://is.gd/eKai), and they haven’t paused since then.
$1,340,000,000.00, and they’re already out of money? At $40 a pop for the coupons, that’s 3,500,000 coupons.
Do 3,500,000 people really have analog TVs and use antennas? I haven’t used that technology for almost 30 years. I don’t even KNOW anyone who uses it.
Where are these millions of people hiding out?
#9 – OK
>>Seriously kill your effin TV. 8 years TV free
>>for me. Dont miss it.
Yeah, I know a bunch of people who “never watch TV”.
They watch movies on DVD though (Blu Ray, even!), and they sit home with their 8-at-a-time Netflix subscriptions, watching 14 movies a week.
They’re worse than the grown-up video game addicts.
15,
are you asking if 1% of the USA, Does not have CABLE or SAT??
Answer..YES its true.. And in my estimation its OVER 10%..
Sat does not carry LOCAL channels..CABLe DOES..
SAT adds a Local Antenna to get LOCAL..if they go digital, you wont see them.
Those CABLES and SAT, are Digital to ANALOG anyway..THAT would require BOTH to swap over to DIGITAL TO DIGITAL..
i have a friend who works for the prison system. a lot of inmates have tvs cheap little analog tvs. they are going to be very upset with they no longer work.
i have yet to hear anyone talk about that.
My mom currently has cable, but I got her two boxes anyhow. The reason is that in an emergency, the cable may not work. Then she could get over-the-air reception using her box.
I plugged them in and tested them out. She can only get 2 channels, versus about 10 on the analog reception. Nice. This is going to be a friggen’ disaster.
Regarding the expense. This was paid for, indirectly, by the companies that won the spectrum auction that is is being freed up by the digital conversion. The government is making a tidy profit on this.
One last point. The conversion gets even more messed up because the FCC is allowing low-power stations to remain analog. However, most of the cheap converters can only processed digital. So people will have to mix-and match and remember what device to change channels on in order to get what station. It will be a major cluster-f**k.
#17 – ECA
>>Answer..YES its true.. And in my estimation
>>its OVER 10%..
wELL, i GUESS YOU MUST BE RIGHT. iF THEY UNLOADED one point three two billion WORTH OF COUPONS. sOMEHOW, i MANAGED TO MISS THEM ALL. tHIRTY YEARS, AND i CAN COUNT THE NUMBER OF ppl WHO HAVE HAD ANALOG tv ON 1 HAND.
amodedoma:
Most converter boxes in stores start at $60, a few are $50.
mister mustard:
Estimates are 15% of the population watches only OTA TV. That translates to 15 million households.
At this point, when we have been informed now for 13 years of the digital switchover, and you cannot go 20 minutes without hearing about it, including crawls during programming, I find it hard to believe there is anyone who is not aware of it.
13# It was a rough first couple weeks, not having that friend/noise in the house, but after that no problems. Amazing how much more reading and stuff around the house I got done.
16# Yea I have friends also who watch DVD’s non stop. And to be honest I dont know how they find the time to watch 3 or 4 in a weekend. I maybe play 1 a month.
Its often said that tv is passive while reading actively engages the imagination. I do lots of both and find very little difference between the two. I select books I like and tv I like==so there is already a screening process taking place. It is a different experience, each with their pro’s and con’s.
Devoting enough time to fixing the house or car is required of tv or of reading just the same.
Anti-tv SNOBS==what do you think you get out of it that justifies you feeling so smug about it?
You know what, my computer is getting a bit old and can’t play the latest games anymore. Shouldn’t the government give me a coupon for a new video card?
That’s how I feel about this whole situation.
There’s a crazy old guy down the street from me who’s hoarding these converter boxes for some reason. He’s got at least 15 coupons now. He goes around asking the neighbors to order their two and give them to him. I have a feeling that people like him are the problem here.
#24:
If the government disabled all the old video cards, then yeah, they should give you a coupon for a new one.
This process, getting ready for HDTV and to a lesser extent ATSC, started 20 years ago.The government has been telling people for 2 years that NTSC was going they way of the dodo bird by 2009. I bought a HDTV w/ATSC tuner years ago and love it. Screw NTSC, it sucks. For those that need more than 20 years to figure shit out you deserve what you get.
I don’t see why everyone thinks this is going to be a disaster. Let me get this straight, if you watch TV you know about the switchover. There are ads and stories about it all the time. If you don’t watch TV then what’s the problem? This is like Y2K all over again. A bunch of people worry that the world is going to come to an end, talk about it incessantly so that everybody is sick of listening to it and when the day comes nothing happens.
Come on John, you always make fun of the doom-sayers predicting the end of the world and now you are starting to sound like one. My prediction? The truly ignorant will be surprised by the switch-over and not be able to watch Wheel-of-Fortune for a few days. Big deal.
I watch so little TV that I hadn’t noticed that my digital converter box wasn’t picking up the local FOX station. I wouldn’t have cared much, except that some friends were coming over to watch a football game on FOX. The guy at Best Buy said that FOX owns a stake in one of the satellite TV providers, so they transmit their signal at lower power than the other local stations, so an $80 powered antenna was needed.
I gave away my analog TV to a friend last month, and enjoy watching DVD movies on the 50″ plasma TV that I bought with the savings from not having had cable for a few years.
B.Dog, you got ripped off by the guy at Best Buy. You probably needed a new antenna feed cable, or a UHF antenna, or to aim your existing antenna better. But, enjoy the new TV and thanks for stimulating the economy.
One thing about VSB NTSC…the signal could be shit and you still hear it and watch it through the snow if you had to. Now, you have to have a “decent” antenna system.
#26 – GF
>>Screw NTSC, it sucks.
Why?