Gripe of the Day: Digital TV

This whole, switch to digital TV, thing is nothing more than a power and money move. This thing came out of nowhere and hit us like a brick smack in the face. They announced this crap and then gave us a matter of months, in a weakened economy, to get ourselves on the ship or basically, be left behind. Why would they do this? Why would the FCC do this? What were they telling us was so urgent that they had to force this down our throats right now!? What they said at the time was that digital is so much better but those of us who have had digital satellite TV knew that, that was a crock. Every time it rains, snows, gets cloudy or the wind blows too hard, you're left with a chopped up mess of a signal that leaves you all of the sudden wondering whey the hell you're paying for it. One thing is certain and that is that my old analog signal with my old rabbit-ear antenna worked perfectly, rain, sleet or snow and when it didn't, all I had to do was adjust the ears. Not with this digital crap! You either have a good signal or you don't. This is more of the same old same with these large industries in America. There used to be a time when a red blooded American man could roll up his sleeves and fix just about anything. That isn't good for business however. If you can fix it, why would you buy another? In case you haven't noticed folk, the ship has been overtaken by money men with numerical souls who see and think in digits. That can't rule your world but they want to be kings so they're changing your world into something they can control. Back to the topic.

This was definitely a back room deal with a "rush" stipulation attached to it. That's the only explanation for why this thing was done in such a hurry. Then they realized that the economy is failing and people (every single person with a TV) probably can't afford to do this right now, so they offered us coupons. These coupons expired before the national deadline date for the changeover to digital TV. What the F**k was that all about?! People were in the middle of trying to survive a recession and this was the best they could do? What a load!

As the deadline drew nearer, they realized that no where near enough people were ready for it so they had to extend it but notice that they didn't extend the life of the coupons. Then they began to drum up new reasons to explain why this will be so good for us all and why they had to make this change. One such reason was that each of your local networks would now have more than one channel on which to broadcast which should mean more diverse programming and a larger set of options to chose from. I thought to myself, "that could be good. Perhaps now I can actually have some good choices for the terrible weekend lineups on most network channels". And they asserted that emergency responders needed the old analog frequencies for national emergencies such as that of 9-11. I though, "that could be good. They could use a dedicated network".

So I, being one of those with a useless expired coupon, went on line and found myself a cheap converter box for one of my televisions. I no longer have satellite TV so I had to do it. I already had a pretty good antenna so I hooked it all up and got it all up and running. First thing I did was scan through all of these great new channels to find all of this wonderful new programming they promised. I wasn't all that surprised to find nothing but crap on top of more crap followed up by supportive crap! To add insult to injury, it's been cloudy or raining since I got the damn thing and I haven't been able to watch a show without interruption, yet! Then I thought a little deeper and now I'm wondering why, if this digital thing was so great and had the potential to send out so many various frequencies and bands within bands and whatnot, why the hell didn't they leave us alone and let the emergency responders use it?! Wouldn't it have been easier to let them set up their new systems on this new technology rather than forcing the entire freakin' nation to throw away millions of dollars unnecessarily?! Is it me or is there a dirty, dead stinkin' smelling rat in the room? Anywho, I'm vented.