It has been however long, and digital TV is a way of life. I'm not talking about cable, either, but rather broadcast local channels. We don't have an outdoor antenna, just an RCA indoor job. With old school analog rabbit ears, you could watch a snowy but uninterrupted program. Imperfect reception was still followable. Now with digital modern awesomeness, a marginal fringe signal is useless. If the digital antenna is not precisely positioned, you get frozen frames, pixilated images, and interrupted audio. Useless. Bad weather makes it worse.
So thanks, Congress and FCC. You have set TV back over seventy years.
Not even wrapping it in foil will help.
13 comments:
No sweat:
About the time most everyone's got one of these new PsOS, they'll come out with HDTV2.0, so they can raise the price again.
They know the signal sucks!
That's not the point: They wanted to replace a FREE system with one for which they could keep charging more...
Mission accomplished!
Actually, I find the pixilated images and interrupted audio to be the most entertaining thing on television these days.
Same deal for me. I have a ladder permanently placed to go up and adjust my antenna on the roof if something good is on.
Except for my vid collection, I don't watch TV at all. I find it funny when people frown & insist I watch TV in order to be "better informed". Usually this is after I express a contrary opinion ...
I'm reminded of the '70s when David Wolper inflicted Roots on us all. For years after people would "cleverly" retort (ie: Plaintively whine.): "Haven't you seen Roots!?"
Yes, slavery sucks. So does Roots. And depending on the "electric brain" in your living room to do your thinking for you sucks even more.
Bunch of elitists...
We live at the end of Tornado Alley, where storms dump their fury over having missed that particularly sweet trailer park in Texarkana. It is helpful to have video access to local weather.
Also MeTV...'50s and '60s goodness.
Ahhh, yes, Roots. The African people told Alex Haley just what he wanted to hear, just like Margaret Mead's Samoan girls told her sexual tall tales, which she anthropologically accepted as fact.
In fact, I find much more drama in that classic test pattern you brought up than in practically all television these days.
@Jay --- my two favorite television networks are TCM and YouTube.
@ Weatherly - During WWII Pacific, a famous prankster by the name of Hugh Troy pulled a fast one on an anthropologist. He got a local kid to feed the "scientist" bogus folklore stories. During the sessions the kids' grandfather would loudly say a particular word in the local language from time to time. The "learned one" later had it translated. It was their word for horses--t.
Look up the old book The Complete Practical Joker. Lotsa Hugh Troy anecdotes.
@ Michael W - Love You Tube! The problem with TCM is they're usually showing something I've already seen or own.
@Jay --- TCM admittedly has a problem with scheduling, but they still manage to surprise me. Today, in fact, they were showing some of the old Boris Karloff "James Lee Wong" movies that I hadn't seen before.
@Michael W - In all my years of watching old flicks I've never seen any of Karloffs' "Mr. Wong" films (I think Monogram did them.)
Was this on early morning?
@Jay --- yes, they were Monogram productions. TCM ran "The Fatal Hour" and "Doomed to Die" yesterday morning as part of their Marjorie Reynolds tribute.
It was interesting noting how there was no effort made to make Karloff look "overly Oriental". Except for a bit of work around the eyes they pretty much let him be.
IMDb has links to where you can watch "Doomed to Die" and "The Fatal Hour" online. If you should happen to see them I'd be interested in your opinion.
@Michael W I may actually have them on one or two of the Millcreek 50 packs. I'll try to take a look at them the next few days.
Karloff was known to "walk" through a flick it he thought the picture a waste of time. It will be interesting to see how he performed.
Your cheapest road to TV, phone & internet is likely going to be a high-speed internet connection and a digital TV with a wi-fi portal (overgrown tablet computer).
Once the economy tanks as the bill arrives for all of Comrade-0's borrowing, we're likely to see 3G service/DSL drop to around $20/month as millions dump their landlines & cable.
If you have a new IPad or Samsung Galaxy tablet, you can watch great, steaming piles of idioTVision for free or cheap...a Boomer's paradise!
@G-I-D-B- We are already there. Dumped cable in January, have a ROKU box, which allows us to access what we want via Netflix, Amazon, and such. Steaming piles of IdioTVision? Riot!
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