OT:watch out for expiration of converter coupons!

Dummy me, didn't look at what I got, now they won't replace the unused ones, as they expired a month ago : ( Oh well, might as well wait until the program ends and the free taxpayer dollars are not available to the purveyors, then the prices will come down! Leo

I just yesterday bought a RCA flat panel HDTV and the picture isn't as good as the old TV. I am on Dish network and called them. They tell me this is normal because their signal is digital and it won't look as good on a HGTV as on analog. I can get new dish, box, etc to get HDTV over satellite. This cost more.

This is just another case of the government putting their nose where it isn't needed or wanted. Here I bought a HDTV and can't get as good of picture as with old tech. I guess I should have researched more? From everything I had read you would have problems if you didn't have HDTV. Here I have problems because I have HDTV. Here is the stupid thing. You have analog and on antenna,you have to spend money to get picture. If you have HDTV and on cable or satellite, you have to spend money to get good picture.

Am I all wrong and don't understand or is this a big rip off?

I recently changed over from a 32" analog/CRT TV to a flat screen, 42", HD LCD TV. Local store had them new for $700. My TV comes from a satellite dish via Direct TV. Regular TV does not look as good on the new TV unless I shrink the image down a bit and then it looks just as good as it did before. In fact, there's a large menu of custom controls to change the image - but I don't want to mess with it. With DVDs, it looks great. Overall, I don't think picture quality is any better than the old tube-TV. But, that's not why I bought it - I got it because most DVDs we rent are on widescreen and I got sick of the dinky little letter-box in the old TV with part of the screen not even getting used.

I also was under the false impression that LCD TVs use less electricity - and since I'm on 100% solar, I'm always looking to cut down our use. Now, after some checking, I find out they use, more-or-less exactly the same amount of electricity per square inch of screen.

In regard to the coupons - just got mine. They had two months to be cashed in, but I used them right away at Walmart. Two converters wound up costing me $10 each, out-of-pocket - but overall total was more like $40 each which is nonsense. Those converters seem to be very overpriced - I'm sure due to the stupid coupons.

This was a way for the govt to capitalize on the radio spectum. By forcing broadcasters into digital modes, and changing many (if not all) into the UHF (ultra high frequencies) they reduced the amount of spectrum necessary for TV.
This opened up a lot of prize spectrum for sale to commercial intrests, other than TV brodcasting. Any ham operator can tell you that UHF frequencies are good far shorter distances than VHF, and digital needs to be rock strong or else you're going to get a lot of broken pictures, missing audio. Those of us who are in the fringe areas now are going to be the loosers.