Gone Digital and Quit

So we got our coupons for our discount for a digital converter box. You have to use them in 90 days—and so they expire in about a week. I had ordered some before but we lost them for 4 months and they were no good so we had to order them again—what a nightmare.

We dutifully went out and bought the boxes and of course no one sells them for what the government reimburses, so you will be out a chunk of change—found out the cheap ones don’t have the plugs in them, went our and got those, and then spent quite a while hooking them up. There is NO WAY my mother will be able to do this. My in-laws will definitely have to hire a someone, or get cable on all their tvs. If you are currently unemployed or underemployed, hang up a sign in the grocery store and offer to figure out these stupid things (every one of them is different) and install them for the technically challenged. A whole new cottage industry will be born. It took both my husband and I working together over 45 minutes to get the thing up and running and I HATE IT.

I just have to thank the tv industry for hanging itself. I have been meaning to cut back on my watching time and this finally weaned me completely. The pixallation and breakup of the image when I turned the bedroom light on, or my cell phone rang makes you want to heave your set out the second floor window.. The fact the the PBS station didn’t even come in until I went down and got a length of tin foil to rig up an antenna defeats the whole point of having a tv in my bedroom. The fact that every third word dropped out until I thought I was going to go CRAZY…...

FORGET IT. I shut off the tv and picked up a novel.

I see this digital conversion thing will be an immense boon to libraries, radio broadcasters and DVD sales, since the only thing my analog tv is now good for is as a playback screen for DVD and video. I feel bad for the television industry and any poor sucker trying to get its message out to the public, but this definitely heralds the end of broadcast television.