DTV coupon program broke?
National News: For several months, TV stations across the country have been airing promos regarding the upcoming digital TV transition. It appears that the notification has worked to the point that the program (which offers two 40 dollar coupons per address for two converter boxes) is officially broke. The program is still taking orders but it's hard to say if there will be additional money put back into the program. Some money has been put back with those who did not use their coupons within 90 days, otherwise it looks like Congress may need to look into a converter box bailout. The coupons are not required in order to purchase a converter box, it was a way to defray the cost of purchasing a box for digital over the air reception on your older existing analog TV. Hopefully some additional funding comes through, though it will probably be restricted to those who rely exclusively on OTA reception. Update: This recent news regarding the digital transition could cause it to be postponed. It appears that President Elect Obama will try to persuede Congress to pass a law in order to postpone the transition until June 1st. Are you for or against a postponement of the DTV transition. Feel free to share your comments here.Readers’ Forum
The only thing I wonder is the people who took advantage of the program by buying the converter boxes, then selling them on eBay for a huge markup. We have both the ones I bought at home so I’m not worried about it, but there’s no way they would be able to prevent that. The two maximum was a compromise: enough to get the houses that need it but low enough that people couldn’t abuse the system. Right now we have other needs moneywise, I think people have plenty of heads up on what is happening at this point.
Joe Gerard (URL) - January 07, 2009 at 10:12 pm
June would be a better time to do this. People living in the suburbs and rural areas will usually need better antennas to capture a digital signal, and erecting antennas in January should not be forced upon the people. (perhaps the Jan date was an effort to force cable subscriptions?) Snowy analog VHF signals can be watched now but once the digital changeover happens, millions of people will only have blank screens, even with a box.
Rick Radebaugh - January 16, 2009 at 12:42 pm