One week from today, June 12, and the digital transition will finally occur. Back in February, everyone seemed in an uproar that it had come to quickly and the public was unprepared. 4 months later and it is back page news. Still, cable hopes that consumers will rush to subscribe rather than fear a loss of TV signals. Under the guise of public service, cable is pursuing a radio campaign to remind consumers that the date is next Friday.
My one surprise in the upcoming date is that it is a Friday. Does that mean that there will be a flurry of activity over the weekend to buy a converter, calibrate the antenna, schedule a cable truck. Would the public have been better served if the transition date fell midweek.
And what will the day look like. Panic, calm... are we ready. Will it arrive like a lion or a lamb? We will soon find out.
And at the same time, my cable company is moving more channels off their non-scrambled line-up and requiring me to put a converter box on more TV sets to continue to receive these signals. While I have learned to accept the set top box, I do not feel the need to put it on every TV set. It's size alone makes it unwieldy for a place next to my kitchen TV. If it were simply much smaller and behind the TV, allowing my TV to retain all its functionality. I would add one. But cable has done a poor job of allowing consumers to buy a third party device to enable that or to even offer one itself. And so my access to channels on some of the TVs gets more and more affected. So long MSNBC; goodbye TCM, Adios Style. How many more go away to the point I finally decide to go the Fios route.
No comments:
Post a Comment