Sunday, November 23, 2008

Getcha some

So if you are a television junkie in the US of A, like me, you likely know about the change over to digital broadcast coming up in a couple of months. And if you are like me too, there ain't no way in heck you are getting a high definition television for Christmas. Which means you will have to buy a digital converter box before midnight February 17. Else your bestest friend in the world won't bring you the morning news on the 18th.

Of course, none of that applies if you use cable or satellite to get your TV signal. Your TV will work fine after the switch.

Around here we have one TV hooked up to satellite. The rest of the television sets are only used for playing DVDs. Occasionally I try to watch something broadcast over the air, like today when I wanted to watch the Cowboys beat up on the 49ers, but I also wanted to clean my garage. But the reception is generally for crap.

Racecar Man demonstrated his digital converter boxes the other day for me. I wasn't convinced that we would get the same great results, since his house does not sit at the base of a big hill and his TVs are mostly upstairs. But I went to https://www.dtv2009.gov to snag the government cheese coupons for $40 off the cost of a converter box.

It took about 10 days for the coupons to arrive, and tonight we finally got around to picking up one converter box. I also grabbed the cheapest set of rabbit ear antennas that they sold at Best Buy for $10. The converter boxes all over town are priced at $60.

So with my coupon, we are out $30 to get TV reception in our bedroom. And let me tell you, the reception is awesome! To celebrate The Boss Lady is watching something boring and stupid in the living room via the satellite system and I am watching a perfect looking live broadcast of NFL football while blogging from my bedroom.

Heaven!

Someday there might be a high def television in our house. But I bet that day is a long ways off (Probably right after all three of our analog sets die...). Until then, I'll stick with my $30 digital-dumbed-down-to-analog TV picture.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

we've switched to digital about 3 years ago here in the UK...
I think the only difference is that we now get more channels!
lol

Mike said...

Yeah there are several local channels on here that I did not know existed.