I know we are behind the times – but Ryan and I just picked up our digital television converter boxes.
If you remember, back in February all television signals over the air were supposed to be converted from analog to digital; but the government delayed it because not enough people got the coupons and converter boxes. The new switchover date was June 12th 2009.
With our apartment we got free basic cable and didn’t need a converter box. Then when we moved to our new house and tried to plug in for the free “over the air” channels we realized we didn’t have a digital signal reader and couldn’t get more than one fuzzy channel. (Of all the channels, the religious network came in the best and was the only one that might have been viewable)
We went to order our coupons and found that the previous owners had already got them delivered to our address and we didn’t qualify – only 2 per household and they had already used them up. Instead we sent them to our apartment address which got forwarded to our new house and arrived in yesterdays mail.
The coupons were for $40 off, and the converter boxes were exactly $40 at Target – so why are they “almost free”? Well… New York charges an 8% sales tax, and on $80 that’s $6.40. We went to check out and had to pay the taxes ourselves, the coupon wouldn’t cover that. We also had a coupon for a free bag of cat food, but there was no sales tax associated with that one.
So tonight Ryan will try to plug them in and get our TV’s up and working. Honestly we don’t watch much TV – only PBS. Most of the time we either get news online and only use our televisions for games and movies. But it would be nice to have a few channels.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
We are living overseas and I forgot about that conversion back home! I think our old TV in the states would be needing a converter… but we gave it away before we moved. Does this change lead to a big difference in image quality now, or anything? Do you have any insurance that it is better service, or how does this affect things?
Jerry
I don't have cable, but I do have a digital ready TV. Problem is, before the switch in June, I got about 8 digital channel, yeah for me. Now, AFTER the switch, I only get ONE channel and not all the time either. I keep scanning and re-scanning the TV for channels, but someway, somehow, I've lost the other channels. I get channel number in the corner of my screen, 9 times out of 10, I get the message-NO SIGNAL. Frustrating when I had that digital channel BEFORE the switch. My next step is to upgrade my antenna to one of those 'special' HD antennas and see if that makes a difference. If not, I'll settle for the one channel I get sporadically, read more and watch more DVD's….
Least you don't have an awful cable bill like me! And your cat will love you.
Not bad for a $7 purchase.