In an attempt to postpone the transition date from February 17 to June 12, the Senate passed a bill on Monday, Jan. 26 to delay the nationwide switch to digital TV signals.Fueled by worries that viewers aren't technically ready for the congressionally-mandated switch over, the reprieve will give consumer four additional months to to prepare for the digital switcheroo.
The bill will also allow consumers with unused or expired coupons--handed out by the government to offset the cost of the $40 converter box--to request new coupons and will give the nearly 2.5 million waiting for the government-sponsored rebate a chance to save.
"The Senate acted responsibly to give the Obama administration time to attempt to bring order to a mismanaged process," says Senate Commerce Chairman John Rockefeller in a statement supporting the TV-switch delay.
The reprieve will give an estimated 20 million homes not ready for the switch, including elderly and lower-income families, a chance to buy a converter box or subscribe to a cable or satellite provider.
UPDATE: Backers of a plan to expedite passage of a delay of the mandatory digital transition date were dealt a blow on Wednesday, Jan. 28, as the move failed to garner the required two-thirds majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans opposing the measure managed to gather up 168 nay votes to prevent the extension passing with limited debate and no amendments.
2 comments:
Do people honestly still use the old Rabbit ears to watch TV? Just make the switch, stop wasting money talking about it. If people can not watch TV one day they will either deal with it, or go fix the problem. I'm really just sick of the commercials, I'd rather be bombarded by classic ads selling crappy products for 2 easy payments of $19.95.
My cable provider, RCN, switch over our system to digital in early January and it wasn't as simple as those so-called crappy commercials claim. My house has four cable TVs and only the living room HDTV successfully switched over. I ran to Best Buy to get one of those digital converter boxes thinking it would work. Wrong. We had to get special cable converter boxes from RCN (something those crappy commercials don't tell you) and it ended up taking a week before all of the TVs had digital cable. The switchover isn't as easy as simply having cable.
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