Feds start wait list for DTV converter box coupons

Published on January 6th, 2009

Feds start wait list for DTV converter box coupons | KOMO News — This is going to be a fiasco, you can see it coming down Broadway.

Consumers who apply for federal coupons to pay for converter boxes ahead of next month’s transition to digital television broadcasts are being placed on a waiting list and may not receive their vouchers before the switchover, the Commerce Department said Monday.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the arm of the Commerce Department administering the coupon program, created the waiting list on Sunday after hitting a $1.34 billion funding limit set by Congress.

The agency will send out coupons to those on the list only as unredeemed coupons currently in circulation expire, freeing up more money for the program. The waiting list already has requests for 103,000 coupons.

Found by Aric Mackey.

39 users responded in " Feds start wait list for DTV converter box coupons "

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# 1 Randomized said, on January 6th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

Confused old people with no TV = start of the end of the world. Massive riots will start and by the time they end it will be too late!!!

# 2 sargasso said, on January 6th, 2009 at 3:14 pm

Another opportunity for, The Church of England.

# 3 Mongoq said, on January 6th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

How many are like me who had the coupons expire unused? Are they saying they are out of real money or the potential liability?

There’s gonna be a huge outcry when D-day comes.

“Im calling my mayor/congressperson/preacher! DID YOU KNOW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN???!!!! WHERE IS MY TV?????

Watch for the FCC to allow or order the broadcasters to keep analog working for another 6 months.

# 4 deowll said, on January 6th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

This isn’t even a zit much less a mole hill as problems go so would you guys stop trying to make a moutain out of it?

# 5 amodedoma said, on January 6th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

20$ converter unit and they need a coupon? The crisis is worse than I thought. Nice way to spend tax dollars.
Oh I can imagine some oldtimer with a 20 yearold Magnavox TV trying to install one of these and learn how to use it. Then I multiply that by several million and try imagining the customer service hotlines of the manufacturers of these units. … the horror … I don’t even want to imagine having to work one of those lines.

# 6 McCullough said, on January 6th, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Maybe they can just pick up a book….Reading is FUNdamental.

# 7 B. Dog said, on January 6th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

It ain’t just the old folks who will suffer; Think of the children!

# 8 GregA said, on January 6th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

Wait, what? So do I need one of these converter boxes to make my xbox work?

# 9 OK said, on January 6th, 2009 at 4:29 pm

So why they hey, is the goverment so concerned about everyone about everyone being able to get a digital signal? And how much is this costing the taxpayer? Well in light of whats going on right now (bailouts etc), Im sure that answer to that last question would be “chump change”.

Seriously kill your effin TV. 8 years TV free for me. Dont miss it.

# 10 RTaylor said, on January 6th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

I was in one of the test markets this Fall that switched. I have satellite, but I still ordered a coupon. It came in about two weeks and was easily redeemed at Amazon. The TV stations and FCC call centers took a big hit for the first two weeks. Flat screens TV sales went through the roof because of confused customers. Of course Best Buy took real advantage of the ordeal. This was a small market of about 200,000.

# 11 Stopher2475 said, on January 6th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

I ordered the coupons too early on. When I got them the converters were never in stock and they expired. They’re better stocked now that the date is closing in. The time limit on them was just way too short.

# 12 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, on January 6th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

I ordered two coupons after Thanksgiving, they came in three weeks. The reply said something about them being available to ship Dec 12….sounds like the waiting list has been in effect for a while. BTW, the Magnavox converters at Walmart are crap.

I’ve always predicted that the NTSC shutoff would be delayed, and I stand by that.

# 13 Zybch said, on January 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

#9 – Not so long for me, but I don’t miss television AT ALL. I’m sure an awful lot of people would quickly find the same but they’re too scared to turn off the idiot box for 1 evening let along a whole year.
Stupid fuckers!!

# 14 Bando said, on January 6th, 2009 at 6:59 pm

I can’t wait for this. Every day, KOMO shows a scrolling banner along the screen during Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Seriously. Every day. For an entire round, sometimes. I wrote about it in my blog back in May (http://is.gd/eKai), and they haven’t paused since then.

# 15 Mister Mustard said, on January 6th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

$1,340,000,000.00, and they’re already out of money? At $40 a pop for the coupons, that’s 3,500,000 coupons.

Do 3,500,000 people really have analog TVs and use antennas? I haven’t used that technology for almost 30 years. I don’t even KNOW anyone who uses it.

Where are these millions of people hiding out?

# 16 Mister Mustard said, on January 6th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

#9 – OK

>>Seriously kill your effin TV. 8 years TV free
>>for me. Dont miss it.

Yeah, I know a bunch of people who “never watch TV”.

They watch movies on DVD though (Blu Ray, even!), and they sit home with their 8-at-a-time Netflix subscriptions, watching 14 movies a week.

They’re worse than the grown-up video game addicts.

# 17 ECA said, on January 6th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

15,
are you asking if 1% of the USA, Does not have CABLE or SAT??
Answer..YES its true.. And in my estimation its OVER 10%..

Sat does not carry LOCAL channels..CABLe DOES..
SAT adds a Local Antenna to get LOCAL..if they go digital, you wont see them.

Those CABLES and SAT, are Digital to ANALOG anyway..THAT would require BOTH to swap over to DIGITAL TO DIGITAL..

# 18 comhcinc said, on January 6th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

i have a friend who works for the prison system. a lot of inmates have tvs cheap little analog tvs. they are going to be very upset with they no longer work.

i have yet to hear anyone talk about that.

# 19 Ron Larson said, on January 6th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

My mom currently has cable, but I got her two boxes anyhow. The reason is that in an emergency, the cable may not work. Then she could get over-the-air reception using her box.

I plugged them in and tested them out. She can only get 2 channels, versus about 10 on the analog reception. Nice. This is going to be a friggen’ disaster.

Regarding the expense. This was paid for, indirectly, by the companies that won the spectrum auction that is is being freed up by the digital conversion. The government is making a tidy profit on this.

One last point. The conversion gets even more messed up because the FCC is allowing low-power stations to remain analog. However, most of the cheap converters can only processed digital. So people will have to mix-and match and remember what device to change channels on in order to get what station. It will be a major cluster-f**k.

# 20 Mister Mustard said, on January 6th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

#17 – ECA

>>Answer..YES its true.. And in my estimation
>>its OVER 10%..

wELL, i GUESS YOU MUST BE RIGHT. iF THEY UNLOADED one point three two billion WORTH OF COUPONS. sOMEHOW, i MANAGED TO MISS THEM ALL. tHIRTY YEARS, AND i CAN COUNT THE NUMBER OF ppl WHO HAVE HAD ANALOG tv ON 1 HAND.

# 21 dvdchris said, on January 6th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

amodedoma:
Most converter boxes in stores start at $60, a few are $50.
mister mustard:
Estimates are 15% of the population watches only OTA TV. That translates to 15 million households.

At this point, when we have been informed now for 13 years of the digital switchover, and you cannot go 20 minutes without hearing about it, including crawls during programming, I find it hard to believe there is anyone who is not aware of it.

# 22 OK said, on January 6th, 2009 at 10:23 pm

13# It was a rough first couple weeks, not having that friend/noise in the house, but after that no problems. Amazing how much more reading and stuff around the house I got done.

16# Yea I have friends also who watch DVD’s non stop. And to be honest I dont know how they find the time to watch 3 or 4 in a weekend. I maybe play 1 a month.

# 23 bobbo said, on January 6th, 2009 at 10:39 pm

Its often said that tv is passive while reading actively engages the imagination. I do lots of both and find very little difference between the two. I select books I like and tv I like==so there is already a screening process taking place. It is a different experience, each with their pro’s and con’s.

Devoting enough time to fixing the house or car is required of tv or of reading just the same.

Anti-tv SNOBS==what do you think you get out of it that justifies you feeling so smug about it?

# 24 Somebody_Else said, on January 6th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

You know what, my computer is getting a bit old and can’t play the latest games anymore. Shouldn’t the government give me a coupon for a new video card?

That’s how I feel about this whole situation.

There’s a crazy old guy down the street from me who’s hoarding these converter boxes for some reason. He’s got at least 15 coupons now. He goes around asking the neighbors to order their two and give them to him. I have a feeling that people like him are the problem here.

# 25 brm said, on January 6th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

#24:

If the government disabled all the old video cards, then yeah, they should give you a coupon for a new one.

# 26 GF said, on January 7th, 2009 at 1:20 am

This process, getting ready for HDTV and to a lesser extent ATSC, started 20 years ago.The government has been telling people for 2 years that NTSC was going they way of the dodo bird by 2009. I bought a HDTV w/ATSC tuner years ago and love it. Screw NTSC, it sucks. For those that need more than 20 years to figure shit out you deserve what you get.

# 27 Rob said, on January 7th, 2009 at 8:21 am

I don’t see why everyone thinks this is going to be a disaster. Let me get this straight, if you watch TV you know about the switchover. There are ads and stories about it all the time. If you don’t watch TV then what’s the problem? This is like Y2K all over again. A bunch of people worry that the world is going to come to an end, talk about it incessantly so that everybody is sick of listening to it and when the day comes nothing happens.

Come on John, you always make fun of the doom-sayers predicting the end of the world and now you are starting to sound like one. My prediction? The truly ignorant will be surprised by the switch-over and not be able to watch Wheel-of-Fortune for a few days. Big deal.

# 28 B. Dog said, on January 7th, 2009 at 8:48 am

I watch so little TV that I hadn’t noticed that my digital converter box wasn’t picking up the local FOX station. I wouldn’t have cared much, except that some friends were coming over to watch a football game on FOX. The guy at Best Buy said that FOX owns a stake in one of the satellite TV providers, so they transmit their signal at lower power than the other local stations, so an $80 powered antenna was needed.

I gave away my analog TV to a friend last month, and enjoy watching DVD movies on the 50″ plasma TV that I bought with the savings from not having had cable for a few years.

# 29 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, on January 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am

B.Dog, you got ripped off by the guy at Best Buy. You probably needed a new antenna feed cable, or a UHF antenna, or to aim your existing antenna better. But, enjoy the new TV and thanks for stimulating the economy.

One thing about VSB NTSC…the signal could be shit and you still hear it and watch it through the snow if you had to. Now, you have to have a “decent” antenna system.

# 30 Mister Mustard said, on January 7th, 2009 at 9:41 am

#26 – GF

>>Screw NTSC, it sucks.

Why?

# 31 chuck said, on January 7th, 2009 at 9:51 am

I think we’ll see another government bail-out here. Obama will stimulate the economy by sending everyone in the U.S. a free digital converter box.

# 32 Dave W said, on January 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am

Well, I for one refuse to pay for television. I have never had cable or satellite (except the last few years at my parent’s house when they got cable). For me, it is a matter of principle. I won’t pay for something that is bombarding me from the sky .

I don’t watch a whole lot of television, but I did get my coupons and converter boxes rather early on. They work fine, in fact, in general, I get better reception than I did with analogue, except for the drop outs when someone walks by or turns on a light switch or the fridge cycles on. Lots more channels, too…what amazing stuff….NBC STILL running the Olympics on 4.4, a useless weather channel on 4.3, infomercials on 4.2, and of course the usual NBC network crap on 4.1. Although in theory I now get about 25 more channels, the only worthwhile thing is the occasional cooking show on one of the PBS affiliates that I can now see at a more reasonable time. Of course when I’m somewhere with cable, there are another 100 channels of “not much to watch”.

I do however predict a small fiasco on “D” day. Despite the fact that the warnings have been blasted at the viewing audience for months now, a lot of the “VCR blinking 12:00″ crowd will be stunned that their TV has stopped working. Many OTA viewers are very non-technical, and the adds generally give a URL for more information. A goodly number of these folks don’t know what a URL is. Some will assume the set is broken, buy a new one that, though they don’t know it has a digital tuner, and be fine. The rest will be on the phone to broadcasters, repair shops, and their reps., whose numbers they looked up in a paper telephone book.

Finally, for those confusing the coupon program with some kind of bailout, let’s set the record straight. The government is making a killing selling the “publicly owned airwaves” that will be freed up. The cost of the coupon program is a very, very small fraction of the revenue that will be produced.

# 33 KwadGuy said, on January 7th, 2009 at 10:21 am

Since all the converter boxes are made in the Far East, I don’t think this is gonna be much of a stimulus to the ecomony.

Oh, and if you are one of those getting a box, the best deal/best box is the Zenith/Insignia (goes by both names) box. There are cheaper boxes, but they mostly suck. The Zenith/Insignia box can be purchased (under the Insignia name) for the cost of shipping + your government rebate card.

# 34 WmDE said, on January 7th, 2009 at 10:38 am

Mr Mustard what have you been watching for 30 years?

I watch over-the-air TV because I see no point in paying Dish Network for them. Dish Network provides me with 200 channels the majority of which I don’t care about. For traditional network and local It’s a set of rabbit-ears.

I bought converter boxes and they work quite well. They should work even better after the change. Most current ATSC stations are interim installations. After Feb the stations will move to their final set up using their assigned channels and main antennas.

# 35 scoosdad said, on January 7th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

17 said:

“Sat does not carry LOCAL channels..CABLe DOES..
SAT adds a Local Antenna to get LOCAL..if they go digital, you wont see them.”

Wow, so wrong wrong wrong.

DirecTV and Dish do carry local stations up on the satellite and deliver them to the boxes via the dish. The providers will take care of any conversions on their end and satellite viewers who get their local market stations shouldn’t see any difference on 2/18.

“SAT adds a Local Antenna to get LOCAL..if they go digital, you wont see them.”

I know Dish allows you to connect your own TV antenna to some of their boxes as an option to pull in local stations (and put them up on the program guide also, BTW) instead of paying $5 month to get them off the satellite, and their boxes accept either an off-air DIGITAL signal or the current analog from your antenna. So again, if that’s how your local signal gets into your satellite box, nothing will change there either (provided your antenna and location permit pickup of the digital signals). Those digital signals have been up and running for months now in most locations so satellite users who do this already know if their situation will pull in the stations or not.

Bottom line is, you will not need a converter box to view local off-airs if you bring those in over your satellite box in either situation.

# 36 brm said, on January 7th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

The problem is that lots of elderly folks won’t be able to watch the local news. If only 1% of the elderly don’t have a converter box, that’s 4 million people who are going to be pissed off on D-day. Seems like a problem to me.

# 37 Mister Mustard said, on January 7th, 2009 at 1:56 pm

#34 – WmDE

>>Mr Mustard what have you been watching for
>>30 years?

Same shit as everyone else, I guess. Law & Order reruns, MTV (back in the early 80’s, anyway, before it turned to shit), CNBC, Discovery Channel, History Channel, like that. You know, stuff you can’t get OTA. And I lived for a while in Indiana, and couldn’t get shit OTA except for one useless local station that wasn’t even worth having a TV for. I had cable before VCRs were even affordable, fer chrissakes.

I don’t really watch too much TV, but when I do, pretty much nothing I watch comes OTA. Of course, the basic cable doesn’t cost very much, so it’s no financial hardship.

I guess the 10% – 15% OTA number must be in the ballpark, as that’s what everyone seems to think it is.

Still, I’m stunned.

I know old people, young people, middle-aged people, rich people, poor people, middle-class people, technogeeks, and luddites. But for the life of me, I can’t think of a single soul that gets a TV signal via the antenna of their TV.

# 38 GF said, on January 7th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

# 30 Mister Mustard

Creating color for NTSC, which originally was B&W, was a hack that is susceptible to hue shift due to signal interference and cheap TV’s. In the industry the joke is that NTSC is said to stand for never (twice) the same color.

Also, the color gamut, the range of color, is more limited than it is with digital – yes digital is still limited – thus making it hard to shoot different shades of the color red. In other words the color is better represented in ATSC* than NTSC.

And finally ATSC allows for high definition broadcast channels, thank the lords of kobal. It really is better in high def.

# 28 As far as Fox transmitting in low power because they want to f with people, well, that’s bullshit. They would be violating FCC standards if they did not attempt to provide the best signal to their service area as effectively as possible. They’d lose their license if you could prove they were doing this maliciously.

After February 17th – when there are no more waivers for broadcasters in large markets – if you and others are still having problems you could make a complaint to the FCC . Keeping up a technical standard is really what the FCC’s job is, not whether we see Janet’s boobie.

*Of course ATSC does have some lower quality standards but generally those are not used for broadcast.

# 39 Uncle Patso said, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:53 pm

Once the vouchers run out, I expect the converter boxes to come down in price by almost exactly $20 almost immediately. I expect some older ones to start showing up in Goodwill stores soon after that.

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