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Half of government-issued digital TV coupons have expired before use

by Darren Murph posted Jun 13th 2008 at 10:47AM


Okay, it's not that alarming, now is it? How often do you (or wait, let's use your neighbor in this example) let mailer coupons sit around, collect dust and expire? Yeah, exactly. According to a recent writeup over at WDEF-TV, around half of the 840,000 government-issued digital TV coupons have already expired before they were used, and interestingly enough, Congress may not be placing all of the blame on procrastination. It's said that many folks are still having a tough time tracking a converter box down, and judging by Ben's runaround a few months back, we guess we can sympathize. For those with recently expired vouchers, you may want to keep them around a few weeks longer -- if this proves to be too widespread, The Man may actually extend their useful life to enable more citizens to get discounts.

HD STBs are not eligible for $40 DTV vouchers

by Ben Drawbaugh posted Jan 2nd 2008 at 10:20AM

Smart Antenna
With only 412 days to go until analog TV goes dark, there are plenty of questions about the new voucher program that started yesterday. While none of the new boxes are available just yet, reading through the very long list of rules, we found something a little disappointing; any STB with HD outputs (DVI, HDMI or component) can't be purchased with the help of a $40 voucher. While we understand the government's desire to cut back on fraud -- while at the same time keeping costs down -- we can't help but think about all the early HDTV adopters that have "HD Ready" HDTVs. These people bought well before the DTV tuner mandate went into effect, and will be left out of the voucher program completely. Of course one could argue that if they could afford to be early adopters, then they don't need the hand out, but what about all those who picked up an HDTV on the secondhand market? The other interesting tidbit in the rules section is the inclusion of CEA-909, aka smart antennas. This is an antenna with a interface to the STB that allows the tuner to adjust the antenna to optimize reception. This can be very important to anyone who lives in an area where transmitters are installed in multiple locations.




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