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Thursday, February 21, 2008

TV Set to Change Again

By Rory McClannahan
Mountain View Telegraph
    I was 7 years old when our family got its first color television. It was 1972 and my father declared that he was not going to watch the Summer Olympics on a black and white set. So he went to Sears and picked up a color TV with a startling 12-inch screen. This set served as the family television for the next 10 or so years until one day, the screen faded to a single piercing dot in the center. Out next television was larger and may or may not have fallen off a truck. It included a neat new device called a "clicker" which changed the channel with the push of a button from the relative safety of your chair.
    About that same time, we also got cable and our channel selection went from four to about 20.
    My how times have changed. My father has all the latest television technology and a satellite dish that enables him to watch any one of hundreds of channels of entertainment. And while over the years I've had nice televisions and cable, our house is currently equipped with a 10-year-old TV with a broken remote control and an aerial antenna attached to the side of the house.
    Let's just say my priorities shifted away from television and haven't quite wandered back just yet. Ours is one of the 13.5 million households, or 12 percent, in America that aren't hooked to cable or satellite. Up until Sunday, we had eight over-the-air channels— excluding the religious channels— that we would watch.
    On Sunday, we got a converter box that takes digital signals sent out by local stations and converts them for use on our old set. Now we've got a handful of PBS stations, a weather channel and a channel that plays Spanish music videos, which I find to be somewhat compelling.
    By this time next year, all of us still getting television through the air for free on old sets will have to have these converter boxes. The federal government has mandated that all over-the-air stations will have to solely broadcast a digital signal, which will make old television sets useless without a convertor box. Anyone who has bought a new television in the past year or is hooked into cable or satellite won't have to worry about the conversion.
    But don't panic. The government has started issuing two $40 vouchers that folks can use to help cover the cost of a convertor box, which are priced at about $60.
    More information about the digital changeover and how to get a voucher is available online at www.dtv2009.gov or by calling (888) 388-2009.
    Meanwhile, I'll be in my living room watching Shakira singing about the torture of love or desire or some such thing. I'm not quite sure, my Spanish needs some improvement.
    Contact Rory McClannahan at 823-7102 or online at editor@mvtelegraph.com.
    FOR THE RECORD
    A story published in the Feb. 14 issue of the Mountain View Telegraph contained incorrect information.
    The story should have read that capital credits from Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association of Colorado are usually paid at least 10 years in arrears out of margins accrued from previous years. Because Central New Mexico Electric Cooperative was not a Tri-State member until summer 2000, it has not received any allocations, according to Jim Van Someren, company spokesman for Tri-State.
    The error was due to incorrect information provided to the Telegraph.