On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:38:42 -0600, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

fired this volley in news:8d0c8279-66a3-4b3c-9db1-
:

The good
news with the new digital stuff is that if you can get any sort of
signal strength, the picture is likely to be good, better in fringe
areas than with the old analog stuff. But it's either going to be
great or you aren't going to get it at all, no in-between fuzzy-ghosty
pic.

And there, Stan, is the crucial problem our emergency services planners
didn't think out well.

Not only is fringe area reception spotty, but rain and dust storms can
also interrupt it.

It used to be, you could rely upon a cheap battery-operated TV for
emergency information during major storms. Even a noisy, snowy picture
was (usually) useful for determining, say, storm tracks. Now, the
probability of that working has been reduced to almost zero.

You'd have thought that our far-sighted FCC and other planners of
emergency communications would have reserved ONE analog VHF station per
service area, just for that primary purpose. But no. Now we must rely
upon radio ONLY for crisis communications. That, or we can wait for the
sheriff's deputies to come along the streets with PAs blasting the news.

Hmmm... Town Criers! Who'd have thought we would have "planned"
ourselves back to that.


LLoyd


The FCC didn't do that to us, Lloyd, it was the idiots in CONGRESS who
passed the law requiring all TV to go to digital. Come Nov 2010 we
will have the opportunity to completely clean house in the Congress.
I, for one, am going to vote against ANY incumbent. I would like to
see ALL of them thrown out on their ears, regardless of party and see
us start over with some people who aren't crooks and who have no ties
to any groups. Wouldn't THAT be great?

Jim