DTV - The End Of Television As We Know It

Before I get into the title post, I wanted to take a moment and thank my regular readers for your continued readership, comments and encouragement. Whether you do this via Twitter, email, or blog comments, I appreciate your participation and continued support.

I recently wrote about alternate side parking, I hope you have found it useful. I just used the post as a reference yesterday, to check to see if there was a holiday this week, if there was, I would have parked in the spot where the street cleaning took place during the holiday and thus save myself one quick trip. Hope my posts are as useful to you as they are to myself. My aim is to make FrugalNYC a destination for you to find all sorts of resources that help you in your day to day life, in any city. Now on to the post topic.

In September 2008 I wrote a post titled Free DTV, this post is a follow-up and reminder to that post. Starting February 17, 2009, analog television broadcasts in the United States will end. Are you ready for this change? If you still have an old TV like I do, and would like to stretch the life and usefulness of your old TV, you need to purchase a digital converter box. You can buy it at most electronics stores, there are many brands available and they pretty much all do the same thing. I have found the Best Buy Insignia model NS-DXA1-APT (SKU 8854527) to be very good, not to mention the remote can be programmed to control your old TV as well.

If you have cable or satellite, most likely, you are already using the proper hardware that's necessary for the transition. If you receive your TV signal via a rooftop antenna or a set-top antenna you need to purchase a digital to analog converter box. High Definition TV sets get a nice boost with DTV, because the signals are not compressed like many cable providers do. So you may get a better and clearer picture using over the air signals than you do with cable.

A friend of mine requested the $40 dollar coupon after reading my post in September, but he let it expire. Don't let that happen to you. So if you still have one of these coupons, use it soon, and save yourself $40 in the process. If you have not requested the coupon, there is now a waiting list, all coupons alloted have been given out and new ones will only be sent out as old and unused coupons expire. You can request your coupons from DTV2009.

From my tests using a mix of two TVs, two Converter boxes, and two set-top antennas, I have concluded that some converter boxes are better, and the antenna used can make a difference too. The Philips PHDTV1 Silver Sensor UHF/HDTV Digital Indoor TV Antenna is pretty well rated on Amazon. I know of some people who are using the Terk HDTVa Indoor Amplified High-Definition Antenna for Off-Air HDTV Reception, and have heard good things about it with HDTV reception. I used my existing TV antennas and they received digital SDTV signals crystal clear! You can pick up a $2 antenna like I did for my secondary TV and it will work fine in most neighborhoods.

Here are two DTV related links I have found, the first is Funny, and the from Wisebread is informative and also goes into watching TV via the web. Thanks for reading. For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add FrugalNYC to your RSS reader.

photo courtesy of videocrab