Apsattv
03-01-2008, 11:04 PM
From http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=281994
On Wednesday, the government began weaning Americans off rabbit-ear TV antennas.
On Feb. 17, 2009, the once-iconic devices will be useless. The feds are offering $40 coupons to encourage people to chuck their rabbit ears and buy converter boxes that will bring them into the digital age.
I’ll miss the rabbit ears. I tried to dig up mine just to get a look at them for old time’s sake and realized they didn’t make it through my last move.
R.I.P., my RCA rabbit ears, wherever you are. I hardly knew ye.
I used that pair once, during a power outage. But in my younger days, I had less money and a much closer relationship with rabbit ears.
I’ll never forget the various ways I arranged them to get the TV screen to approximate something visible to the human eye.
I never resorted to foil, but in one memorable instance, I placed the rabbit-ear stand on the floor, bent one antenna all the way to the back of the TV and stood the other one straight up at 90 degrees. To reduce fuzz, I perched a finger on one of the antennas. This position made it hard to eat my TV dinner, as I recall.
Other times, no matter how many ways I twisted the antennas or turned that knob — which I suspected never really worked — the screen still came in looking like super fuzz.
But at the time, it beat springing for cable.
Then there were the times the screen came in so clear, you couldn’t believe it. I was on rabbit ears and a 13-inch TV when I watched the women’s basketball team from my alma mater, Carolina, win the national title in 1994.
At Best Buy on Wednesday, I talked to Luis Maymi in the TV department.
“Everyone is wondering what’s going to happen, will they have to get a new TV,” he said.
They won’t, he said. He has been directing them to a Web site that explains how to get one or two coupons (“412 days to end of analog broadcasts” declares the home page).
The boxes will cost between $50 and $80.
Maymi pointed to a row of rabbit-ear antennas, noting that many of them had been returns. People had taken them home and realized they could only get about two channels, he said.
I smiled. Free TV is all about location.
Maymi says when he worked in the Raleigh area, he recorded the World Series on a TV using rabbit ears, designed for high-definition reception.
“The picture was phenomenal,” he said, and, pointing to one of the giant, LCD flat-screens, added, “just like what you would see over there.”
Many folks will carp about having to pay the difference between the government’s coupon and the cost of the new box. But they’ll be able to keep getting free TV, and that’s the important part.
And years down the road, the collective memory will all but forget that once a TV without an antenna was not a TV, and America was filled with people doing a living room dance with rabbit ears, all in search of the perfect reception.
On Wednesday, the government began weaning Americans off rabbit-ear TV antennas.
On Feb. 17, 2009, the once-iconic devices will be useless. The feds are offering $40 coupons to encourage people to chuck their rabbit ears and buy converter boxes that will bring them into the digital age.
I’ll miss the rabbit ears. I tried to dig up mine just to get a look at them for old time’s sake and realized they didn’t make it through my last move.
R.I.P., my RCA rabbit ears, wherever you are. I hardly knew ye.
I used that pair once, during a power outage. But in my younger days, I had less money and a much closer relationship with rabbit ears.
I’ll never forget the various ways I arranged them to get the TV screen to approximate something visible to the human eye.
I never resorted to foil, but in one memorable instance, I placed the rabbit-ear stand on the floor, bent one antenna all the way to the back of the TV and stood the other one straight up at 90 degrees. To reduce fuzz, I perched a finger on one of the antennas. This position made it hard to eat my TV dinner, as I recall.
Other times, no matter how many ways I twisted the antennas or turned that knob — which I suspected never really worked — the screen still came in looking like super fuzz.
But at the time, it beat springing for cable.
Then there were the times the screen came in so clear, you couldn’t believe it. I was on rabbit ears and a 13-inch TV when I watched the women’s basketball team from my alma mater, Carolina, win the national title in 1994.
At Best Buy on Wednesday, I talked to Luis Maymi in the TV department.
“Everyone is wondering what’s going to happen, will they have to get a new TV,” he said.
They won’t, he said. He has been directing them to a Web site that explains how to get one or two coupons (“412 days to end of analog broadcasts” declares the home page).
The boxes will cost between $50 and $80.
Maymi pointed to a row of rabbit-ear antennas, noting that many of them had been returns. People had taken them home and realized they could only get about two channels, he said.
I smiled. Free TV is all about location.
Maymi says when he worked in the Raleigh area, he recorded the World Series on a TV using rabbit ears, designed for high-definition reception.
“The picture was phenomenal,” he said, and, pointing to one of the giant, LCD flat-screens, added, “just like what you would see over there.”
Many folks will carp about having to pay the difference between the government’s coupon and the cost of the new box. But they’ll be able to keep getting free TV, and that’s the important part.
And years down the road, the collective memory will all but forget that once a TV without an antenna was not a TV, and America was filled with people doing a living room dance with rabbit ears, all in search of the perfect reception.