Robert Hovland wrote:
Dear Newsgroup,

Does anyone know the latest info about what is going to happen to the FM
band when the FCC forces all of the VHF television stations to give up
their broadcast band and switch to the new freqency allocations for
digital TV?

[sneck]

The consequences I think of when I consider the moving of the FM band are
monstrous: what about all of the car radios, portable FM radios and
walkmen, and collector hifi FM tuners that will suddenly become unusable
without maybe some kind of adaptor which may or may not work very well?

Why should Mikey Powell give a rat's ass?

Really... we're going to all have to replace our TV sets when analog
television signals are phased out, aren't we? (At least that's what I've
been led to understand)

I personally have no desire to do so. I have digital cable. There is no
additional attraction to having HDTV.

The people south of here in the Marianas - the hills that separate Apple
Valley, California from San Bernardino - might benefit. But only the people
south or east of the Apple Valley town line, in unincorporated San Bernardino
County, because they can't get cable (Charter's franchises are in Hesperia
and Apple Valley and Victorville, but they don't have an agreement for the
unincorporated areas where not many people live)... and especially in the
Marianas, with the big hills right to the south, satellite might not be an
option either. (Going east of AV towards Lucerne and Big Bear, satellite
should be doable as the hills aren't over there.)

I've *always* considered HDTV to be a solution looking for a problem...

communications industry are done for the sake of the economic enrichment
of those companies who stand to profit richly from such a change, without
giving much, or any, consideration to the consequences.

That's fine. Mikey P. can buy me a new television set. :-P

When a land developer decides to make major changes to a piece of
undeveloped land, an environmental impact report has to be made before the
developer can go ahead with their plans. Where is the impact report for
this huge planned change in the FM band?

There is none. I doubt that anyone at the FCC cares (although I'm sure people
will pipe up and tell me I'm wrong

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