The news here recently said that 50 percent of the people still have only over
the air tv with an antenna (no cable tv and no satellite dishes).

me: If tthey all happen to have tv sets that go up to UIHF channel 83, then
when all over the air analog tv broadcasting stops in 2006 as Congress mandated
it must by law, how many of those people do you think will tune to EVERY
channel on their tv set in a futile attempt to find an analog tv station
broadcasting only to find out that they can hear cell phones on their tv sets!!
and then to further find out that the ONLY thing that their old tv sets are
good for picking up off the air IS cellular telephone calls.

That's right. Most all of the people in the HDTV newsgroups and elsewhere were
and are wrong when they said that the old analog tv sets wil be obsolete and
completely useless when analog tv broadcasting stops, and won't pick up any
transmissions anymore in a watchable or listenable format.

The truth is, if it goes up to UHF channel 83 (not to be confused with cable
channel 83), they WILL still pick up analog cellular telephone calls.

However, it is illegal to listen to them in the U.S. which does make the tv
sets useless legally.

The irony is that the ECPA got the law passed by Congress to prevent the
general public from eavesdropping on cell phone calls. But I would say that
most of the general public isn'tt aware of the ECPA law and isn't even aware
that cell phones can be heard on old tv sets. And since 50 percent of the
people still use only over the air tv for tv reception, when analog is shut
off, I would say that a majority of them will be tuning through ALL of the
channels on the tv sets.

The real irony here is that a device that was once meant for the general public
to watch and listen to legally (analog tv sets that go up to UHF channel 83)
will now be good ONLY for listening to cell phone calls and will therefore be
illegal to use.

And probably illegal to even have since the ONLY thing they will be good for is
for illegally eavesdropping on cell phone calls.

None of my tv sets get up to tv channel 83.

But I know some people who do have them.

So working tv sets that go that high up still exist in good condition,
therefore making my points in this message valid.