DIY & Home Improvement
In reply to the discussion: Old television hell HELP [View all]LisaM
(28,889 posts)Like you, we had a small, older TV that we could watch in a pinch on an island we go to (we'd only put it on for really special events, like Michael Phelps breaking the Olympic title record, or the Michigan- Ohio State game). Other than things like that, it sat in the closet, but it could get the local ABC, CBS, PBS, and NBC stations, and we could get Canadian TV.
Then they changed the law, it could still (kind of) get the Canadian station, but nothing else. So we ditched the old TV, and I brought our smaller digital TV up one weekend so we could watch a game. I was pretty sure it wouldn't pick up any of the newly-digitized stations (I was right), so I bought an antenna, the strongest one they had at Best Buy and took that up, too.
All I got were three shopping channels from Vancouver, two of them in Chinese! I called the antenna company, and the guy was really very helpful, but he told me that due to the rock formations where we are, there were virtually no digital signals capable of crossing them. And we used to be able to get all the main channels!
So, I hear ya, this is ridiculous and was essentially a giveaway to satellite and cable (and now streaming) TV. The public owned the airwaves. So they took away the airwaves......