Hanging On To A TV Collectible

My wife antiques and I am constantly amazed at the things she brings home. A few years ago she brought home a great old console TV set. It probably sat in someone’s den back in the 1950s and 60s. She took it to a TV repairman and he made a few adjustments to the picture tube and the set was good as new.
For a 1950s-era television set, that is.
We had a lot of fun with it because it was an accurate reflection of what use to pass for TV in this country. One forgets how spoiled we have become until you watch a set that we needed a rabbit ears antenna with “tin foil” stretched across it to get acceptable reception.
The great thing about this TV is that it is a classic, but it’s not very practical anymore. Since the conversion to digital broadcasting, it doesn’t even get a picture anymore. I guess you could hook a DVD player up to it and play old TV reruns, but that’s about it. Maybe old sets like that are destined to wind up in a museum someplace because the value of them will be so high in the future. Most people have thrown away their old analog sets or recycled them, opting instead to buy a new digital set that allows them to see programs in High Definition. Still, I know a lot of people who simply purchased converter boxes using those discount coupons.
Today, July 31st, 2009, was a milestone in the evolutionary saga of television. Today was the last day to use those discount coupons to buy converter boxes. The FCC tells us that of the 63.4-million coupons sent out, only 33-million have been redeemed. The government said 49,000 requests were received on Tuesday of this week by people still hoping to beat the deadline. So, if you still have your coupons hang onto them. Someday, they may be worth something to a TV collector, much the way people now collect POW bracelets and old drive-in speakers.
As for the Digital changeover itself, many people are discovering the biggest single factor affecting your TV reception is location. Thousands of Americans have lost television reception completely, simply because of where they live. I got an email this week from a longtime KRBC viewer who, for the first time in 15 years, was unable to see the station after converting to digital TV. He used to have to use a 20-foot antenna to get us, but even that doesn’t help anymore. The sad fact is that he may just be out of our range now because our digital pattern is not the same as our analog pattern was. I feel really bad about that because I think he wasn’t told the whole story about this digital conversion. The industry spent a lot of time selling the public on the benefits and somehow neglected to mention that some people would lose TV coverage in the process. In the end, digital was an “all or nothing” process…and as some are now finding out, it has been a frustrating and expensive process, too.

Downing Bolls