About six weeks ago, America went digital with television, as we all are aware. How are we doing with the conversion process? Contrary to the dire predictions that tens of thousands of kids would never see Sesame Street again and seniors (that would be us baby boomers...) would never find out where the people of Lost are actually lost, the DTV, digital television, conversion is going pretty well and the over 55 baby boomer group gets the best report card. Gearlog says only about 1.1 percent of the U.S. population is behind the eightball, so to speak, which means 98.9 percent...

Let's get down to some basics - a quick 101 course in gadgets. What are the slickest, most popular and what do they do? Read on, Baby Boomer and let us introduce HDTV, smartphones, GIS and GPS. We're doing this strictly in the interest of economic stimulus - when you understand it all, you can go buy it all, right? HDTV - a micro-primer HDTV means High Definition Television. HDTV (or simply HD) and DTV (Digital Television) are not the same. On June 12, 2009 all US TV broadcasters were required to complete the switchover to DTV equipment (which didn't go...

Here's a little more insight into TV's changing bandwidth - the frequencies at which television receives a broadcast signal. As of June 12, we all know, TV broadcasters will switch from analog signals to digital. When that TV conversion happens, it will be difficult, if not impossible to receive channels lower than 7. Why? The most popular and most productive TV antennas are geared toward channels 7-51. Channels located below 7, like Chicago's CBS affiliate channel 2 or Fox 5 in New York, will change their frequencies to fit in that range. Grant Whipple, TV guru at...

I have written about this analog to DTV conversion until my eyes are blurry so I'm going to let Florence Henderson - Carol Brady of TV's Brady Bunch - have the last word on DTV conversion. Pointing you to CrunchGear's recent article, I'll tell you the Florence Henderson guide is pretty cool. Use the above link and scroll down to the second paragraph where the writer links you to Carol Brady's guide. It's a safe Pdf file and worth the read if you have any concerns about the coming broadcast television change over. I got a  kick out of the tone...

Why would we want to pay for television programs when we can get high definition programming free and with crystal clear picture? Trapped in a cable/satellite contract conundrum? Me too. When I lost my full time job to the economic crisis, I had to look for new ways to save money. My satellite HDTV service was an easy mark. Over the years the cost of this service has become a huge drain on the budget, but television in our home is considered a necessity. With just a little research, I re-discovered the Winegard venerable plain old antenna. It turns out that...

Here are some bright spots in the slow economy. If you don't have buckets of money laying around you're likely looking for ways to save money and trim the budget. We've talked about VOIP,before. It's coming of age, so have another look. And then dig in to Amazon's new on demand downloads of movies and TV. Amazon just rolled out their latest subscriber program last week and it rocks. I think they need to reduce the cost of the TV episodes, but the selection is terrific and the technology right on. If that isn't enough, Netflix has their instant downloads, unlimited...

The question of pricey Blu-Ray over about-to-be-has-been DVD is on my plate. I moved from Mississippi to Illinois recently and, for some reason, my DVD player didn't turn up. It was a good one, a Sony, with up-conversion which is the ability for the player to read standard programming into a sort of high-def clone. I have to decide where I want to put my money right now in times of recession, holiday spending, and the fledgling nature of Blu-Ray players. I can't afford an expensive Blu-Ray. I don't own any Blu-Ray discs. I have a couple hundred DVDs. I researched the opinions and...

It was bound to happen – a glitch in the switchover from analog TV to digital television signal that will occur in February. There is a possibility that some smaller viewing areas could end up TV-less, at least for a time. You might lose your favorite station even if you have a converter box. In fact, you might lose them all. It’s because some small stations are finding that their digital reception area is not as large as their analog area was.   Matthew Lasar at Ars Technica reports on the problem and explains what the FEDs will do to try to...