Just when I got bought my fancy new Toshiba laptop with HD DVD built in they go south on me.  Oh well.  At least I didn’t buy the Sammy 5000 duo player I’ve had on order through the reseller channel the last couple of months (which still has not been released to the CE integrators yet).  Time to start looking at BD-Live now.

After 20 years, Sony finally won a betamax war.

Can you tell us again how to get the “government $40.00 rebate” for the cost of buying the converter in 2009?

I’m only barely understanding this. I do have a TV. But, it’s old. And I have cable. So, I assume I’ll need to go and buy something. I want my govie-bux!!

Jeff Pollin

Jeff, this article does not pertain to the switch to digital TV broadcasting in 2009.  Nevertheless, as I understand it, you won’t need to buy a converter since you have cable.  The digital switch is necessary to free up analog broadcast airwaves, so you won’t (yet) be affected.

Jeff, you have cable, so why would you have to buy something new?  Unless your cable company changes, and then you’d need something from your cable company.  Doh! 

The only thing you need a box for is if you’re using an antenna with an older tv that only has an analog (ntsc) tuner (and no digital (atsc) tuner).  In that case, you’ll plug your antenna into the box and the box into the tv, the box will do the conversion from analog to digital for you, and you’ll change channels on the box instead of your tv itself.  Without that box, that old tv will be useless with an antenna, cuz nobody will be broadcasting analog anymore.  It wouldn’t be useless with cable, satellite, a vcr, a dvd player, etc, or of course a digital tuner box.

Just read what I typed and noticed an obvious mistake.  Typed too fast I guess.  The box converts digital to analog (not analog to digital), doh.

I can’t believe that Sony’s strategy of declaring victory from the onset actually worked.
I think it is a real commentary on the power of marketing.