I got the reference that tacx was making and wasn't gonna pick apart his analogy , to any folks with TVs built before the inclusion of DTV tuners , Broadcast TV is all but dead unless you buy the converter box .
Now , many may complain about how this most recent change in the standardization of how television is broadcast is an unprecedented slap to consumers by making their perfectly functional TV obsolete , but it HAS happened before . Most folks don't know that there was TV prior to WW2 and that it was broadcast on various different frequencies and methods of scanning , two or three different competing systems in fact . The FCC , seeking a countrywide system whereby a TV sold in California could be taken to Florida and still be functional (which wouldn't have been possible without some set of standards by which TV was to be broadcast) , created the NTSC in 1941 to set and establish a set of standards for use countrywide . In the process of setting the Horizontal scanning rate at 525 lines per second , as a nod to Philco who wanted 600 or more lines of resolution , they instantly made obsolete ALL of the RCA televisions that were sold and operating on a 440 line system ! All those folks faced the exact same situation of converter boxes or just buying an "NTSC compliant" TV . These growing pains of the early development of TV , coupled with the onset of WW2 , kept TV out of most homes in mainstream America till the late 1940s / early 1950s . As a cool aside here , Have ya ever wondered what happened to channel ONE ??? On all TVs that were pre electronic tuning , the VHF range ran from channels 2 through 13 . But what of channel one ? Yep , you guessed it , it was lost in some legal pissing match between different factions within the TV/radio manufacturing businesses . The history of both radio and TV is littered with lawsuits and cutthroat antics that would make any ruthless business men of today proud , so this latest bit of "screw the customer" is really nothing new to the industry . Sure , ya can call it progress , it IS progress for the folks who want large slices of TV's former analog band of frequencies and to the politicians who will make mad $$ from those lobbying for a slice , but to the average joe all it means is "go pay for a converter box if ya want your TV to work" . Been there , seen that , anyone got a 440 to 525 line converter i can borrow ???
Anyway , back to the NIMH batteries , I still like the Eneloops
