[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Walter Bright" <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:i6a52a$19jv$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Weird. 'Nothing else matters' is such a depressing-sounding song, I still 
>> can't imagine any grandmothers liking it. (But then who am I to talk? My 
>> granda's in her 80's, drives a Celica, and is the only person in my 
>> family to own an HDTV.)
>
> I talked my dad into getting a 60" HDTV. He loves it, as his vision is 
> poor and he can see it easily. Big TV sets are a godsend for the elderly.

My grandma's HDTV is only about 13". Actually, the only reason she got it 
was because her old small bedroom TV finally died (And by "old" I mean it 
had two knobs: one for VHF, one for UHF - hardware wasn't always designed to 
be disposable like it is now) and the only new ones available were HD.

Interesting thing to note is that this HD set with a rather expensive 
brand-new antenna and digital broadcast gets her *fewer* watchable channels 
than that ultra-old set did back before the analog cutoff. My dad's been 
even more worse off - since the switch he gets about one realistically 
watchable channel if he's lucky (used to get most of the local channels). 
And he's understandably pissed about it (partly because now he can't watch 
Letterman.) Neither of them live in rural areas. Broadcast DTV is shit. I 
honestly can't believe anyone was ever stupid enough to buy into the "DTV 
will give you more channels at better quality" bullshit. I mean seriously: 
you get interference on an analog signal and you get a little static 
overlaid - you get interference on digital signal and you get a dead fucking 
signal. Basic fucking electronic signaling. I saw through it from the start, 
but it's not like there was a damn thing I could have done about it - the 
overwhelming hordes of corporate lobbyists and consumer whores (Just visit 
"engadget") had spoken.