No, digital TV sucks for people in your situation. Where I live, I only got about 3 analog stations well. Now I get all the major networks and multiple channels from each one. I received my coupons shortly after ordering them and successfully used them to buy converter boxes that work great. My TV's picture has never been better in my life.

I understand the arguments against DTV, and even agree with some of them, but I would like to present myself as a counterexample to the "sucks for everyone" claim, because it's actually pretty awesome for me. Also I agree that it sucks that all we got in return for the sale of the spectrum was the stupid $40 coupons, which only accomplished raising the price of each box by $40.

Yeah, but kids that were little when Toy Story 2 came out are teenagers now. What about kids who weren't even born in 1999?

I'm not sure if you're trolling here, and if you are I apologize to everyone else, but seriously? When the ISP's start forwarding their (supposedly) vast profits on to the internet content providers maybe you'll have an argument. A lot of people are able to give away their stuff for free, and good for them. But all you're accomplishing is getting your favorite TV shows canceled because the majority of their viewers are people like you. Or, if you consider that the question for the content providers is not "how many people are watching this show?", but "how many people are watching this show's ads?", then basically no one is watching.

But they are already doing this to some degree. They have the Basic tier, with local channels, CNN, CSPAN, maybe the 20 most popular cable channels, then the extended package that has some of the more esoteric ones, then the different add-ons, like the "Movies Package", "Latin Package", "47 Sports Channels Package", etc. They are already charging us for levels of service, so why not make it smart enough that I can "downgrade" my service to just what I want?

Or why not give up "cable" per se for something like Hulu, where everything is on all the time, supported by ads (and not just one 30-second ad 4 times, 8 minutes per half hour, like we're subjected to on TV), only instead of shows only getting ad revenue during the 30 minutes when they air, they get it every time someone watches it until their damn copyright expires. And you could ask people for their location, age and gender, to tailor ads to them so I don't have to watch 14 denture creme and arthritis medication ads just because I like The Price is Right. Someone please explain to me what is wrong with my logic, because if I were right, Hulu would be doing this right now.

Question for someone who uses this: The descriptions seem to imply that you need to connect every land-line phone directly into the back of the device. This device hardly makes sense unless you can plug it into a phone jack on the wall and all the phones connected to the other jacks in the house will ring. Is this actually how it works?

I don't really see how this is a win (or even a loss, for that matter) for the consumer. Who owns the content that I paid for? The argument was whether it was owned by the cable company or the network, and it came up for the cable company. Who cares? It's still not me.

I don't tell people I'm against abortion, because I'm afraid they'll think I'm Pro-Life.

I don't tell people I don't think God exists, because I'm afraid they'll think I'm an Atheist.

I certainly never share both those opinions with people because they're such <sarcasm>obvious contradictions<\sarcasm>.

You're right, it's almost impossible to share your nuanced opinion with people, because they as soon as they hear certain key words they'll lump you in with the crazies associated with that viewpoint.

Fair enough, but I could make the same argument from the other side: So you're saying "just close your eyes and don't worry about it, and everything will be fine. We're the experts and we can confidently tell you that climate change is nonsense put forth by greedy hippies trying to steal your money."

I guess the point of TFA is that unless you want to dedicate years of your life to learning the ins and outs of climate science, you're just going to have to trust someone. I don't know who you should trust, though, because your point is valid. The people claiming to be experts don't necessarily know what they're talking about.

I don't think Hulu does care. It's the people that provide them with content that seem to think because it's a website that it can only be run on a computer and only nerds and people slacking off from work will use it. Once they realized that Boxee was designed for running on a TV, the situation changes. Once your computer is hooked up to your TV, the only reason to watch TV over Hulu is if you can't wait until the next day.

Now, consider how many ads run on TV vs on Hulu. One 30-second ad 6 times during a show? Half of which are for charities? How much money can they really be making off of Hulu? Of course the folks running Hulu just want to get their site used, but the content providers, as has been discussed time and time again, have no clue about anything, for example, that it's been possible, even easy, to hook your computer up to your TV for years. And since Hulu relies on the providers for their very existence, I think it's fair that they do just about everything the providers ask.

Support for remote controls. With MythTV I can control everything from the remote, but when I go to Hulu suddenly I have to use the mouse. It's kind of annoying.

I think you're assuming that the majority of consumers care whether a given musician is considered art, or are even capable of telling the difference.

Artists make art that they think is good. Fame/Success/Money-seekers make a product that will satisfy the desires of a large number of people. Do you really think good art will ever replace commercial art? Good art by its very nature challenges people, and most people don't want to be challenged. They want to go out and dance and party and get laid. And that is, not surprisingly, what most of the Top 40 are about.

I would argue that people will be upset if pointless, fun, mind-numbing, easy to listen to music dies in favor serious, artistic music. But we won't ever find out, because the market will always favor what's popular over what's good. If the labels die, the populist musicians will rise to prominence through a different venue and the true artists will still only be listened to by that small segment of the population that cares about artistic music.

I don't give a shit. If the record labels die I'll join the chorus singing "Hooray, the labels are dead." I'm saying it's not going to happen.

Everyone seems to think that if we just get right combination of technology and business saavy then a company like TuneCore can kill the record labels and usher in a new era of creative freedom. But guess what: people WANT to be told what to like. The 98% of the population that listens to music in their car, at work and in the gym doesn't have time to listen to 99 crappy indie albums to find the one they actually like. And even if they did have the time many wouldn't want to. And even then most people just want to listen to what people like them are listening to so others will think they are cool.

Certainly if recommender technologies keep getting better it will help, but they're not perfect now, and it will be a while before we can go completely without a middleman.

I don't think that's true. People want more than to break even on the cost of a CD, they want fame and success. If you want your song played on the radio or a music video on MTV, you still need to go through a major label.

I'm not saying this is a good thing. It's a pretty strong financial argument against the labels, but some people want to be famous, too.

Middle class and wealthy people bought homes they couldn't afford, too, which contributed just as much.

I've never understood blaming this whole thing on "the poor" when it seems pretty clear that everyone in every financial position was suffering from collective delusions about the health of the housing market.

It is also intellectually dishonest to assert that the fact that the analogy between copyright infringement and shoplifting is imperfect proves that copyright infringement - morally - is not theft.

There is room for debate on this matter, but it is not a stretch to define theft as "taking something without paying for it that the creator intended to sell", or something along those lines. The digital age is requiring us all to redefine certain things, particularly the idea of property. You're asking me to reexamine my definition of "ownership", but you can't be bothered to reexamine your definition of "theft"? That seems like a double-standard to me.