I can’t watch a single major network on my “rabbit-ears” TV any more, at least, not without some serious picture breakup. The Digital Deadline has passed, and if anyone’s experience is like mine, the bunny has serious problems.

Think back to the ancient days of analog. We saw some fuzziness on my TV, but since I wasn’t paying for a cable box, it was fine. “Good Enough” beats “Nothing.” Now my bunny ears are sad. The picture is great – when I receive it – but the digital breakup is frequent and annoying.

I’m even amplifying the damn signal. I bought a Phillips HD powered antenna. These are bunny ears that should outrun a greyhound. Yet – there is little difference in the reception between the Phillips and nothing.

It’s not like I’m far from the broadcast towers, either. I Google-Mapped the distance and came up with 3.3 MILES. A signal should travel cleanly a lot further than that. I have state-of-the-art equipment, and a practically unusable TV.

Now, I do have cable in the other rooms, but I didn’t want to spring for a FIFTH box. Call me cheap. And in those good old analog days, I could see a picture clearly or, at worst, a little fuzzy.  I’m not going to stick an antenna on my roof, for crying out loud (this is progress?) and so I’m stuck with a useless monitor.

Or so it would seem.

Because the TV wouldn’t “work,” I decided to take another route: I turned it into a big laptop monitor. With an HDMI cable hooked from my laptop “out” to my TV “in,” suddenly, I have free TV. (Or, at least, I have TV off the broadband I’m paying for.) Thanks to Hulu, I can watch nearly any show I wish. With iTunes, I can download even more shows. Programs like Boxee contribute to my choices, and YouTube absolutely thrills my kids on the big screen. (That’s right – I said YouTube is one of my kids’ favorite “channels.” Take that, “high-quality-or-nothing” broadcasters.)

What does this mean for local broadcasters? It means yet another way around you. This time it’s actually worse – HDTV reception is actually forcing me away from you. Unless you’re live streaming, I can’t see you. This is big, big trouble for local media. And it’s another reason why, as Terry and I have said, you need to create original content and put it on the Web.

Yes, it’s true, I’m one of the digerati. Most people in the bunny-eared set won’t bother with my workaround – yet. But devices are out there that let you stream to your TV from the Web without a computer. We early adopters are usually about 18 months ahead of the curve. Inevitably, the new tech (think TiVo) catches up with everyone. The HDTV switch has downright forced me to go past the locals. This is sad, but it’s also as loud a cry for help as they come. Create programming I can’t get anywhere else. Put it online. The rabbit ears have gone down the bunny hole.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.