Hawaiian analog TV shutoff to come early, saving God's creatures

Technological progress marches forward, assimilating all those who resist -- we know this well in our line of work, but sometimes you've got to stand up and say, "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!" Take the digital TV transition in the United States for example: all the analog TV signals will be shut off in February. It won't be pretty, but it'll be progress. Hawaii, though, has a dilemma: it just so happens that the analog towers that'll be torn down are awfully close to the nests of the state's adorable and endangered petrel birds, whose nesting season also occurs in February. Hence Hawaii's digital switch will occur a month early on January 15th, so you 17,000 affected Hawaiians have that much less time to grab converter boxes, or you'll end up watching the next season of Lost in person on your beautiful beaches instead of your ancient tube televisions.

[Richard Lai @ Nov 11th 2008 7:05PM]

It's OK - Jack can go build sand castles.

[Lowest Ranked @ Nov 11th 2008 7:06PM]

4 8 15 16 23 42

[iEye @ Nov 11th 2008 7:07PM]

sweet, winning lotto numbers!

[dandaman @ Nov 11th 2008 7:57PM]

watch it man, do not dis on jack johnson

[iEye @ Nov 11th 2008 7:08PM]

Nice mish mash of iPhone icons and Star Trek TNG+ font!

[AlekZander @ Nov 11th 2008 7:26PM]

You fail at Lost references.

[ybd @ Nov 11th 2008 7:31PM]

I think that's a compliment.

[ntlam @ Nov 11th 2008 8:00PM]

oh iEye, you are bad.
too bad... in some years, iPod will be obsolete as well.

[klew @ Nov 11th 2008 8:30PM]

Since the show takes place in 2004-early 2005, obviously the iphone icons were stolen from whoever made this satellite phone.

[ABCNewser @ Nov 11th 2008 7:08PM]

BTW: The new season of LOST premiers Wednesday January 21, 2008 on ABC. The Premier will be 3 hours long! Can't wait.

[Richard Lai @ Nov 11th 2008 7:11PM]

Is there a time portal near London?

[Gabe @ Nov 11th 2008 7:38PM]

Yeah, I can't wait till January 2008.

[Reece @ Nov 11th 2008 7:52PM]

Wait...

They're still on the island!?

How on earth did they manage to drag it out this long?

[Ethan @ Nov 11th 2008 8:01PM]

Only one of those hours is an actual new story though.

[ABCNewser @ Nov 11th 2008 10:46PM]

Ok, I meant January 2009. The three hour premiere will consist of a one hour recap (not a rerun, a recap), and 2 brand new episodes, "Because You Left" and "The Lie."

[chickenator @ Nov 12th 2008 4:16AM]

The (Cake Is A) Lie

[Fundi @ Nov 12th 2008 4:38AM]

@Ethan

Two hours actually.

[joe23521 @ Nov 12th 2008 9:49AM]

@Ethan, didn't you die back in season one?

[Ethan @ Nov 13th 2008 4:48AM]

I thought it'd be like season 4 with one opener, because of the limited number of episodes. They must have a lot to explain in order to get the ball rolling.

I thought it'd be a sort of cultural impact documentary, then a clip show, then the opener. Now it turns out I only have to turn up one hour late to the 'event.'

I think there's actually a guy on engadget who's called themselves Ethan Rom.

[Towncivilian @ Nov 11th 2008 7:10PM]

"I won't preside over the demise of Ferengi civilization! … The line has to be drawn here! This far, and no further!" - Quark, in "The Dogs of War"

[Jeff @ Nov 11th 2008 10:08PM]

Best. Meta-reference. Ever.

[Nathan @ Nov 12th 2008 3:42AM]

THANK GOD I am not the only one to pick that up!

[Jon @ Nov 12th 2008 2:16PM]

Really? I rather thought "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!" was Picard in ST:First Contact whilst talking to Lilly in his ready-room. Oh, the geek-manity!

[phanbouy @ Nov 11th 2008 7:15PM]

who cares? there's COUGARS ON THE LOOSE!!!!!11111111111111

[whatishalo? @ Nov 11th 2008 7:18PM]

COUGARS? Cool, if they are hott I'll do 'em

[phanbouy @ Nov 11th 2008 7:31PM]

they point at you. with really bad nail jobs.

[phanbouy @ Nov 11th 2008 10:31PM]

wow, guess people really like their Cougar banner ads here.

[Wwhat @ Nov 11th 2008 7:19PM]

So did they find a way to quickly channel surf in the US yet with digital? Over here on digital cable it's rather annoyingly slow as the buffer of every channel fills before it switches making channel surfing a thing just annoyingly enough so you quickly give up on it, which in turn makes you turn off the TV.
Ironically it's the only saving grace of regular TV, surfing, for shows you plan to watch it's better to use other non ad-laden venues and TV's use is really relegated to surfing.

[Chuckles McGee @ Nov 12th 2008 7:05AM]

Noticed the same thing whether it's over-the-air HD or satellite. I'm sure there's a way to get around that (maybe by buffering a single frame every 10 seconds or so from adjacent channels for quick display when flipping), but I'm no expert.

[linuxamp @ Nov 11th 2008 7:22PM]

I always had this feeling that Hawaii's government was bad at planning this kind of thing. The state government is always on "Hawaiian time" so when the deadline nears, they make mistakes like this bird fiasco.

The biggest example is the H3 project but I'm sure the train/monorail project in the works will be just as bad.

[Shea @ Nov 12th 2008 4:45AM]

I've got no doubt about your stance on the rail plans... but if you'll forgive my ignorance, might I ask what happened with the H3...? I wasn't living in the 808 at that stage...

[StalematE @ Nov 11th 2008 7:30PM]

on a side note, Jorge Garcia (Hugo) has been on that island for 5 seasons and is still a lardass.

[Ethan @ Nov 11th 2008 8:00PM]

He is now at least 30% dharma ranch dressing.

[rubirubia @ Nov 11th 2008 8:51PM]

Yeah but they've only been on the island 108 days. (And there lots of empty calorie goodies in the hatch.)

[willxcore @ Nov 11th 2008 9:46PM]

he went to my high school :]]

[StalematE @ Nov 11th 2008 7:31PM]

did you change your icon to the phone button in hopes that someone might actually call you?

[InvadrZIM @ Nov 11th 2008 7:38PM]

why not leave them up and use them for white space internet transmitters? or does itt not work like that?

[Benson @ Nov 11th 2008 9:41PM]

It does work like that, provided all you want to do is transmit the entire internet; with broadcast communications, browsers don't request web pages, they just wait till the right page gets broadcast... otherwise, an "internet transmitter" isn't quite what you want.


Unfortunately, there's the question of where to start from, and in what order to stream the internet, not to mention that it's growing faster than you can broadcast, but I'd just start from 3.14159265 and keep going. It's all in there. (Or if not, we wind up proving (negatively) the normality of pi, which is even cooler!)

[Benson @ Nov 11th 2008 9:42PM]

(Technically, of course, you could do an asymmetric solution like one-way satellite internet, where you use a high bandwidth, but one-way, downlink, and use a telephone line (or cellular, to go all-wireless) for uplink, but that still doesn't look like a good idea.)

[Tired_ @ Nov 12th 2008 12:27AM]

Even if they just use the existing towers for a completely different technology, seems it'd be cheaper/easier to reuse an analog TV tower with new antennas, rather than building a whole new tower for LTE five feet away and tearing down the old one.

[broli @ Nov 11th 2008 7:38PM]

Do you guys remember when we thought this device looked like the iPhone.

[iEye @ Nov 11th 2008 7:46PM]

Ah, yes the iPhone... I hear the next iPhone will be made out of CARBON FIBER!!!!

as always the iPhone will be 5 years ahead of the competition in UI, and now build materials...

[Reece @ Nov 11th 2008 7:53PM]

Ass.

[lorddshadow2 @ Nov 11th 2008 8:15PM]

i'm pretty sure they already made phones with carbon fiber. n00b!!! sry guys for feeding the troll. we should starve him but it's not as fun as bursting his iBubble.

[OCEAN 'CLAK' 20th @ Nov 11th 2008 11:31PM]

'i' have to agree with 'ieye' other phone manufactures are like 10years behind the iphone, thats why steve was born, to make the world a better place,

@ broli 'i' agree they should use iphone instead, the others a cheap iphone knock off

[Jon2309 @ Nov 12th 2008 11:30AM]

Wow, iEye's comments are becoming so faint, I have to copy-paste them into notes.


Oh, wait.

[Ethan @ Nov 11th 2008 7:59PM]

Sawyer won't mind, he's been sent back in time anyway, so he can make some more archaic references to tv programs I've never seen.

[RedShirt @ Nov 11th 2008 8:28PM]

WALT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[icepop4who @ Nov 11th 2008 8:33PM]

people watch tv in hawaii? i would never watch tv if i'm in hawaii; there's too much fun to be had outside

[NickLee808 @ Nov 12th 2008 1:47AM]

Yes, we watch TV in Hawaii.
No, we do not have beautiful beaches.