The government already does nationalized health care, and they do it fairly well (read: cheaply) for veterans, old people and poor people. So, I think they should extend that to everyone else.

And do you really think they're going to have the same people who are heading up the DTV transition doing national health care? I'm sure that fits right in with the FCC's mandate. That's like saying "because Wal-Mart sells cheap electronics, I don't believe in getting my prescription filled there". Two totally unrelated things. I take it you're a republican. You have nothing against the way the government protects your freedom and security with the standing army, I mean, considering they can't even figure out how to change from Analog to Digital TV, how do you think they can manage to protect your freedom.

As a popcorn hour user myself I will acknowledge that the issues you describe are there. But, on the other hand, what product, at any price point, will play the stuff that the popcorn hour will? I used XBMC for years and once I went HD found that XMBC wouldn't cut it anymore. I looked around and the ONLY device I could find was popcorn hour. You're right, 5.1 audio doesn't decode well, but I downsample 5.1 to 2.0 when I am ripping and compressing, and its fine. I use this to play HD media and for that, it shines. Short of building a $1000 computer for your media center, there is nothing else that comes CLOSE to the popcorn hour, and certainly not at the price/energy point.

The same retard who starts a company that after many years can pony up $670 million in cash to buy towers from Sprint? If your company owns TOWERS and deals with other BUSINESSES do you really think it matters what they're named?

This is one of the few times where a 'standard' picked by America actually proves to be better than what is used in the rest of the world. DAB is seeing a very slow buildout, where as America's HD (Hybrid Digital) is seeing a better buildout. It, of course, benifits from an additional 5 or so years of research, however...

Its not proportional. AM Broadcast band gets roughly 1.2MHz of bandwidth to cram in all the stations (0.520MHz - 1.710MHz). An NTSC or ATSC TV station is given 6MHz of spectrum (per channel). This means, that all the AM Radio stations fit in roughly 1/6th the space given to a single TV station. If you think you're going to fit much in 1.2MHz of bandwidth, think again...

FM Radio isn't much better. It gets 20MHz to play with for all stations, so the same as 3 TV stations get.

Not to mention that lower frequencies require gigantic antennas to transmit (without fancy coils, a full wavelength -- or the distance the traveled between the rise and fall of the sine wave that makes up the transmission). At 600KHz that is nearly 1600 feet. Not going to be able to make a very portable transmitter with an antenna that is 1600 feet long.

Low frequencies are very carved up, and work well for what they're alloted for, but the types of small, local area communications we need in the digital age are just better suited to higher frequencies. One, the signals are line of site, so you avoid interference issues. Also, as mentioned above, the antenna concerns. Not to mention just the sheer amount of bandwidth available at higher frequencies. Also, IIRC anything under 30MHz needs to be coordinated internationally to avoid interference -- those signals travel very far...

Confirmed in Cedar Rapids, D* has KGAN (CBS) KWWL (NBC) and KFXA (FOX). They have not come to an agreement with Cedar Rapids Gazette Co (KCRG) ABC yet for retransmit rights (sources close to the discussion who I've spoken with, also known as some guy on avs forum states they're close however).

On top of that, you must live in a Sprint service area -- NOT a Sprint Partners area like I do. How you can tell if you're in Sprint Partners? Well, its almost impossible. Best way to tell is to go to sprint.com and enter your zipcode. In my case its 52402 then get the caution "!" triangle with the caption "Sprint currently offers wireless service in the 52404 area." Well, whooptie shit. No SERO for me, however. What a bummer.

@h4idol

Thanks for the suggestion, I wasn't sure if I was leaning toward BlueRay or HD-DVD. I'm now pretty sure I want to see HD-DVD succeed just so that you look like an even bigger fool. You do realize that HD-DVD and BlueRay are pretty much the same thing. Same video and audio codecs... the disks are a little bit cheaper to produce. I guess that brings out the elitist in you, no HD for the masses, only overly expensive stuff!

I wonder if Wal-Mart carries HD-DVD, if so I'll be picking one up this weekend, I think.

I did this to my and my girlfriends unlocked iPhones last Saturday (it was mostly done but the source code to the server wasn't released). Worked like a charm. Fully upgraded to 1.1.1 without incident.

I have my iPhone working on i Wireless (a regional GSM carrier in Iowa) with EDGE and Youtube.

Video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qRt9a1hNA