Today was supposed to be the day. We’d been warned for months by infomercials, headline banners running across the screen and campy commercials where our local weather man asked us if we were ready for the conversion to digital TV.
Being the mindless sheep that we are, we watched these commercials, hoped our TV could handle the conversion and debated the virtues of cable, but we never asked a few simple questions. Sure, the date to switch over to a digital signal got pushed back to June, but that doesn’t mean that people are going to explain the process any more succinctly, so let me ask my questions here…
- Will getting digital TV make me able to make fun of my friends who are spending $50 a month on cable? Will the reception be as good? Will I be able to go over to their house and say, “Yeah, cable is totally worth it cause you can watch the Oxygen network whenever you want.”
- When will I be able to talk about the rabbit ear antenna as, “back in my day”? I’m hoping the answer to this question is, “for the past twenty years,” cause that’s how long I’ve been doing it.
- Will I still not get CBS, but will get seven channels in Spanish? Is there a way to let the TV companies know that I’m not Spanish or is this punishment for being too cheap to get cable?
- Should I feel bad that all of the ads for the digital conversion are geared towards old people and I still have no idea how to hook this stupid thing up?
- What will happen if I don’t have a TV? Will it be like that time when I told people I didn’t watch TV, but watched 5 episodes of Iron Chef on Youtube every night?
- Will they have a “worst show in analog history” award? Can I nominate anything with Michael Rappaport in it?
- What will happen if I plug my converter into my microwave?
- What will happen if I turn on my electric shaver and then put it in the microwave?
- Are suspenders coming back?
- The Fonze was one of the coolest names ever, but is Winkler the dorkiest name ever? It’s seriously only rivaled by Vanilla Ice being Rob Van Winkle.
- Is a digital converter box a romantic Valentine’s day gift? Should I apologize to my girlfriend?
- Isn’t a TV commercial showing you how to set up your digital converter box incredibly counter intuitive since no one is going to set up their box until there isn’t an analog signal and they can’t see your stupid commercial!
