Microsoft Money to be Discontinued

Microsoft has recently announced that it will discontinue its Money Software. In late 2007 (at the same time that bought my tax preparation software), I bought a copy of Microsoft Money Plus (2008). And in January of this year, I wrote that Microsoft decided not to release a 2009 version of Money. It turns out that Money Plus will be the last version of MS Money to be produced. The following notice was posted on the Microsoft Money website:

Important notice: Microsoft Money Plus will not be available for purchase after June 30, 2009. All purchased Money Plus products must be activated prior to Jan. 31, 2011.

With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.

We would like to thank the many dedicated users who have been enthusiastic supporters of Microsoft Money over the years, as well as our partner financial institutions who helped pioneer a digital vision of financial management.

Microsoft remains committed to helping customers chart a course to financial well-being. The MSN Money Web site will continue to provide personal finance information and advice plus comprehensive market news and quotes. We will continue to evolve and enhance the online MSN offering in the coming months.

Microsoft also posted an FAQ on the topic.

To tell the truth, I never installed installed MS Money Plus on my computer, and am still running Money 2007. The Money FAQ has some interesting recommendations to people in my situation. Here are a couple of questions and answers from the FAQ:

Q: I am Money 2007 user. Should I upgrade to Money Plus before sales end?
A: If you are still using Money 2007, it is not recommended that you upgrade to Money Plus at this time.

Q: I am a Money 2006 or earlier user. What should I do?
A: If you are still using Money 2006, it is not recommended that you upgrade to Money Plus at this time.

So, Microsoft is not even recommending that people upgrade to the last and final version of MS Money. I have an unused and unactivated copy of Microsoft Money Plus that Microsoft does not recommend I upgrade to. Maybe I ought to sell my copy of Money Plus on eBay.

What do I do now? There is a new version of Quicken 2009, and I might consider buying that or a 2010 version when it is available. Also, an anonymous commenter on my last post suggested that I ought to consider GnuCash. According to the reader, GnuCash is 100% free and very powerful. I have downloaded this software, and I won't dispute these claims. However, I will say that GnuCash is not as intuitive as either MS Money or Intuit's Quicken.

Interested readers can read more about GnuCash at: http://www.gnucash.org/
You will also find links to download a free copy of the software for Windows (63MB). The source code is also free and available if you want to compile it for Linux, UNIX, or Macintosh.

DC

New Bank Offers Highest Money Market Rate

Savings account interest rates have dropped again. However, there is some good news. Since my last update, I have added a couple of new banks to my list that are offering 2.05% APY on a money market account. These banks are Ally Bank and ShoreBank Direct. These were the highest money market yields that I could find. There is no telling how long these offers will last, but I think that it is worthwhile to consider these options if you are willing to open a new account.

It has been difficult to keep track of which financial institution has the best interest rates on deposits. So periodically, I will post a list of the annual percentage yields (APYs) for institutions that I have accounts at, or have otherwise mentioned in my blog. These rates are sorted by APY:

2.05% Ally Bank Online Savings
2.05% Shorebank Direct Online High-Yield Savings
1.80% Umbrellabank Pot O' Gold Money Market
1.55% HSBCDirect Online Savings
1.50% Citibank Ultimate Money
1.50% Bank of America SavingsLink**
1.50% ING Direct Orange Savings
1.40% Citibank Ultimate Savings
1.00% Guaranty Bank Gold Rewards Money Market
0.95% E*TRADE Complete Savings
0.75% Chase (formerly WaMu) Online Savings
0.75% Western FCU Money Market
0.14% PayPal Money Market*

*Note that the PayPal Money Market fund is NOT FDIC insured.
**SavingsLink account is no longer offered to new customers.
Rates are believed to be accurate as of 6/15/09. I did not include banks that had special, or introductory rates in the list because they are not ongoing interest rates. I am also not including non-liquid accounts such as CD's in the list.

I think that the big news is that there are banks that still offer higher interest rates, but you really have to seek out these banks. A note about Ally Bank is that it not exactly a new bank, but it is actually the reincarnation of GMAC Bank (originally General Motors Acceptance Corporation). With the former parent company (GM) in bankruptcy, they have made an effort to shed any remaining association with the original GM. The SavingsLink account (originally from Countrywide Bank) has fallen considerably from the top of the list, and Bank of America no longer offers this account to new customers.

Historically, money market funds (offered through brokerages) have paid a higher interest rate than their counterparts at commercial banks. However, this situation has reversed itself, and the money market funds are now at the bottom of the list. Money market funds are NOT insured by the FDIC. However, money market accounts offered through banks are.

DC

Rescan Your DTV tuner

Did any of your local TV stations disappear last night? Officially, all regular television stations in the United States stopped broadcasting analog TV signals and switched exclusively to digital broadcasting as of yesterday, June 12th. Because some digital stations have moved to different channel numbers, everybody should re-scan their DTV tuners to ensure that you will receive all of the digital stations broadcasting in your area. This is usually a straightforward procedure.

My DTV converter box is an Insignia NS-DXA1-APT, but it is very similar to the Insignia NS-DXA1 as well as the Zenith DTT901 and DTT900 models. On these models, I push the Menu button on the remote control to get into the setup menu. From there I would select either Auto Tuning, or EZ Add, and follow the on-screen directions to scan for new channels. If you have any difficulty doing this on your DTV converter, then you should consult the manual that came with your DTV box.

For some background information, the switch to digital TV is not as simple as just turning off analog TV broadcasts. Until June 12, 2009, TV broadcasts were received on channels 2-69. After the digital transition is complete channels 52-69 will be reallocated for other uses. In Silicon Valley, where I live, the digital TV station KTEH is on channel 54-1. KTEH is really broadcast on digital channel 50, but shows up as 54-1 through a process known as virtual channel numbering. The analog channel 54 will disappear after the DTV transition.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, KGO broadcasts analog TV on channel 7, and digital TV on channel 24. After switching off the analog channel, they will return the digital broadcast to channel 7. More complex is the case of KTVU which broadcasts analog on Channel 2, and digital on channel 56. After the switch off, they will broadcast on channel 44. However until June 12th, Channel 44 was used by KBCW (the old KBHK). For obvious reasons KBCW needs to shutdown their analog transmitter before KTVU can take over this channel. Is this confusing enough for you?

In addition to my DTV converter box, I also bought a DVD/VCR recorder with a built-in digital tuner. If I use an antenna with this device, I will also have to rescan the channels to receive over-the-air (OTA) TV broadcasts.

DC

New Government Acronyms

Super Saver over at My Wealth Builder has just published a very funny list of new acronyms used for government bailout programs. On his list are the "Special Creative Accounting Methods" (SCAM) and "President Obama's Oversight Program" (POOP).

To see the whole list, read the whole post. Let me know if you can think of any more creative acronyms that the government ought to be using.

DC

Diapers.com Coupon Code

Elias over at Finance Puzzle has recently had a baby. In one of his posts, he mentioned saving $10 when buying diapers from Diapers.com. He used a promotional discount coupon code: drybb.

The promo code (drybb) is good for $10 off of your first order from Diapers.com. In addition, they offer free shipping with a purchase of $49 or more. Although they are best known for diapers, Diapers.com also sells other baby products such as wipes, clothes, toys, books, car seats, strollers, etc.

Diapers.com’s claim to fame is fast shipping. Based on what other people have said, delivery usually takes about 1-2 days. In some cases orders are delivered in less than 24 hours.

Anyway, I thought that I would pass along this information to my blog readers in hopes that it can save you some money. If readers know of other helpful discount codes, please let me know.

DC

Latest Money Rates 5/09

Over the past month or so, savings account interest rates have remained about the same or have dropped only slightly. It has been difficult to keep track of which financial institution has the best interest rates on deposits. So periodically, I will post a list of the annual percentage yields (APYs) for institutions that I have accounts at, or have otherwise mentioned in my blog. These rates are sorted by APY:

2.05% Umbrellabank Pot O' Gold Money Market
1.65% Citibank Ultimate Savings
1.65% HSBCDirect Online Savings
1.65% Countrywide (now Bank of America) SavingsLink
1.50% ING Direct Orange Savings
1.20% E*TRADE Complete Savings
1.20% Guaranty Bank Gold Rewards Money Market
0.85% Washington Mutual (WaMu) Online Savings
0.75% Western FCU Money Market
0.21% PayPal Money Market*
0.05% TD Ameritrade Money Market*

*Note that the PayPal Money Market and the TD Ameritrade Money Market funds are NOT FDIC insured.
Rates are believed to be accurate as of 4/30/09. I did not include banks that had special, or introductory rates in the list because they are not ongoing interest rates. I am also not including non-liquid accounts such as CD's in the list.

In my last post about money market rates, I mentioned that I did open an Umbrellabank Pot O' Gold Money Market account, which gives the highest interest rate in my list. Now, I'm in the process of moving more money into Umbrellabank. The 0.85% rate that I'm getting at Washington Mutual (WaMu) is particularly disappointing, and I have been moving money out of WaMu (soon to be Chase) over the last few months.

As I mentioned before, Smarty of Growing Money has published an interesting post listing a few institutions that are still offering good interest rates. Please see his post 10 High-Yield Savings Accounts. Note that his post is a couple of months old, and most of the interest rates have changed. Nevertheless, I would like get some feedback (good or bad) from anybody who has an account at any of the institutions that Smarty mentioned:

Broadway Federal Bank
ShoreBank
Alliant Credit Union
Danversbank
CNB Bank Direct
Chesapeake Bank
Provident Direct
GMAC Bank
Presidential Online Bank
FNBO Direct

Historically, money market funds (offered through brokerages) have paid a higher interest rate than their counterparts at commercial banks. However, this situation has reversed itself, and the money market funds are now at the bottom of the list. Money market funds are NOT insured by the FDIC. However, money market accounts offered through banks are.

After I published my last update, I found a website that copied my last six posts verbatim, without giving any credit to or even mentioning PFStock. There is one word for this: Plagiarism. I found the plagiarizer through trackbacks on Smarty's blog. After sending a cease and desist Email to the plagiarizer, I got him to remove the stolen material from his website.

DC

Searching for Market Direction

These days everybody is searching for clues about where the stock market is headed. I wrote a post a while back about predicting stock market direction. The stock market sure is volatile these days; one week the market is up, the next week it is down. Even on a day-to-day basis, the stock market sentiment can turn around 180 degrees. Although my original post is more than a year old, it remains as applicable today as it did when I wrote it.

I think that we would all like to have some insight into where the stock market is going, and I am not a psychic in this regard. But, there are ways to predict the direction of the stock market. These predictive insights come from the stock futures markets.

The CME Group (formerly called the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) trades stock market futures contracts. Specifically these futures contracts are for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 and are known as equity index futures. By observing the behavior of these equity indices, you can often predict how the stock market will do in early trading. This prediction gets more and more accurate as it gets closer to the stock market opening.

The CME Group has a page that displays the most popular equity index futures in one place. Pay special attention to what is known as the "Globex Flash Quotes". Each week, the Globex trades nearly continuously from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon. This is by design so that US stock market futures can be traded by people around the world.

In the example, green numbers for the S&P and Nasdaq futures predict an up day in the stock market. Red numbers would predict a down day. However, I will warn you that these "predictions" are only reliable for early trading. I am sure that you've seen it happen many times where the stock market opens up in the beginning and ends significantly lower. Or the stock market drops in the early minutes of trading, only to recover significantly before the end of the day.

Another places to look for a predictions of stock market direction are in the International Market indices. These indices tell you how the overseas markets are doing. If the markets in Asia and in Europe have had a down day, it is likely that the US markets will follow suit.

DC

Plagiarizers

There are many pitfalls to writing a finance blog. Among them are deflecting comments from irate readers who (like most of us) have lost money in the financial markets recently, and are looking for somebody else to blame for their misfortune. But nothing irks me more than the wholesale plagiarizing of my blog. This is the one issue that makes me want to throw in the towel, and quit blogging for good.

Let me be clear on what plagiarism is not. If you copy a portion of a blog post (1-2 paragraphs), but attribute that the author (usually with a link to the original post), that is not plagiarism. In fact, this is generally encouraged among bloggers who appreciate incoming links. However, I have recently discovered a website that reproduced my last 6 posts on PFStock, verbatim. This website is a stock market blog written by somebody named "Allen". And, he has stolen credit not only from me but also from a several people that I recognize as stock market bloggers.

The way that I discovered this fraudulent website is mostly by chance. I recently wrote a post that I linked to a post on Smarty's blog, Growing Money. When I reread his post, I noticed that someone else had linked to his blog post with a topic that was very similar to mine. I wanted to see what the other poster said, and I clicked on the backlink to discover my own post reproduced on the plagiarizer's website. This blogger was even too lazy to edit the links.

Anyway, to deal with the issue, I found out the Email of the website owner by using the WHOIS Lookup for domain name servers at Network Solutions. I also also found an Email address for his web hosting company. Armed with this information, I drafted an Email that looked something like this:

Dear Sirs:

It has come to my attention that a website run by you has been deliberately plagiarizing material from my blog PFStock ( http://pfstock.blogspot.com ) without my permission.

I demand that you immediately cease and desist this activity, and that you remove from your website all of the stolen material. If you fail to do so, I will seek further action against you and your company.

Sincerely,
PF Stock

After sending this Email to the plagiarizer and his web hosting company, another exchange of Emails ensued. Finally, I got the plagiarizer to remove the stolen posts from his site. I also noted that if I ever catch him plagiarizing again, I would take legal action against him.

Like I said, plagiarism is probably the one issue that really makes me want to quit blogging. Hopefully, this will be the last time I have to take such measures against people copying my blog. But somehow, I doubt it.

DC

How Much Do You Make?

That is the question that everybody would like to know the answer to, but nobody wants to ask. I mentioned before how readers are innately curious other people's net worth. I think this is because of people's natural curiosity -- wanting to assess how one is doing compared to others. When you read new blog or meet somebody new, do you ever wonder how much they make?

So, how much do you make? Madame X, who writes My Open Wallet (one of the blogs on my blog list), has asked the question not once but twice. Do you think she got any responses? In fact, she received hundreds of comments on her posts. Here are a few that I picked out.

I'm a 22-year-old woman, single, living in the midwest. I work tech support for a software company, and I make $32,000. I just finished a degree in English, so I feel like I'm doing pretty well for myself.

I'm at 31 year old living in small town in Ohio, I have a BS degree. I work for a non-profit managing the office & doing all accounting, marketing, fund-raising, communication (pretty much everything) for about $19,000 per year. I have no debt and I am 8 yrs away from paying off my house.

Male, 41 living in Fredericksburg, VA. I work for the patent office, 114,000/yr plus 5000-10000 bonus + overtime.

I'm 41, male, single, an MD in Illinois. Annual base income $180K (excluding bonus which may add another $20-30K at year's end).

Mid-40's, male, married, no kids, Wall Streeter, live in same part of Brooklyn as Madame X, own brownstone and investment properties w/rental income. Total income ranges from upper six-figures to over $1mm depending on what year, what you count, and how you count it (ex. stk options, rental income, invmnt distributions, etc).

Bay Area, single female, 41yrs old, Software Engineering Director, $130K/yr.

So, now I'm asking: how much do you make?

DC

Latest Money Market Rates

Overall, savings account interest rates are continuing to drop. It has been difficult to keep track of the rates that I've been getting in my various money market accounts. So, I've decided to periodically post a list of the annual percentage yields (APYs) for institutions that I have accounts at, or have otherwise mentioned in the blog. These rates are sorted by APY.

2.05% Umbrellabank Pot O' Gold Money Market
1.75% Citibank Ultimate Savings
1.65% HSBCDirect Online Savings
1.65% Countrywide SavingsLink
1.50% ING Direct Orange Savings
1.45% E*TRADE Complete Savings
1.20% Guaranty Bank Gold Rewards Money Market
0.85% Washington Mutual (WaMu) Online Savings
0.75% Western FCU Money Market
0.32% PayPal Money Market*
0.05% TD Ameritrade Money Market*

Rates are believed to be accurate as of 4/6/09. I did not include banks that had special, or introductory rates in the list because these are not ongoing interest rates. I am also not including non-liquid accounts such as CD's in the list.

*Note that the PayPal Money Market and the TD Ameritrade Money Market funds are NOT FDIC insured.

After my last post on the topic, I did open an Umbrellabank Pot O' Gold Money Market account, which gives the highest interest rate in my list. The 0.85% rate that I'm getting at Washington Mutual (WaMu) is particularly disappointing, and I have been moving money out of WaMu (soon to be Chase) over the last few months.

My fellow blogger, Smarty has published a interesting post with a few institutions that are still offering good interest rates. Please see his post 10 High-Yield Savings Accounts. Note that his post is more than a month old, and the interest rates may have changed.

Historically, money market funds (offered through brokerages) have paid a higher interest rate than their counterparts at commercial banks. However, this situation has reversed itself, and the money market funds are now at the bottom of the list. Money market funds are NOT insured by the FDIC. However, money market accounts offered through banks are.

Due to the ridiculously low interest rates paid by TD Ameritrade and other ongoing issues that I've had with TD Ameritrade, I'm seriously considering moving my assets to another brokerage. Does anybody have some suggestions?

In these times of uncertainty, I will repeat two pieces of advice that I think few people would disagree with:
1) Never exceed the FDIC insurance limits.
2) Don't keep all of your money in one place.

DC

Determined Californians!

I have mentioned the Retire Early Home Page Discussion Board as being a resource for those interested in early retirement. Topics on this board range from starting to save for retirement to leisure activities after retirement. Some posts seek investment or retirement advice from other readers. One post in particular has stuck in my mind over the years. This post titled "Early Retirement Plan needs investment advice" was written on August 12, 2005:

We have a very serious plan to retire in 3 years (2008) and need advice on investing the lump sum Capital Gains from our properties.

Our plan is to have a total of 10 rentals by the end of this year. So far we have 5 and buying homes very aggressively to achieve this goal by the end of this year. We are breaking even after renting each home. I figure that by the end of 3 years, assuming they all appreciate at the current rate of 30% we will have $2.7M in equity.

After 2008 the Capital Gains tax reverts back to 28%. We want to sell all our properties in 2008 pay the taxes at the 15% capital gains rate and start our retirement. Our thought is that we live off the interest for a long period of time.

I will be 45 and my husband will be 38. This will be a huge accomplishment if this happens and we’re working very hard at it.

I have read many books, articles and logged on to many websites. I still have a long ways to go on educating myself in the investment arena.

What suggestions do you have for rookies like us in putting our money is a safe but of course high interest account to allow us to live off the interest?

We have a combined total of $35,000 in our 401K, both currently work making a combined income of $170,000/yr and have no other investments besides our rental properties. After our planned retirement, our expenses would be $70,000/year to live comfortably, after paying off our main residence.

Determined Californians

This post was written by shelnbud, and is the only post that this author ever posted on the Retire Early forum. Replies to this post from other members of the message board were critical of the lack of diversification in the author's "retirement plan". I don't think I need to add my own commentary since the post itself speaks volumes...

DC

Stores Offering Discover Cashover

You can use a Discover Card to get cash back at the grocery store. Discover calls this the "cash over" option, and you can choose it when you checkout at the supermarket. For me, this works out to be a nice interest free loan, since I pay off my card every month. It also saves me a trip to the ATM. Officially, Discover says that most supermarkets have a Cash Over limit of $50, but I've noticed that my local Safeway limits me to $40.

Since I first mentioned getting cash back at supermarkets when using a Discover Card, there have been questions about which supermarkets allow cash back on this credit card. According to discovercard.com, the following stores offer cashover:

Big Y, Hannaford, Safeway, bloom, Heinen's, SAM'S CLUB, Carrs, Meijer, ShopRite, Dominick's, Pak'n Save, Sweetbay, Food Lion, Pavilions, Tom Thumb, Genuardi's, Randalls, Vons, Giant Eagle, and Walmart.

It used to be that the cashback goes on your monthly statement as being a purchase. But Discover changed this so that they now classify the cash back as being a "cashover". They separate out the "cash over" part from the "purchase" part of the transaction. And, you don't earn the regular Discover Card cashback bonus on the cash over amount.

Warning: I do not recommend this strategy for people who run a balance on their credit card because you will end up paying interest charges on the cash over amount.

If you found this information useful, please consider making a donation by clicking the PayPal button below. Thanks. DC

More TD Ameritrade Spam

I haven't written about this in a while but, it is happening again. I am getting spam at my Ameritrade Email address. To protect my Email, I use a unique Email address for my Ameritrade account, which is accomplished through Yahoo's "AddressGuard" feature. Because I've only given this unique Email address to Ameritrade, they are supposed to be the only entity that knows this unique Email address.

However, I've recently gotten significant amounts of spam at the Email that only Ameritrade is supposed to know about. Whenever this happens, I will usually change my Email address to a new one, and delete the old Email address. This has happened four times already, and it seems that my Ameritrade Email address has been repeatedly compromised. I know that this problem has been an ongoing a security issue at Ameritrade.

Shortly after I posted my last article about TD Ameritrade Spam, TD Ameritrade announced that they discovered "unauthorized code that allowed an external source to retrieve certain client information" from their system. How can this "unauthorized code" magically appear in their software? Clearly this was an inside job, as it seems that TD Ameritrade has a more than a few disgruntled employees...

By contrast, the Email address that I use for E*TRADE, and several banks has never been compromised. There is also a reason why I cannot delete my existing Email address, and setup a new one with Ameritrade. It has to do with courtesy fill notifications. I have asked Ameritrade to change my Email address, but the courtesy fill notifications are on a different system that retains my old Email address. I spoke to Ameritrade's customer service people about this issue. But, the Ameritrade CSRs are so incompetent that they don't know how to change Email addresses for courtesy fill notifications. In fact, some Ameritrade employees aren't even aware that they offer a courtesy fill notification service.

DC

Early Retirement Revisited

I haven't written about early retirement in awhile. So, let me first reiterate what I think are the three common rules among those who have retired early:
1) Living below your means (LBYM).
2) Maintaining a diversified investment portfolio on which to draw from.
3) Using a conservative 4% rule of thumb as a baseline for withdrawing from your retirement savings.

In my previous posts on PFStock, I have mentioned Billy and Akaisha Kaderli. This couple retired in their late 30s, and claim to live off of $24,000 per year. In my communications with the Kaderlis I have determined that they live in what is commonly known as a mobile home. When I asked my readers if they thought that they could live off of $24k a year, or retire to a mobile home, I did not get an overwhelming response. So, one could say that early retirees are often willing to do what most people are not.

I recently came across a blog that purports to be be about early retirement. But, the author is not actually retired, and the blog really focuses on an extreme version of what is known as "voluntary simplicity". Some suggestions mentioned in this blog are turn down the heat to 55F, stop drinking milk, and reuse gift wrap. This got me thinking that practically anyone could claim "retirement" by reducing their consumption to a very small fraction of their net worth. The real question then is "would you be willing to reduce your consumption to this level?"

Along these same lines is the book Your Money or your Life (YMOYL) written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. I read YMOYL a while back. While there certainly is a lot of good information in this book, some of the suggestions may be equally unappealing to many people.

The authors of YMOYL encourage the reader to thoroughly evaluate the value of each item they have, and track every last penny that comes into or out of your life. This is an activity that I personally frown upon, as I don't think that people should obsess about the minute details of every financial transactions.

YMOYL also advises investing virtually all of your money in US government bonds. I think that a more diversified investment portfolio of both stocks and bonds is a far more prudent choice. A portfolio made up of purely bonds violates rule #2, above. Also, as a historical note, Joe Dominguez died of cancer at age 58. And, this always left me with an uneasy feeling that the lifestyle he advocated in YMOYL may have contributed to his early demise.

In any case, I don't think that early retirement should be solely about depriving oneself to reach these goals. I will not tell you to give up eating meat, drinking milk, or buying your favorite latte drinks at Starbucks. Regardless, I think that everybody can make small steps that will bring an early retirement closer to reality.

Today, I will leave you with a quote from Robert Frost:

Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.

DC

Digital TV Delay

It looks like Congress has agreed to postpone the switch off date for analog TV from February 17th until June 12th, 2009. Unless you've been living in a cave, you would know that is the date when all regular television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting analog TV signals and switch exclusively to digital broadcasting. Presumably this nearly four month delay is meant to reduce confusion whenever the digital switchover occurs. But the truth is that there will be confusion regardless of when the switch is made.

Just look at the current wording on the FCC website about when exactly the transition to digital-only TV will be:

On Feb. 17, some full-power broadcast television stations in the United States may stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital. The remaining stations may stop broadcasting analog sometime between March 14 and June 12.

That sounds pretty wishy-washy to me... If I interpret this correctly, even the folks over at the FCC don't have a clue when the transistion date is going to be.

The switch to digital TV is not as simple as just turning off analog TV broadcasts. Currently, TV broadcasts are received on channels 2-69. After the digital transition is complete channels 52-69 will be reallocated for other uses. In Silicon Valley, where I live, the digital TV station KTEH is on channel 54-1. KTEH is really broadcast on digital channel 50, but shows up as 54-1 through a process known as virtual channel numbering. The analog channel 54 will disappear after the DTV transition.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, KGO broadcasts analog on channel 7, and digital on channel 24. After switching off the analog channel, they will return the digital broadcast to channel 7. More complex is the case of KTVU which broadcasts analog on Channel 2, and digital on channel 56. After the switch off, they will broadcast on channel 44. Channel 44 is currently used by KBCW (the old KBHK). For obvious reasons KBCW needs to shutdown their analog transmitter before KTVU can take over this channel. So, is this confusing enough for you?

If you own a DTV tuner, what this means is that you may need to re-scan for channels after the switchover. I used to tell people that you could do that on February 18th, but now you'll have to wait until June 13th to be safe. I do own a DTV converter box, but I also bought a DVD/VCR recorder with a built-in digital tuner. I guess that I will have to rescan the channels sometime (as according to the FCC) possibly between March 14th and June 12th. But, it seems that the FCC who has the last word on these matters, aren't themselves sure of the exact date.

DC