Hello,

    I've been wondering about this for some time now, and since the
demise of analog tV will undoubtedly happen, hopefully someone
here will either have suggestions or direct me to a list
where someone might.

    Similar to our sighted counterparts, I'm sure there are many blind
people, hams or not, who have various radios which pick up TV audio.
Maybe it's in your handheld ham transceiver.  Maybe it's in a walkman,
or maybe it's one of those little Sangean radios.  Or possibly you have
one of the wide band receivers such as the Icom R7000 or R8500.  Or it
might be a scanner such as Radio Shack, Uniden or AOR, to name but a
few.  But the situation that might differentiate us from the sighted
public is that this TV audio might be more than just a slight
convenience or just another add-on or feature.  Since those of us
who don't see enough to purchase a television for the picture, there's
no reason to purchase one in the first place, especially if you already
have all the channels available to you in an easy to access radio.  Now
when HDTV completely takes over where does this leave us?  While I
realize that no one can sacrifice the portability of his handheld by
connecting a converter box to it.  I still however have some
questions about this sort of thing.  Will it be possible to use these
converter boxes which are meant for older analog TVs on table top
receivers or scanners? And just what are the characteristics of these
HDTV signals anyway? Are they similar in the distance that they
travel as compared to the older analog signals?

    On a slightly different subject, I was extremely frustrated to learn
only a few days ago that virtually every new TV on the market today
mutes.  I mean if you hook it up without an antenna a print message
comes up on the screen saying, "Please connect cable."  You hear
nothing.  No noise, just plain old silence.  But more disappointing
is the fact that it takes a really strong signal to unmute these
televisions.
Keith  WB8WTT