Sayreville & Piscataway NJ Real Estate Blog

Does your television set use free programming for your news and entertainment? If so in early 2009 those rabbit ears will die and so will your television watching. Well sort of. On February 17, 2009 broadcast television as we know it now will die. Television sets that use antennas to capture analog broadcasts will no longer have a signal because the stations are required by law to convert to digital programming. Before you start to mourn the loss of you free entertainment, the government is offering a way to jumpstart those rabbit ears. With stations fully converted to digital signal, households that use airwave signals will need to purchase a converter box that will change the digital signal to analog so that the television can continue to work.

Television sets purchased before 1998 are analog sets. These sets will require a converter box. Some projection televisions purchased between 1998-2004 maybe digital but owners should check their manual to be sure. All others will probably need a converter box. These converter boxes must be purchased. There is a government program to help with the cost of the converter box for people who use free programming.

Cable television and satellite television users must call that service providers to find out how their televisions will be supported after February 17, 2009.  Use the table provided to help you decide what action you need to take to continue your television viewing uninterrupted.

The government program that helps Americans with the cost of the converter box requires consumers to call or apply for the assistance. There is a $40 coupon available that consumers can apply to the cost of the converter. Only two converters coupons are allowed per household. Either click the image above or click here to go to the government website to learn more or here to apply online for a coupon. There is also a toll-free number 1-888-DTV-2009.

Remember don’t throw away those rabbit ears the converter will still need them.

Got an email this morning entitled “John Hopkins Cancer Update” now having been around the internet long enough to know that even well meaning people can get caught up in a hoax, I decided to do a bit of research to see if the claim in the email was true or not.

If a prestigious university, like Johns Hopkins, made the claim that microwaving food in plastic containers was a way to get cancer then that would be news — something carried by major news outlets. Getting confirmation of the fact, if it was a fact, would be easy.

First off, the email referred to Johns Hopkins’ newsletter, so starting at Johns Hopkins and its current newsletter revealed a nothing on the topic. The next step was a Google search for article with “cancer” and “John Hopkins” in the search terms. The search lead to two credible sources. The Baltimore Sun article Myth-Information Lives which suggested what I had in my email was a hoax. The article is dated August 31, 2007.

The next source was Sidney Kimmel Center at Johns Hopkins. In News and Events section there is an Kimmel e-wire entry ”Baltimore Sun features the mythbusters in Kimmel Cancer Center PR office” that links to an entry entitled Myth-busting at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Center. Within the release is a link to a statement from the Kimmel Center. The statement says indeed the email is a hoax. The statement is dated March 2007.

That statement leads to an interview with researcher, Rolf Halden, PhD, PE, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Water and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in which he also states the claims in the email are false. He does recommend following the directions on the label of plastic products as some plastics do not recommend exposure to heat.

It took longer to write this blog entry than it did to find out the email was a hoax and find out definitively what Johns Hopkins had to say on the Cancer Update email.

For the web savvy, there is http://www.snopes.com. In the search function put the term “cancer” and the Cancer Update from John Hopkins comes up as number two on the list as of September 26, 2007. So don’t be fooled people by stuff that comes in your email and for goodness sake, don’t pass it on without doing a bit of checking first. Let’s see if we can keep some of these hoaxes from living long enough to become email legends.