Disqus - Latest Comments for dave73

Re: ATSC 3.0: The Next Generation OTA TV Launches in Late 2018

dave73 — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 23:44:01 -0000

I'm well aware of that station being on RF 4. I'm about 30 miles SE of Chicago in Gary Indiana. I barely pick up that station with my all VHF Antennacraft antenna (model # CS600, which is discontinued, due to Antennacraft being out of business), and using an RCA pre-amp (model # TVPRAMP1R). I use that same pre-amp with my Antennas Direct DB8 antenna, & I get a few LPTV UHF stations, like WWME-CD on RF 39, WMEU-CD on RF 32, WDCI-LD on RF 30, WESV-LD on RF 40 (barely), WPVN-CD on RF 20 (barely, because their signal is sharply directional in my direction, & on the edge of their service area), only 1 TV gets WCHU-LD on RF 33. I sometimes got W25DW-D on RF 25, due to the signal being super directional to the SW.. I have a separate antenna for WYIN, due to its signal transmitting from their tower in Lake Dalecarlia, an unincorporated area between Cedar Lake & Lowell Indiana, & without this antenna, WYIN on RF 17 cuts in and out.

Re: ATSC 3.0: The Next Generation OTA TV Launches in Late 2018

dave73 — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:07:37 -0000

I hope with the new TV's coming out with ATSC 3.0 tuners, that TV makers eliminate the analog tuners from TV's. It's frustrating that my TV's want to scan for analog channels. There's only 1 analog station broadcasting in my area, of Gary Indiana, from Chicago, on channel 6. It's one of those stations that some people nickname, Franken FM stations. It means that Channel 6 broadcasts in the 82 to 88 mhz band, & the audio is on the edge of the FM band, at 87.75 mhz, but most radios that go that far down pick it up at 87.7 mhz. With this change, I hope it'll either force these LPTV channel 6 stations to actually be a TV station (channel 6 stations broadcasting a digital signal now aren't heard on analog radio, & their digital signal isn't compatible with HD Radio), or those stations turn in their licenses, & shut off their stations.

Also with the move to ATSC 3.0, any stations that weren't broadcasting on VHF-Lo (channels 2-6) in ATSC 1.0, but will be in ATSC 3.0, I hope those stations will be a bit easier to get. The few current VHF-Lo staitons can only be picked up with an outdoor antenna optimized for VHF-Lo, & broadcasting at least 2kw. LPTV VHF-Lo stations are sketchy, & require a pre-amp, besides an outdoor antenna optimized for VHF-Lo. Chicago currently doesn't have any LPTV VHF-Hi stations, & not sure how much power is needed to get those stations. CBS in Chicago is on VHF-Hi (RF channel 12), & is sketchy with indoor antennas, but ok with antennas optimized for VHF-Hi (channels 7-13). UHF overall has worked best with DTV, but sad that it's now more valuable than VHF in the digital era.

Re: Gays who love Donald Trump are planning a rally at the Lincoln Memorial

dave73 — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 17:21:34 -0000

Sad thing is that i just reconnected with someone i thought was a friend, just because of certain things we had in common, until i learned that he's a trump supporter (i didnt use a capital t on purpose, because I had a teacher who said to us, that not capitalizing the letter i, or people's names and titles names means that they're not important people.) It was bad enough that one of the common things we share is that we were involved with a serial cheater, and someone who also moves a lot. To find put that he voted for donald trump, and still supports him is making me not want to be friends with him. He doesn't care that we won't be counted in the 2020 census (unless democrats can take over both house and Senate, and repeal it before the 2020 census), weakening laws that protected us, and if trump can get enough people appointed into certain positions in government, get gay marriage repealed. Some people want to get the federal government out of marriage too, but not sure if trump wants to go that far. Doing so also overturns the Love vs Virginia ruling that struck down interracial marriage, and 16 states refused to remove the ban from their books. Overturning Love vs Virginia ruling would mean that those in interracial marriages would have their marriages null and void in those 16 states.

Re: 10 Things We Miss About Pizza From Back In The Day

dave73 — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 06:07:49 -0000

I hope MeTV reads these comments, because the last 2 McDonald's restaurants that served pizza, were forced by corporate to stop making them. If they continued, they were threatened with having their franchise license revoked.

Re: 9 TV characters who left their shows way too soon

dave73 — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 02:19:15 -0000

For Valerie Harper to go from the Mary Tyler Moore show, to her own show, Rhoda, worked out for her. In the 80's however, her new show, Valerie, playing Valerie Hogan, however created problems off camera. As the ratings started to go up, Miller Boyett Productions pulled the same stunt that Norman Lear Did with Good Times, wanting the show to revolve around Jason Bateman more than Valerie Harper. The production company wanted Jason Bateman's character, David Hogan to have a larger role in the show. It upsetted Valerie Harper, along with demanding more money. She at out of some filming sessions. When both Miller Boyett Productions & NBC refused to give her a raise, but sitting out of some episodes eventually got her fired, & replaced by Sandy Duncan, playing Sandy Hogan, sister of Michael Hogan, played by Josh Taylor. Valerie Harper sued both NBC & Miller Boyett Productions. Her lawsuit over her pay was dismissed, but because she was still under contract, Miller Boyett's termination of Valerie Harper caused them to breach her contract, & had to pay out $1,800,000 and a percentage of the profits from the show. Valerie Harper remains the only actress to this day, that was fired from a show named after her. It was unfortunate that she didn't go back to a sitcom or a drama after that show. She mainly did TV movies & theatre after that. She did guest star in numerous TV shows, but Mary Tyler Moor, Rhoda, & Valerie (The Hogan Family after she was fired) were the only shows that she starred in.

Re: 9 TV characters who left their shows way too soon

dave73 — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 01:43:49 -0000

George Clooney was smart to stick it out on ER, while pursuing movies in between. When he became that in demand for movies, he waited until his contract was up, & left the show on good terms. This way, if he needed to return to TV, he could do so. Now Charlie Sheen let his drug addiction get in the way of his movie career,that he wasn't getting many movie roles. So to keep him in the spotlight, he got put on Two and a Half Men, & was drawing a steady income. Too bad he blew that up as well, that he might have a difficult time getting anything in TV, or movies. Who knows how he's managing HIV, since it was announced that he's HIV+ in 2015, but was positive since 2011, when he learned that he's HIV+.

Re: 9 TV characters who left their shows way too soon

dave73 — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 01:35:23 -0000

It's ironic that once Dick Sargent took over as Darrin Stephens, Elizabeth Montgomery had a strong freindship with him. She knew he was gay, & was ok with it. She managed to hide it from the other cast members. Agnes Moorehead liked Dick York, but not Dick Sargent. I forgot the reason Agnes didn't like Dick Sargent, but she didn't. She didn't even like being on Bewitched, because the show wasn't her cup of tea. She expected the show to be a flop, hoping to go back into movies. If she was that unhappy with the show, I wonder why she stayed all 8 seasons.

Re: 9 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Lay's Potato Chips

dave73 — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 02:18:36 -0000

I grew up on Jays as well. Unlike Lays, Jays was a Midwest brand. I still get Jays whenever I can, even though they're no longer made in Chicago. The family couldn't compete with the big corporations, and when they filed for bankruptcy, the company Snyder Lance, bought the brand name products and store space, but not the plant. Jays are now made in southern Indiana and Pennsylvania, depending on the product. With Snyder now owning Jays, I wonder if the brand expanded outside of the Midwest.

Re: 7 discount stores from back in the day you probably forgot existed

dave73 — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 21:30:27 -0000

Venture was a midwest & great plains discounter. May Department Store CO. did not have Venture in California. I believe Robinsons was in California. Ames was strictly a northeast retailer in the 70's. They barely entered the midwest in the early & mid 80's. Even after buying out Zayre in 1989, they only got as far as the Mississippi River. None of the Ames stores were west of the Mississippi. I don't know how far Woolco got, but it might be possible they reached California. Their stores were scattered around.

Re: 7 discount stores from back in the day you probably forgot existed

dave73 — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 21:24:37 -0000

Only TJ Maxx was started up by the parent company of Zayre. Marshalls was owned by Melville Corporation, until 1995. TJX Bought Marshalls after Melville Corporation sold off all their businesses, to focus on CVS Pharmacy. As for the Zayre/Ames mess. I remember that all too well. I don't know ab out your area, but when Ames took over Zayre, Ames made Zayre's problems much worse than just the inventory problem. Zayre had a point of Sale computer system that worked so well, that it was difficult to mess up entering in numbers. Ames changed the system, & if the wrong price was entered into the register, it accepted it, & only managers could make voids. At Zayre under Zayre, if a cashier made an error, they could void out the transaction themselves. Ames way of only managers making voids caused people to drop their merchandise, & leave the store. The cashier could not accept any other customers, until the manager showed up. Ames also alienated the senior citizens, when they decided to take away the senior citizen discount on sale merchandise (Zayre allowed it on sale merchandise). They also had fewer sales that made them not competitive to Venture & Kmart. The overall changes Ames made is what made Ames file bankruptcy much faster, than had their business been similar to Zayre. Ames mainly served small towns with little competition, while Zayre competed with all the NE retailers of Bradlees, Caldor, and many others, Meijer in Michigan & Ohio, Kmart in all their major markets, Walmart in the south, & others. Ames buyout of Hills caused problems once again. I remember people in Lafayette Indiana, where there was a Hills, & people told me that they liked Hills. They hated seeing Ames not only back in Lafayette Indiana for the second time, but back in the same building as they were when they took over Zayre in 1989. People that lived there their entire lives avoided Ames the second time around, since they didn't like what they did to Zayre back then. At first, Ames wasn't going to reopen in Lafayette Indiana, after they said that the area didn't meet their demographics. They changed their mind when they saw that it was profitable under Hills. In 2000, they also bought out 7 of 8 Goldblatts stores in Chicago & Gary Indiana, in order to re-enter the Chicago market. Chicagoans also avoided Ames, because many were still bitter that they made Zayre's problems worse, & thought they sold junk, at Target prices. Both the Hills, & the Goldblatts buyouts hurt them. The somehow managed to stand up to Walmart all those years, but when Target started entering their core territory, that put the final nail in their coffin. Ames simply did not work out outside the Northeast, with the exception of Ohio

Re: 7 discount stores from back in the day you probably forgot existed

dave73 — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 21:03:14 -0000

White Front was west coast only, & owned by Interstate Stores, the same company that also owned Topps. I was a baby when Interstate Stores filed bankruptcy, & closed everything, but Toys R Us. BTW, Topps was a Northeast & Midwest chain, similar to White Front.

Re: 7 discount stores from back in the day you probably forgot existed

dave73 — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 21:00:16 -0000

My local Venture stores had lunch counters too. In the 90's, one Kmart switched theirs to a full service Little Caesars, while another stayed as a K Cafe. Walmart had theirs too, until 1994 for new stores, then in 1995 and up, new stores were getting Subway or McDonalds in most locations. By me, by 1998 they all went Subway, with the exception of the Hobart Indiana store. It initially went Subway. When the store was added onto, & became a superstore in 2004, it became a McDonalds. In 2010, McDonalds closed, & a year later, it became a scaled down Burger King (meaning they don't serve all sandwiches, nor do they offer all desserts & drinks). Target varies, but by me,they have Pizza Hut Express & Starbucks. They used to offer their own snack bar too.

Re: 7 discount stores from back in the day you probably forgot existed

dave73 — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:54:55 -0000

Kmart also went along with Thanksgiving Day sales too. Not knowing if the remaining Kmart stores will see Black Friday 2017, that'll leave just Meijer in my area to hold Thanksgiving Day sales. My Meijer stores are also 24 hours, meaning they only close at 7pm Christmas Eve, & reopen on December 26th. Meijer at least still holds true Black Friday sales, as they hold 3 separate sales, Thanksgiving Day only, Black Friday only, & Saturday only. If Kmart makes it to Thanksgiving, it'll be Thanksgiving Day, & Thanksgiving night.

Re: 7 discount stores from back in the day you probably forgot existed

dave73 — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:50:35 -0000

The Shoppers World in Merrillville Indiana is not the same Shoppers World that was in Chicagoland & NW Indiana in the 60's. That Shoppers World was bought out twice. First I believe it was bought out by catalog store, Arden in 1963. Then Community Family Center bought out Shoppers World in 1967. From what I was told, the 60's Shoppers World only had 14 stores at their peak in 1967, & Highland Indiana was their only Indiana location. I don't know if Community kept that store open as Comunity, or if they closed it. Supposedly, they also owned Mays Family Center, which was well known in NW Indiana. Community's Chicagoland stores got bought out by Zayre in 1982, & the rest of the company went out of business after that, including all the Mays Family Center stores. The current Shoppers World in Merrillville Indiana is based out of New York City.

Re: Can we guess your age based on your taste in TV?

dave73 — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 01:34:31 -0000

I'm like John H, I watch TV over the air. I haven't had cable in years, primarily because of cost. At my new place, it might be possible my mom might be getting DirecTV. I however don't believe I'll watch enough programming to want it. As money allows, I plan to invest in a C-Band dish, & get the LNB that also picks up the Ku band as well. There's still free programming on Free To Air satellite. Some of it's good, while other programming is not. For me, the not so good programming are the religious channels that want to reach as many people worldwide for their donations. For those who like PBS will find the East & West coast feeds, as well as some PBS stations on satellite, unencrypted. Even Create, World Channel, MeTV, Heroes & Icons, , & I think Bounce are free from the source.Until Weigel Broadcasting ended their partnership with MGM for This TV, that used to be available on FTA (Tribune encrypted the signal). Until then, I'll continue with an outdoor antenna for my Chicago stations. I plan to custom make a massive grey hoverman antenna to try and get South Bend Indiana stations from my new residence, as my new place has stray signals coming from the South Bend station, & I want to capture them. I have the height to try it, & luckily, South Bend has always been a UHF only market.

Re: Carson's in Circle Centre is part of reeling department store firm

dave73 — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 00:28:27 -0000

I don't know what the demographics are for downtown Indianapolis. In some major cities, Target has opened, what they used to call, City Target stores. Those stores would be in an area where people traditionally walked to places, & when it came to necessities, they had the manufacturers make smaller size products for those stores, just so people don't have to lug around a 1 to 1.5 gallon bottle of laundry detergent for example. Target has done well in Downtown Chicago, as well as the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. Target also has at one of these stores in their hometown of Minneapolis Minnesota. I wouldn't rule out downtown Indianapolis. Target even wants to get a store open in Manhattan, & so far, only Kmart has done, & surprisingly, that store is still in business.

Re: 10 drug store chains you will never shop at again

dave73 — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 17:18:31 -0000

As a kid, I had a Rexall franchise, then it went totally independent after Rexall closed. It was Ranburn Rexall Drug. It later became Ranburn Pharmacy. It stayed open until 2 years ago, when the owner died, & had no one to take over the business. The landlord had to get a court order to take possession of the store, & instead of disposing of all the merchandise, they held a going out of business sale, then threw away anything that didn't sell at all. The landlord wanted the store vacant, & marked some stuff down below wholesale.

Except for a 5-7 year period where Osco was opening freestanding stores locally to me, Osco used to only be found in Jewel stores, just like today. As we all know, the freestanding Osco stores were sold to CVS. Hook's was based in Indianapolis, & most of their locations were in Indiana, but I believe they had a few in the Chicago suburbs. They were bought out in 1995 by Revco, then a year later, Revco got ought out by CVS. I also grew up with Ribordy Drug, which was a small pharmacy chain with the bulk of their stores in Lake & Porter Counties of Indiana, but was also found in rural city, Reensselaer, a then small city LaPorte, & I nwas surprised that they had stores in South Bend in Indiana. They were based in an unincorporated part of Porter County Indiana, using a Valparaiso mailing address. They were bought out by Walgreens in 1985. Highland Indiana had an independent pharmacy called Highland Pharmacy. I remember they sold food, medicine, & candy on the main floor, along with the pharmacy. In the basement, they had a smalll selection of toys, & Hallmark cards. Due to theft, they closed off the basement to the public, & moved what they could upstairs. The owner was ready to retire, & was already losing business, due to increased competition, that the owner sold off the pharmacy base to Target, & closed the business down in 1996.

Re: 10 flavors of your favorite foods you will never eat again

dave73 — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 16:08:35 -0000

And real sugar in all their Latin American versions of pop, & not just Coca Cold either, but Pepsi too.

Re: 10 flavors of your favorite foods you will never eat again

dave73 — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 16:06:53 -0000

It depends on the Burger King franchise. There's 3 Burger King locations by me that still, do not have the Coke Freestyle machine. One is owned by Tri-City Foods, & the other 2 are owned by Cave Enterprises. Cave Enterprises decided that they don't want a machine that could break down on them. Plus, they don't want to be changing all the pop & syrup flavorings that go with it. They prefer to carry just the most common sold Coca Cola products, and that's it. For the single Tri-City Foods Burger King, it hasn't added the Coke Freestyle, because they're not sure if they'll keep that location open. That's the only reason for it.

Re: Muslim Woman Allegedly Kicked Out of Family Dollar for Wearing Traditional Garb

dave73 — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 13:51:22 -0000

Indiana doesn't allow the face to be covered. Indiana doesn't even allow us to wear glasses when getting a photo ID, or smile. If I'm not mistaken, Indiana no longer exempts people from getting their pictures taken, like Arabs or the Amish (the Amish in particular, who seem to think that pictures take away their souls).

Re: 5 Reasons You Should Shop at Aldi

dave73 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 13:51:01 -0000

You somehow got lucky on that one. Aldi had the barcodes on their products from day one (when they opened their first stores in 1976), but at least local to me, Aldi had waited until 2004 to add scanners to their stores. Before 2004, cashiers had to remember the prices of all the items, & that usually slowed down the checkout process. The first Aldi store that opened in my area was in 1977, when they opened in the shopping center that's anchored by Kmart. Since getting established as a company by the mid 1990's, they slowly converted to freestanding stores, as they wanted smaller parking lots, & own their locations. They also did it to keep UFCW picketers from picketing their stores, since they're non-union.

Re: You'll never watch 'The Brady Bunch' the same way again after reading these 12 facts

dave73 — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 23:44:08 -0000

No one from The Brady Bunch receives any royalties. That didn't happen until 1970. Had The Brady Bunch started in 1970, the cast would have been eligible for royalties from the show. It's sad that actors back then didn't get paid for shows that went into off-network syndication. If they did, it might have been at the most 5 years.

Re: T-Mobile adds more free streaming services to both Binge On and Music Freedom

dave73 — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 05:28:50 -0000

You can choose the AT&T network, as long as you get a phone that works on the AT&T network. The map on the box will either be blue for AT&T, or red for Verizon.

Re: Deutsche Telekom’s effort to sell T-Mobile US paused due to spectrum auction

dave73 — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 00:26:24 -0000

I used to only like Verizon, because of the coverage for where I traveled. T-Mobile used to have poor coverage in my immediate area, & was non-existent in most of rural America. The only reason I even gave T-Mobile a try in 2014, was because I'm on Verizon prepaid, & at the time, they were refusing to offer 4G LTE to prepaid customers. So I signed up for the #30 5GB plan with unlimited text & 100 minutes of talk time. My first phone turned out to be a 3G phone, rather than a 4G LTE phone, but it was faster than Verizon's 3G service. I practically needed a smartphone in oder to take advantage of certain offers from local & national stores & restaurants. Verizon eventually started offering 4G LTE to prepaid, & I found their coverage to be as bad as the old T-Mobile service. I then upgraded my T-Mobile to a 4G LTE phone, & saw major improvement in coverage, that between their 3G & 4G LTE, that T-Mobile chose to build out almost all LTE only towers and add GSM on some towers for those with basic phones. I was surprised that for rural towns like Hebron & Demotte Indiana, those towns used to have no coverage for T-Mobile, & now, T-Mobile built out in Band 2 (PCS band), since they skipped 3G in those areas, & T-Mobile's coverage blows away Verizon. With Demotte Indiana, when I last traveled there in July 2015 (might have changed since then), only Verizon didn't have 4G LTE coverage, & T-Mobile blew Verizon away on coverage. I don't know what T-Mobile did to optimize the PCS band in those 2 rural towns, but at least outdoors, T-Mobile worked perfectly (worked great indoors in downtown Hebron Indiana), while Verizon barely worked outdoors. In Demotte, T-Mobile had excellent 4G LTE coverage, while Verizon's 3G coverage sucked, because Verizon uses band 2 (PCS) for 3G in my area, & 3G was poorly built out. For where Verizon built out 4G LTE, it's poorly spaced out, that I have at times dropped data connections, when the 4G LTE signal is weak, & might revert to 3G, or no service. While there are still a couple of areas where T-Mobile still doesn't work, I'm taking my chances, because I can't be on Verizon with a poor 4G LTE network, & that they refuse to let a long time prepaid customer upgrade to their new plans (they're only offering the new plans to new customers, while existing customers are stuck with older plans). I am a firm believer that T-Mobile has improved dramatically. I've been told that even AT&T (at least local to me around Gary Indiana) has better 4G LTE coverage than Verizon.

Re: T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter talks 700MHz acquisitions, says distribution will expand to another 30M to 40M POPs

dave73 — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 23:59:46 -0000

The reason T-Mobile has no stores in Iowa, is because they have T-Mobile affiliate, i-Wireless serving Iowa. If T-Mobile really wanted to serve Iowa, they would have to buy out i-Wireless. That was what Sprint had to do when they bought out Nextel; they had to buy out their affiliates, in order to get rid of the lawsuits. iPCS was the last holdout before they eventually got bought out by Sprint, in order to retain Nextel.