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TV Digital Converter Box Coupons & Sales Tax

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:26 am
by tonybackache
Purchased my first Digital Converter box today using the $40 coupon.
Box sold for $49.87 plus sales tax = $54.10 - $40 coupon = $14.10 out of pocket! A surprise of $4.23!!!
I think the $40 should have came off the top thereby only pay taxes on the difference of $9.87!!!
But what do I know?

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:12 pm
by Robert Reed
Wow Tony
You paid almost $10 salestax on a $50 item. Thats close to 20%. Are the AR retail taxes that high? Or is it just on speciaty items?

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:04 pm
by Bigglez
Greetings Robert,
Robert Reed wrote: You paid almost $10 salestax on a $50 item. Thats close to 20%. Are the AR retail taxes that high? Or is it just on speciaty items?

Code: Select all

Item:...$49.87
Tax:......4.23
Total....54.10
Coupon:..40.00
Cash:....14.10

4.23/49.87 = 8.48% (not 20%...)

Item:....$49.87
Coupon:...40.00
Total:.....9.87
Tax:.......0.83
Cash:.....10.70
Comments Welcome!

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:22 pm
by Yerry
But it wasn't a sale at a lower price. Your $40 coupon was a subsidy. The store didn't charge ten bucks, it charged fifty. sales tax is based on the price of the item sold, and now how much you paid in cash.

Sales Tax & reception from digital converter box.

Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 7:52 am
by tonybackache
Sales tax here is 8.5%.
I purchased the RCA brand box sitting near the Count Down Clock at Wal Mart.
I wasn't expecting anymore channels ( a total of 7) to receive than my Dual Tuner TV with rabbitt ears .
Well I was wrong after the digital box ran a scan 18 channels appeared all from rabbitt ears. Most of the channels are 60-70 miles away!
Here in my locality we are having issues with digital programming freezing up when the wind blows! I called & spoke to Tech at nearby TV station he said analog channels will continue to broadcast at less than perfect picture but digital broadcast is 100% or you will experience distortion, freezing, etc due to trees swaying in the wind. These symptoms have also been experienced on a local cable network.
The Tech mentioned I need a outside antenna mounted above the trees (70' minimum here) in my neighborhood to have stable digital reception. I don't like the sound of that added expense!

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 3:30 pm
by jollyrgr
This partly explains some of my problems. I live in an area where I cannot get good reception of local channels. It was fair to say the least several years ago. Now it is hardly worth trying.

A couple tornadoes at different times took down towers of TV stations. One was a UPN station on channel 57 in Madison, if I recall. It is now a CW station. But it disappeared and when it came back, it was much weaker. So much so that I could not watch it. If it is the station I'm remembering, it could not put up the same size tower it once had. Another station's tower was taken down in a tornado/microburst. It came back on again weaker than normal. But all stations locally became weaker. My guess due to going digital.

For a long time I made do with what feeds I could find on analog C-band for the networks. Those slowly went scrambled or digital. Most of the other low end cable stations also scrambled. Neither DISH or DirecTV would let me subscribe to "locals" when I first signed up. I solved my problem by going with a Free To Air (FTA) satellite receiver. It may have cost about $40 with shipping off eBay. But with this and a 10ft dish I can get hundreds of FREE channels. Right now I watch FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CW from C-band DVB broadcasts. These are also on Galaxy 10R. To get on Galaxy 10R you only need a 3ft dish as this is a Ku bird; and of course the receiver.

FTA digital satellite is NOT for the point and click crowd. But those with minimal skill in setting up a dish and programming a receiver, it is quite enjoyable. If you can program the most complex VCR, you can program a FTA receiver. Aligning the dish is a bit more complex. When I first setup my big dish it was intimidating as dealers wanted to charge a couple hundred bucks to align it. But someone showed me the basics and it took all of 15 minutes to set it up then. A mini dish is also quite easy to install and setup.

A friend and I have a debate. He still thinks the digital switch over will have to be abandoned as there are too many people without the ability to understand what is going on. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Hope this helps some of you.

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 7:42 pm
by philba
I don't think it will be abandoned but there will be some way p*ssed off people when they discover that they don't get exactly the stations they got before. I've got a roof antenna at about 50'. l I only get 5 of the 7 main channels we got in analog. One we don't get is Public TV which we get perfectly in analog. The transmitter is about 15 miles away and my antenna is pointed right at it. The other station is in a different direction so I know I need to get another antenna to pick that up.

Needless to say, the average cable non-subscriber isn't going to like this situation at all.

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:58 am
by cato
Philba, Some of the converter boxes, (an allegedly available RCA DTA 800B1 for example) support something called smart antenna, by which the box can select appropriate antenna phasing to change directivity on a channel by channel basis.

Said smart antennas run about 80 bux or at least the ones I've seen on the web do.

That might solve your transmitter in another direction problem.