Some Lessons From Digital Conversion
In a month, analog TV goes away. It's the form of television we have had since the beginning of broadcast TV.
Most of us have been using digital TV for the past four years. People who are receiving their TV signals through outdoor antennas or rabbit ears probably bought their TV a decade ago. Every TV set made before 1998 had a traditional analog receiver. (If you bought a big-screen, projection television between 1998 and 2004, there is a chance it has a built-in digital tuner inside. Before 2004, only a limited percentage of projection TV sets included digital tuners.) If you bought a new TV set since 2004, there is a high likelihood that it has a built-in digital tuner that will work after the switch-over date.
There have been commercials running about the changeover. Those ads are usually done by cable TV companies who want you as a customer.
So, the majority of U.S. consumers are ready because they have newer televisions with digital tuners, or because they get their programs through cable or satellite.
WHAT'S THE ISSUE?
Not everyone is prepared for the change. Perhaps, it's another digital divide.
Who is most likely to have that old TV or no cable/satellite service? The poor, elderly, and those in rural areas. Does it sound a bit like the digital divide of who has fast Internet and who still has dial-up of no Internet access at home?
There were coupons offered by the government for $40 off the cost of a converter box that runs about $45-85. That box installs between the antenna and the TV set. But all those coupons are gone now. Maybe the government will issue more coupons (there are 100,000+ people on the waiting list).
Some numbers from the NTIA:
About 24 million U.S. households had applied for 46 million converter box coupons.
Households could ask for two $40 coupons.
The coupons expired 90 days after they are mailed out.
Original estimates suggested that fewer than 20 million U.S. households have TV sets receiving over-the-air broadcasts.
Nearly 53% of the coupons requested have been redeemed.
3 million have expired.
The NTIA says it will work with Congress and the Obama administration to "ensure everyone is prepared for the transition and no one is left in the dark."
MY OWN EXPERIENCE
I actually own a small TV without a digital converter. It sits in a dusty basement corner of the house where I never wanted to punch a hole for a cable hookup. It's connected to a VCR and DVD burner as a monitor and was where I began converting all my home video a few years ago. Yet, another digital conversion process...
All those VHS tapes of my sons as babies and growing up needed to be put on DVDs.
I had Super 8 movies that I had converted to VHS in the late 1970s and had to convert again. One day the DVDs will be obsolete. What will be next? At what point will I no longer be able to view them?
Remember moving all your floppy disks to a new hard drive when the drives started disappearing? I started archiving 35mm photos to digital .jpg files and storing them on CDs about ten years a go. Never got them all done. Never will get them done. Last year I started moving the CDs of pictures to an external hard drive.
It's like repainting the aircraft carrier - start at one end and when you finish, it's time to go back and start over again.
I sent for the coupon and got one. I bought a converter (it cost $8 after the coupon was applied) and hooked it up as an experiment to that TV with a pair of rabbit ears. Without the converter, I could pick up with much "snow" (hey, kids, do you know what THAT even means?) 8 local channels. With the converter, I got 20 channels and they were all clear. In fact, now I got 3 versions of the local CBS affiliate.
WHY THE TV CONVERSION?
The Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act, passed by Congress in 2005, requires TV stations to move out of analog spectrum and move to all-digital broadcasts on Feb. 17, 2009. Much of the freed-up spectrum was sold by the Federal Communications Commission in an auction that ended in early 2008. That spectrum, in the 700 MHz band, is some of the best spectrum available for long-range wireless broadband services.
Part of that 700 MHz spectrum was supposed to go toward a nationwide broadband network shared by commercial users and public-safety agencies such as police and fire departments. Unfortunately, the auction didn't raise the minimum price required by the FCC, and they have not come up with an alternative plan.
Of course, digital broadcasting also allows stations to offer improved picture and sound quality.
WHERE THINGS STAND
President-elect Barack Obama's transition team asked Congress last week to delay the shut-off, citing the Commerce Department's running out of money for coupons that subsidize the cost of converter boxes.
FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said at the International Consumer Electronics Show that it is important to make sure that the converter box subsidy program gets back on track, but that it does not mean delaying the analog turnoff is necessary. The date of the transition and the terms of the coupon program were set by Congress. The FCC, as the broadcast regulator, has an important role in administering the transition.
Some companies, like Verizon Wireless, might have to rethink plans for rolling out their 4G high-speed network on the spectrum it bought in the auction last year. With a delay, the spectrum might not be cleared in time for it to roll out the service.
Some cities (Detroit is one) have TV stations running on-air tests to show whether your set is ready for the transition.
Digital TV reception via antenna is not like analog TV. Before you got some strong channel signal, others were weak. I recall from my childhood always playing with the roof antenna or "rabbit ears" trying to get channel 2 clearer. I never understood why CBS, which was right across the river in New York City just like NBC & ABC, never came in as well. With digital TV, you either get the channel (clearly) or you don't get it at all.
Is this a Y2K scare that will turn out to be not a bang but a whimper? Or will those that suffer simply have no voice? We'll check in after the 18th.
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