Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
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For most viewers, the transition amounted to a minor hiccup at most. But the industry estimated that 12 million homes had not installed the necessary converter boxes, putting them at risk of losing TV altogether.
Across the country, television stations set up help lines and community organizations held events to aid confused viewers. Most stations didn’t receive the flood of calls they had expected, a sign that the transition was smoother than many had predicted.
Mike Burgess, the general manager of KOB in Albuquerque, said he had braced himself for calls when the station switched at 5 a.m. on Friday. According to Nielsen, Albuquerque had the highest rate of unprepared viewers of any market in the country. Acknowledging his surprise, he said the station had logged only three calls in the first digital hours.
“One of ’em was, when’s your weather guy coming back from vacation?” he said.
As of Saturday evening, the station had received about 150 calls.
Michael J. Copps, the acting chairman of the F.C.C., said the “overwhelming majority of households” were ready for the transition. Still, he acknowledged that it represented a “great challenge” for some viewers…
The operative phrase being “some viewers”.
Many of the calls concerned the rescanning of TV sets. The F.C.C. says that over-the-air viewers must rescan their sets to pick up the new digital signals that are being powered on…
What remains is tidying up the calls that dribble in from folks who never read the manual for their converter box and don’t know how to press a button to rescan. You know. The one that says “SCAN”.
Weren’t people predicting an impending disaster?
This signals the end of analog everything. With the efficiency of digital, and the ease with which one can encrypt digital signals, is there any reason for analog encoding (modulation)?
Will we have to buy a SmartCard, and compatible receiver, to receive ‘free’ TV some day? Will over-the-air porn be coming soon?
I resent the allocation of bandwidth to the Internet-gadget crowd when good old TV is still much more compelling (than the drivel of a billion slacking minds).
Some people are just plain stupid and no amount of hotlines or PSAs is going to help. Survival of the fittest is in play here. I for one, have no sympathy if someone is sitting in front of a dark TV right now.
I was thinking of getting a converter box while I can still get a coupon, because, with the quality of tv shows these days, when I need to cut my household budget again, the cable goes. However, I have a built-in antenna system that works through wiring in the walls (my house was built in the ’60s) and I’ve heard that the converter doesn’t work so well with those. Meh. Guess I’d just have to ditch my old Sylvania and get a cheap digital tv.
Here in my little city (~30,000) we now receive no over-the air TV. When disaster strikes, what’s the chance that Timewarner will still provide cable? At least I’ll have my iPhone.
Seriously, our city, which is in rural Appalachia, now has no TV signal, as the closest city with a real TV station is 75 miles away. When analog radio goes, we will be at the mercy of a few digital providers.
Wait a sec, – the scan button also works as a “re-scan” button? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
I pointed the remote at my wife and pressed “mute” and she’s still yammering away. And now the sound on the TV is broken!!
#5 I’d be willing to guess that cell phone service will go out before cable if a disaster hits..but hey I think there is an app for that. 🙂
If you haven’t figured this whole switch out yet, you need to be taken in for compulsory sterilization. Same goes for any children they managed to squirt out.
#5. Both Dish Network and DirecTV offer digital satellite TV in North Carolina. Cost, could be a problem.
much to do about nothing, unless; your life is wrapped up in watching TV dribble.
Bah, who needs TV when you have the ‘net? Threw out my TV 9 years ago since it caused my brain to rot, never looked back.
Even for those of you in very small communities that have lost over-the-air access to a TV signal, your national government hasn’t forgotten you. A couple of days after a nuclear attack, you’ll receive a postcard in the mail saying “Duck and Cover!”
#7, figured out we’d be screwed before the switchover. And, cell is much, much more reliable than cable (or power) around here.
#8, we get those here. But, they claim the local stations are from a city in another state, 2.5 hours away, that I’ve never been to. No amount of arguing will convince them otherwise. I imagine more of government meddling – damn FCC.
I only watch ONE program a week on television, and it is a simple little hobby show. I would get rid of my television except for that. And I work as a TV news photographer for a local O&O station. Television is terrible in every way. I wish it would all go bankrupt.
I would like to know what you posters think is so compelling about the ‘net?
I would choose PBS over the ‘net if those were my only two options (I get 3-4 PBS stations over the air).
The ‘net is a good source of product information, and No Agenda is worth a listen, but who spends 2-5 hours a day on the Web?
I frankly don’t believe the words written here.
and now, back to real news………
Can we make a list of when people predicted horrible problems, and then when the time came, turns out they were wrong?
Y2K, Iraqi WMD, digital TV, Democrat Convention in Boston(traffic), global warming…
And the under-reported story, thousands whose TV’s no longer receive a signal have discovered the beauty of life without meaningless celebrity worship, mindless consumerism, fearmongering, drivel alleged to be news, and mass voyeurism.
No news at 11.
MikeN,
And let’s keep track of when people (aka us liberals) predicted a disaster and where RIGHT — Reagonomics, de-reregulation, Bush’s tax cuts, the Iraq war, etc.
You didn’t listen to us about THOSE disasters and you are ignoring us now about global warming.
As for the digital TV — I somehow missed all the disaster talk. Who cares if a few people go a few days without TV? It’ll do ’em good.
Yeah, if you talk to the government. Maybe spinless news is in order:
“TV Switcheroo Leaves Millions with No Free TV”
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/06/dtv_delay14.html
“”I did everything the government said to do,” said Ann of Annapolis, Md. “Got a new antenna, bought a converter box and the result? I used to get 14 stations from both Washington and Baltimore and now I get 1 station. One. I have rescanned repeatedly, all day. Moved the antenna around inch by inch in a complete circle and still I get 1 station.”
“All the info that is thrown to us from the stations and the government are lies. There is no better reception, there are no ‘extra’ channels, there is no easy fix. These are just lies. There are far less channels, and reception is just awful if you don’t live right under the station’s antenna (like I do for the 1 channel I can still get).””
It was a snap for me… I haven’t owned a TV since 1994. Ha!
Vive le Youtube 🙂
what’s underreported is the loss of local television if you’re out of digital range, which apparently is a lot smaller than analog range. I know of at least two people on opposite ends of the country with no local stations as of Friday. Boxes and antennas all in order too. What they do have all of a sudden is around a half dozen religious stations.
no local station access means no access to weather or other emergency alerts. Not good when you live in an area with severe thunderstorms or tornadoes.
DTTV FAIL
19 = sirfelix. I live a bit north of you, up in north baltimore co., and the only thing we lost was the weak PBS station out of Howard Univ. WETA 26.1 comes and goes. But then it’s done this for many months. Hopefully, these weaker stations will soon boost their digital transmitters’ outputs. But so far, I haven’t notice any wattage changes. WHUT 32.1 was suppose to go from 100kW to 1000kW (unless they changed their commitment), eventually. That seems like a lot for a small college station to crank up to. While WETA actually planned to decrease wattage a trifle. That also seems incorrect. So I suspect what wattage projections, that were told to the government, was highly inaccurate. We see, what and when, these stations boost their signals.
The rescan was easy, and I knew it would be necessary before I was told, since I had a list of post-transition frequency changes. As these were all suppose to go in effect back in February.
By far, the biggest hassle for me was reprogramming Tvs and VCRs, to no-longer receive ANY analog stations. But just receive channel “3” at most. Or only line inputs. Some refuse to eliminate all channels, from its memnory, in case you’ve gone insane and wish to receive zero channels. So channel “3” it is. But a few of my home’s analog video appliances did allow complete tuner erasing. And now only allow selecting line inputs (L1 & L2). The Tvs were generally hard to retune to NOTHING. While the VCRs required only a rescan of their channel memory. And eliminating the few “PSA” broadcasting channels.
The thing that really bugged me later that night was Washington station 7.1 was experiencing audio interruptions during “Pushing Daisies'” last episode, at 10pm. And Baltimore station 54.1 was experiencing video interruptions during the early evening. Even thought this station had turned off its analog transmitter, a month ago! Were they simulating difficulties to merely impress? A few channels lost their EPGs for a spell. But that’s been happening for months now. Question is, why does it have to happen period. Are they using the cheapest available 16bit PC to provide the schedule info (as our local Comcast provide once did)? I wish the minimum standard for the EPG gear was set a bit higher and enforced. And I wish one didn’t have to tune in each station, for two minutes, just to get it updated. RCA once sold Tvs that got all the channels’ programming schedule, via a single, local PBS station. But these digital boxes aren’t as smart, as that. And turning them off (to conserve power and reduce heat), loses all the schedule info received thus far. Why couldn’t that have designed the EPG to operate independent of the powered up state, and channel selection? Do more expensive Plasma and LCD Tvs’ tuners work any better than this?
GregAllen, somehow I missed all these liberals saying there were no WMD. Who were these people who knew beforehand?
Here’s a bit of info about why some out there have no reception with their new DTV boxes. It’s all about the right antenna.
http://www.pixelriffic.com/?p=192
If Dvorak had given me a dollar for every time over the last year that he said that the transition would be a total disaster, I could have paid off my upside down mortgage, upside down car loan, and upside down credit card balance.
This DTV transition is another example of poor leadership and stupidity in government. Big business makes the same mistakes. Fixing/changing something and making it worse. One step forward, two steps back.
All at the expense of taxpayers two $40 coupons at a time.
The dumbing down of America has finally replaced the wise decision-makers of past that made America Great. Its all downhill now.