End of An Era

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you probably are aware that most TV broadcast stations will turn off their analog signals tomorrow. Yes, 17 Feb 09 tomorrow. Tuesday. As in, some time after I post this just before midnight tonight.

Now, you might know that the Obama White House worked with the mighty members of Congress to push back the switch from analog to digital transmissions from the previous deadline (17 Feb) to 12 June. That was a nice gesture to those middle-class, working families who couldn't get their hands on a digital converter box.

Never mind that the conversion date for analog-to-digital TV was planned originally for 1997. Or 1998. It was a while ago, alright? I remember the TV guys talking about how much they wanted to switch to digital TV, but everyone agreed that the United States of America just wasn't ready yet. Kinda like how we're not ready to switch to the metric system yet.

Never mind that most people (the vast majority) in America get their TV signals from a cable provider. Sure, some people get their TV from a satellite provider, but they are few in number compared to those people who subscribe to cable. Those of us who receive nothing but an over-the-air signal? We're so far in the minority, our vote really doesn't count compared to the majority. Seriously, I think the over-the-air households are in the single digits, percentage-wise. It's tiny!

Never mind that HDTVs with digital tuners built into the TV (no cable decoder or other set-top box needed!) have been sold probably as long as the TV industry has been talking about switching from analog to digital signals.

Never mind that all Congress really did was push the mandatory switch-over date back a few months. Every single local TV affiliate station I've seen using a scroll along the bottom of the screen has announced their plans to go ahead with the shut-off of their analog signals on 17 Feb. Tomorrow. Tuesday. Hey, they already had plans for that date! They had their guys on the schedule to climb up those transmission towers and take down that analog equipment long before Congress passed its legislation. It'd be too expensive to change horses in mid-stream, so to speak.

Never mind that one of the reasons why Congress felt compelled to take this action (more than just pandering for votes) is because voters all over the country chose to apply for the coupons given away by the Federal government. You know the ones, the coupons that were good for $20 or $30 off the digital converter boxes sold by places like Radio Shack and Best Buy. So the digital converter box was only $40, not $60 or $70. Like the manufacturers didn't factor the Federal coupon into the price found on the box! Yeah, riiiiiiight.

And yet, only about half the Federal coupons passed out to voters have actually been redeemed by shoppers. But the Federal government can't just void the coupons already passed out to one voter in order to re-issue it to another voter. They are simply not that nimble, so they effectively are hamstrung by voters who received the coupons but never redeemed them.

Never mind that consumers have been snapping up those digital converter boxes so quickly, the manufacturers have had a hard time keeping up with demand. Of course, this partly could explain why only half of those Federal coupons have been redeemed by voters.

All I know is, I've had nothing but over-the-air TV since 2005. I've also enjoyed both analog TV and digital HDTV since 2005. I made sure to sign up for two of those Federal coupons, and then used both coupons to purchase two digital converter boxes from Radio Shack for the two analog TVs down in my basement. Everything works great! The converted digital signal on the analog sets looks great, better than any analog signal ever looked on those TVs.

My only problem is that the HD antenna I bought in 2005 (and I don't think there's really anything different from a standard Yagi-Uda antenna* and anything called an HD antenna; as long as you have the digital tuner, and as long as your antenna can receive the normal UHF or VHF signals, then you get the digital signals; I'm pretty sure it works that way) only gets signals from as far away as 35-40 miles, even though it's powered . That works fine for most broadcast stations where I live, but the Fox affiliate is located in Springfield, IL. Which is about 43 miles away. I need a new antenna that can get signals from at least 50-60 miles away.

* OK, so that web source is a little hard to understand. Here's the Wikipedia page for anyone who wants a clearer explanation. See? Wikipedia ain't so bad.

Ah, well. As TV broadcast affiliates turn off their analog transmission equipment tomorrow, it will mark the end of an era. It is quite different from the switch between black-and-white and color TV, I think. Isn't it? People didn't have to run out and buy color TVs to enjoy their favorite shows after the broadcasters started using cameras that could capture the action in color. Sure, you didn't want to be the last family on your block still watching Milton Berle in b-n-w, but not getting the new TV didn't mean the old one was suddenly unusable.

It's the end of an era, I tell you.