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Many are unaware of the DTV transition, or ready to spend money on unnecessary add-ons.
When you go nestle into your couch or La-Z-Boy tonight and tune into “American Idol” or the hours of election and/or Super Bowl pre-game coverage, think of the little people—those who haven’t yet experienced the magic of HDTV.
Yes, there are plenty of them out there, and apparently they don’t have a clue about the upcoming digital transition. Consumer Reports just finished a study that says that many have misconceptions about what’s coming in 2009.
The study shows that 74 percent of survey respondents did know about the transition. However, 36 percent of Americans living with TVs didn’t have a clue that anything was coming. Other interesting figures:
- 58 percent of consumers aware of the transition believe all TVs will need a digital converter box.
- 24 percent believe they will need to throw away their analog TV sets.
- 33 percent that are completely unaffected by the transition plan to buy a converter box.
- 31 percent plan to buy a new DTV set with a built-in digital tuner.
- 73 percent are unaware of the government coupon created to offset purchasing a converter box.
“Confusion about the digital television transition will cost consumers a lot of money for equipment they may not want or need,” said Joel Kelsey, policy analyst for Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports. “Based on these survey results it is now clear that the government and every media company that profits from consumers watching television must do whatever it takes to help consumers keep getting broadcast TV, without paying a dime more than necessary.”
The federal government has allocated $5 million, with $1.5 million in public education funding to the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), respectively. Overseas, the UK is expecting to spend a whopping $450 million on its public education campaign.
A total of 1,013 interviews were conducted telephone for the survey. The switch to DTV is scheduled for February 17, 2009.
Where’s the converter boxes at Wal-Mart? I haven’t seen any yet, or even heard that they are going to get any. I think the government screwed the rural folks again.
Well that sucks for you, but I maintain that in general, and surely after the transition, DTV signals will travel farther since that is all the broadcasting towers will be sending.
Perhaps your local affiliates are just not pumping it out the way they do in my area. At any rate I have to believe that after the transition (by law?) the serviced area would have to at least equal the current analog coverage including the now “fringe” areas.
While I sympathize with your situation, I think there has been little discussion about it because it really wouldn’t reach a majority of those who need to hear it from sources such as these (forums/news sites). You may very well be the rare exception to that.
Nope, I’m correct. Where I live for instance I can receive a ghosty but very watchable channel 12 from our local CBS affiliate. The same station broadcasts a digital feed on channel 7 which is not receivable here. Our other local stations have nice high power analog UHF signals though I can’t get them with an where I live antenna. The same stations are broadcasting with a lower power VHF digital signal that barely makes it out of town.
A really good example is our local ABC affiliate. My cable company provides a nice clean analog version of their signal, but is unable to provide a reliable digital signal because their antenna farm at their head end is in a digital fringe area.
The problem with digital is that you either get a perfect picture or an unwatchable signal with tiling and audio dropouts - or worse.
So, once again, folks who must watch TV in fringe areas with an antenna are likely to be cut off after the transition.
That is incorrect.
When the switch occurs those rural folk will have their $40 coupon to buy/order a converter box that will, in fact, capture digital OTA signals and display them on their analog tv’s. These folks will also benefit in that the DTV signal will be stronger and they will enjoy a better and fuller set of channels to watch.
I used to get nearly 20 DTV channels on my DTV STB via a aerial on my roof that never pulled in any VHF/UHF signals. This was in a “rural” area about 50mi from the areas of broadcast. In fact my father still uses this STB to watch HD sports via his 25yr old aerial and my 6yr old HDTV.
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If you live in flat lands or near a big city with mega power stations you will be fine. However I live in rural mountainous upstate New York. Fortunately I can now get cable so I’m fine - with the exception of my ABC affiliate, but there are a lot of folks living in valleys 20, 30 or more miles from the TV transmitters and they only get marginal analog signals.
I have a feeling that more people than we realize are going to find that digital is not as forgiving as analog was.
Just plug in various zip codes into antenna web to see what happens.
FYI - the problem I see most often is you get a perfect picture and sound, but once or twice a minute the picture breaks up and the sound drops out. Very annoying. I just watched last night’s lost and it’s very frustrating to have the sound vanish during a key piece of dialog.