The Coming DTV Nightmare
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The future of American broadcast television is coming February 17th when U.S. stations are supposed to shut down forever their analog transmitters. After then, all broadcast TV in the United States will be digital.
Too bad we aren’t ready.
We’ve had more than a decade to prepare for this moment. I did the first-ever PBS HD broadcast back in 1998 and explained then what was going to happen next month. The date was already set. But some people just don’t listen and I think the confusion we’ll see next month among parts of the TV audience will be huge.
Most of us actually have nothing to worry about because those who have satellite or cable TV, which is more than 80 percent of American TV viewers, won’t even notice a difference. That’s because the cable and satellite companies will continue to provide us with the same signals they always have, even though it means converting a digital signal back to analog.
In one sense the coming of DTV is a boon to cable and satellite companies because it may drive new customers to them. BUT IT HASN’T YET. Look at Time-Warner Cable’s recent announcement of flat subscriber growth. If customers were flying to cable because of worries about the DTV transition those TWC numbers would have been up, not flat. And they will go up, but not until the stations pull their plugs next month.
That’s the way some of us are, you know. We wait until our asses are on fire to do something about maintaining our Oprah fix
And even then you know the cable companies will screw it up because of the huge influx of new business and because, well, they ALWAYS screw things up. All those who love their cable TV service raise your hands.
Next month there will be howls of outrage from people who have somehow gone an entire decade watching TV and ignoring all those Public Service Announcements about the switchover. What does that say about the true power of advertising? Pitiful.
Just this week the Consumer Electronics Association released the results of a poll trumpeting the fact that 90 PERCENT of TV viewers now know the DTV switchover is coming. That’s supposed to be good news.
Think about it for a moment. There are 110 million households in the U.S. with televisions. According to the Consumer Electronics Association after a decade of explaining and promoting the changeover at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, ELEVEN MILLION HOUSEHOLDS STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT’S COMING.
And remember the CEA survey only concerns awareness and says nothing about whether people have actually prepared and are ready for the coming change in their TV service. Those numbers are undoubtedly lower than 90 percent.
Given the penetration of cable TV in this country the actual numbers probably won’t be that bad. If 80 percent of all viewers have cable or satellite one might hope that 80 percent of the clueless 10 percent are already covered, meaning those who will be surprised when Judge Judy goes dark might be as few as 2.2 million households. But my guess is that those who don’t know about DTV are LESS LIKELY to have cable or satellite so let’s approximately double that at-risk figure to four million households.
All these people have to do, of course, is get a digital converter box and maybe a new antenna to be able to watch DTV on their old ATV. The government even has a coupon program that will give us $40 off on up to two converter boxes per household. That’s up to two $40 coupons per household if I wasn’t clear. With some boxes costing EXACTLY $40, this means switching to DTV can be free! That is IF it works.
I live in Charleston, South Carolina, right downtown in the historic heart of the city. The day after Christmas 2006 I bought on sale a very nice Samsung HDTV and a Terk HDTV Pro indoor antenna – an antenna that WOULDN’T be covered by those $40 coupons. Though apparently many analog antennas are fine for DTV, I didn’t have an antenna at all, so I had to buy one.
In December, 2006 I was able to receive with acceptable quality ONE broadcast HD station on my HDTV. As of this morning – two years later — I am able to receive TWO acceptable HD signals.
I don’t live in the boonies. I don’t even live in the suburbs. I live less than seven miles from all five local HD transmission towers. I live in a colonial city that limits to 55 feet the maximum height of any building in my part of town. I have a name brand TV and a name brand antenna. Now my guess is that in the last two years digital receivers and antennas have both improved somewhat, but I should be able to get more than 40 percent of the signals that are supposed to be available.
Based on this experience my guess is that a lot of people are going to be disappointed with their new digital broadcast TV service. The FCC estimates that the possible TV audience will shrink by two percent, which is to say that the DTV signals won’t make it to two percent of the audience currently receiving analog TV. The FCC is hoping that most of those two percent have cable or satellite or maybe don’t give a damn. They are hoping, too, that their two percent estimate is too high. But my experience suggests that it is actually too low.
Here’s what I think is going to happen over the next two months. First, we’ll run out of converter coupons. Coupon supplies are already low and more haven’t yet been authorized because, of course, they represent a financial obligation – one that requires Congressional approval. Interestingly there are plenty of converter boxes available, which means that people have coupons they haven’t yet used. Maybe they are hoarding coupons. Maybe they are just lazy. Maybe, like mail-in rebates, lots of converter coupons are lost and will never be used. Whatever the reason there is going to be a big blow-up when up to four million households suddenly want converter boxes and can’t get coupons.
But even when they get their coupons and their converter boxes some percentage of the broadcast viewing audience is going to be dissatisfied with their new DTV service. I will be surprised – REALLY surprised – if this number is under 10 percent of those who don’t have cable or satellite, which puts us back with somewhere around two million really unhappy VOTERS.
Two million pissed-off people is a LOT of pissed-off people in a nation that is essentially governed through popularity polls. Two million angry people could have ended the war in Iraq. You can bet two million angry people will cause a tsunami of too-late over-reaction in Congress.
The politicians know this is coming. There are proposals right now in Congress to allow some TV stations to keep their analog transmitters running awhile longer. But this just delays the problem and doesn’t solve it.
This too shall pass, of course. People will survive a short time without Dr. Phil. But don’t be surprised if Congress grabs money from the Fiscal Stimulus wallet and starts handing out subsidized basic cable subscriptions or even HDTVs to those people who waited.
Maybe they aren’t so dumb after all.
[...] date, instead choosing to assume a DTV coupon redeption rate of 70% instead of 100%. With anywhere from 2 million to 11 million people unprepared for the digital switch in just 5 short weeks, this could end up being a big issue in the 2010 [...]
With all of the coverage concerning this switch, to delay it would be pandering to the idiots of the world. Must we always adhere to the lowest common denominator in this country?
The real issue with the DTV switch will be folks experiencing poor signal reception. If you don’t have a high quality signal, whereas before with analog you at least got to watch a slightly fuzzy show, now you get to watched an extremely choppy, pixelated mess. Rural homes, or those with poor quality antannaes, will suffer the most – with the unfortunate result being that they are forced to get cable.
I live in rural PA and receive three stations via DTV. The antenna’s are located about 15 miles away and I have line of sight access. One of the three is broadcasting in very low power (to save money??) on the digital band. I was unable to receive the signal at all until I put up a Terk outdoor antenna. I anguished for several weeks trying to figure out why the signal from this station was received at 20% while the others were 95-100%. After testing my equipment I contacted NBC25 in Hagerstown, and found out they are broadcasting on a low power test mode until Feb 17. Of course they don’t state this anywhere on their web site or in advertising. That may be the situation in Charleston as well,
I have an old Zenith Space Command TV, rabbit ears on top. I got the coupon last April.
I get fine reception mostly on 20 channels. I am using a Zenith Mod #DTT900. converter box. I fine the broader the antenna spread not now high it is works best for me.
Another note…….. if anyone was paying attention to CES, the electronic show,
3D TV’s will coming out in 2010, don’t waste you coins on those shabby old HDTV,s
Suckers !!……
Long Live “Space Command”!… and of course Mac Rules!
How about just dumping the IRS altogether and raise tax money legally? Save billions in lost hours and money, to boot.
See the revenue-neutral replacement for the illegitimate federal income tax: Automated Payment Transaction Tax .
I’m sure we can figure out what to do with all those IRS agents.
[http://www.apttax.com/]
I live in the same historic city as Bob. The new broadcast antennas are 20 miles from my house and I receive 9 channels (6 in HD). Most people don’t realize that the new signals are being broadcast on the UHF band and the VHF antennas that they buy from Lowes won’t do your HD tv justice. The UHF antennas have a smaller footprint and work amazingly well.
Here’s a good site for UHF antennas: http://preview.tinyurl.com/uhf-antennas
Check out http://antennaweb.org for proper antenna placement.
Also, I just got my converter box from http://freetvsignal.com for free with the govt coupon. Free shipping as well. They currently have two free models to chose from.
Of course you won’t need the converter box if you have a digital tuner (most flat screen LCD tv’s do).
Happy viewing.
The government converter box coupons have an expiration date. All those who hoard them, lose.
Hey Bob, any truth to the rumour that you’ve been advising the Obama team on this?
They ran out of coupons Friday, January 9, 2009. Good Call Dude!
The complaints won’t be from 2-4 million holdouts or procrastinators. It will be from the 20 million who did what they were told and still get poor reception. OTA technology is crap and should be done away with. So is cable, because of the high last-mile cost. One satellite easily broadcasts to the entire continent. That is efficiency.
If the government wants to ensure TV to everyone because of participation in democracy, let them put up a satellite and broadcast CSPAN from there. There would be a lot of benefits. The private networks won’t be forced to air public service content, which they hate and lose money on. Emergency messages wouldn’t be affected by local issues, like power outages.
It’s impossible for anyone who actually watches tv not to know that the transition is coming.
If you cant afford the $40 for a converter box the you shouldn’t be watchig tv anyway.
Dean
I live in Los Angeles, about 30 miles from Mount Wilson, where essentially all of our market’s DTV transmitters are (and most of the analogs). The antenna for the building I live in is inside the attic of our two-story building, using 300-ohm twin lead for distribution, and probably hasn’t been replaced since the 1960s. The analog signal was full of ghosting, the UHFs were fuzzy and sometimes were received without audio … in short, so bad that everyone in the building put up with the lousy Time Warner cable service instead, or in more recent years, made arrangements with the management to install DBS dishes. (I’ve always kept the building antenna feed available as a backup.)
Well, I got an inexpensive DTV converter (less than $50), without using a coupon, just to see what would happen. To my pleasant surprise, every one of my locals now comes in beautifully, even though all of them are on UHF (although four of them are going back to their VHF channels next month). I can only conclude from this that even a crappy old antenna which had problems with analog reception will work just fine for DTV if you are close enough to the transmitter site.
Therefore, I can only surmise that Mr. Cringely is doing something wrong if he lives that close and can only receive a couple of signals. Perhaps someone with a broadcast engineering background could weigh in.
You said “Next month there will be howls of outrage from people who have somehow gone an entire decade watching TV and ignoring all those Public Service Announcements about the switchover.”
Why the smugness? Let me get this straight. All I have to do is get a converter box and everything will be rosy? I’ve been struggling with this DTV crap for about 6 months now. I’ve tried two different antennas and I still can’t pick up my ABC affilitate. I assumed that because I live in a metropolitan area that I would get all the stations that I received in analog. My remaining option is to buy an outdoor antenna, which will look pretty stupid attached to the railing outside my apartment.
This whole thing is a scam to enrich the cable and satellite providers, along with the electronics retailers. They’re not getting my money. Congress can take their subsidized basic cable and stick it you know where. Sorry about the harshness, I’m just frustrated. Some of us can’t afford a monthly cable bill.
You all realize that purchasing an HD television set does not mean that you get HD channels by default, right? I’ve read Cringely’s above referenced piece and the ensuing comments, and, I believe some of you are confused, including Cringely.
You have to *pay* for HD programming and secondly, an HDTV need not be purchased to be able to receive digital channels come Feb. 17th. That’s what the converter box is for and most don’t even need that since you already have that box from your cable or satellite provider.
@Mags: You are right about the HDTV not being needed, but you do NOT *pay* for OTA transmitted HDTV. You get digital HD for free over the air, hence why people who have HDTVs want to get an antenna and get their local channels for free. I have Comcast Standard definition cable, but I use an antenna to watch my local channels (for the news/House/Fringe/Scrubs) in HD. It’s FREE (after the price of the antenna). Also, it will keep your TV clock synced and give you localized emergency alerts as well as what show is currently on. So it’s actually reinvigorating the OTA television field.
On another note, I don’t think Bob made it clear enough that an HD antenna and a regular antenna are the same thing. They just throw HD on there as advertising. Though you do want to make sure it is UHF. For anyone interested, this site is very useful and has some even more useful links: http://www.hdtvantennalabs.com/index.php Oh, and Bob, most indoor antenna’s are horrible. I have the AntennasDirect DB2 (technically an outdoor antenna, but I use it inside). It works great. The DB4 is supposed to be even better, but too large to use indoors, and I don’t live that far away from the stations.
I am insensed at the attitude of some of the people who have blogged this site. Particularly the person who said that ‘If you can’t afford to buy new equipment, or cable, you don’t deserve to watch’. Has anyone noticed how many Americans have lost their jobs and are hanging by a thread! All Americans should have access to the local and national news and weather at the very least. We should not be charged these exorbitant rates for bad programming and endless paid programs , and then have to watch boundless advertisments to start out with. Now they want to force everyone to spend money we don’t have anymore since we lost our jobs. I lost my job, and my cable was turned off. The only reason I can see the news is because I put a paper clip into the cable connection, which will not work on Feb. 17 . We, the poor of this country, are being disinfrancised by these damned corporations wanting to make too much money; and in the face of a deep depression!! Say what you will, this is not the country I grew up in!
Right on Karen…I am agree with you !!!! we are stressed out with these hard times as well, have spent endless research time about antenna’s, converter boxes and such…been to all the web sites …. and I too have crap tv with both of our tv’s one is the newer flat screen…but I guess not new enough it needed a converter box (unreal)…and the older Toshiba tv with it’s converter box and the right antenna gets the same crappy freezing up pixed out reception with just six channels, I have undone the converter box for now….and get seven channels in excellent clear
picture until June…as for the flat screen…crappy freezing up, no signal, parttime good only five channels….and we use to have comcast….then went to direct tv….but have cut back … so I guess we may just watch on my computer ….we don’t need to see the depressing news and endless commercials anyway…..we well probably be better off for it…;-)
WARNING !!!!!!!!!!! I ordered 2 boxes from freetvsignal.com in early January and over a month later I received only 1 box and IT DID NOT WORK- DEFECTIVE POWER SUPPLY. No invoice, no return address, no way to return the box for repair/replacement, and no mention of the other box. I used the contact info on their site but it does not work- appears to be FAKE !!!!!! I was able to reply to the shipping email I got when they finally shipped but they do not respond after several attempts. I HAVE BEEN CHEATED OUT OF $80.00 by this company with no feasible recourse.
The antenna issue is huge, especially for folks living in fringe areas who got used to their fuzzy/snowy over the air analog TV reception. Chances are they will lose many of their channels because their existing antennas won’t be good enough (as in “NO SIGNAL” coming up on their TVs after plugging in their DTV converter box). I’m located about about 75 miles north of New York City, and we got our converter box coupons early last year. After I hooked up the box to our fringe VHF and UHF antennas located on the roof, I couldn’t get any digital TV stations coming out of New York City, which worked fine for analog channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. These are 25 year old rooftop antennas. I spent last summer updating the antenna wire from twin lead to coaxial cable, added a mast mounted preamp and tried again. Not much better. All we could get were WNYW-DT from NYC plus two local stations (WTBY and WRNN). Three stations – and only one of them is a major network (FOX) out of New York City. Now what are we supposed to do – go out a buy an even larger antenna? Our existing antennas are already huge and rated for 70+ miles. Taking down antennas and installing bigger ones is a do-it-yourself job. All the antenna installers went out of business in the 1970s when Cable TV became available. That’s when all my neighbors took down their antennas and got cable. We live in the only house on the street that still have antennas on the roof. Basic cable (broadcast only stations on analog cable) is starting to sound a lot better every day. If Cable TV is available where DTV reception is poor I think people will cave in and subscribe. The rest may join the angy mob that Cringely predicts but nothing will be accomplished in the process because fringe area viewers who live too far from the broadcast towers will be dismissed as being “out of market” anyway. The percentage of over the air viewers will shrink even more after the transition, and the main reason will be because of antenna reception issues.
Here’s some more links about the antenna reception issues:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901150335
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-03-02-digital-tv-reception_N.htm
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article.aspx?articleId=70764&mnu_id=52
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/dtv-its-the-ant.html
“Two million angry people could have ended the war in Iraq.”
Well, in the UK which has a population a fifth of the US population – something around 59 million, we did actually have a protest like that. Somewhere between 1 and 2 million people angry people did actually turn up on a march to protest about going to war. For many of them it was the first time they’d ever been on a political demonstration. We only have one city in the country whose population exceeds the number of people on the march.
They were summarily ignored. And we helped invade Iraq anyway…
Power of advertising? We are so inundated with advertising (on television – and everywhere else) that, I suspect, many people do the same thing I do – tune it out. With a government that is trying to force people to switch to cable so the bandwidth can be sold to the cell phone companies, viewers will be forced to pay double for television. Cable used to have few commercials, its expenses paid by subscribers. Broadcast television had commercials to pay for the delivery of content. Viewers paid by giving up a little of their time watching commercials. Now, viewers watching cable pay to subscribe and pay by giving up a much larger amount of their time for the commercials. And, then there is Pay Per View on top of that. The digital transition is just a step toward the total abolition of broadcast television. Combine that with the transition to what some are calling HD radio, and the government will soon have you paying double for any entertainment. Sure to line the pockets of their rich buddies.
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