On February 17, 2009 the analog portion of the broadcast spectrum will be officially shut down as per Congressional mandate. What does that mean to your TV reception? What does it mean to stations like WOSU?
St. Claire of Assisi and You Go Digital
By Tom Rieland
I have a small statue on my desk of a St. Clare of Assisi. Something I found in a voodoo shop in New Orleans many years ago. It was only recently that I learned her story.
At 18, she was inspired by a sermon by St. Francis of Assisi and during the night escaped her wealthy family to live a life without any worldly possessions. With the support of St. Francis, she established the Order of Poor Clares and led it for forty years. Toward the end of her life in the 1250s, she was too ill to attend Mass, but miraculously was able to see and hear the service on the wall of her monastery cell. It was on this basis that on February 17, 1958, Pope Pius XII designated St. Clare of Assisi as the patron saint of television.
What does this have to do with analog or digital TV? Well, it will be that date, but 51 years later, February 17, 2009, that will mark the end of all analog television broadcasts in America. An aide in a congressional office somewhere must have known the story of St. Claire of Assisi.
Why fool with my TV?
For 50 years, WOSU television has been a fixture at Channel 34 in Columbus. Why fool with a good thing? Follow the money. When congress became aware of digital television and how implemention of a new digital transmission process could open up wide spans of the electromagnetic spectrum for wireless companies, it looked like a slam dunk winner. We’ll just move television off that beachfront property, transition to digital and open up that spectrum for a huge auction to help the federal deficit. In fact, the sale of this valuable, scarce real estate is expected to bring in about $10 billion, maybe more. That’s real money!
When the spectrum is sold off, the companies that buy it will use it to develop new technology and services. Cheap, ubiquitous wireless broadband access is one possibility. Mobile TV or music services are others.
When the federal government set the transition’s rules in December 1996, regulators stipulated that the transition would be over and analog broadcasting would end in 2006. Back then, 2006 seemed an impossibly long time away.
The provision that sets the new dead date for analog TV was included in S.1932, a hotly contested bill that slashed federal spending by $40 billion over the next five years. The bill squeaked by the Senate four days before Christmas on a vote of 51-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney abbreviating a trip to the Middle East to return and cast the deciding vote.
The bill, ultimately named the “Work, Marriage, and Family Promotion Reconciliation Act of 2005,” also included up to $1.5 billion for the set-top converters that would allow analog-only TV sets to process digital signals.
In about two years, analog TV will be retired in order to free up portions of our scarce broadcast spectrum. Those portions will then be repurposed for public safety and emergency services or sold for new wireless offerings, among other things. From a station standpoint, the change means we can shutoff our aging analog transmitters and save as much as $100,000 annually in electricity costs.
What about my Analog TV?
Chances are you have at least one analog TV still in use somewhere in your home - Unfortunately, analog televisions are inherently incompatible with a Digital Television (DTV) signal. If any of your analog sets rely on an antenna for programming, their screens will go dark come February 17, 2009. On February 17, 2009 the analog portion of the broadcast spectrum will be officially shut down as per Congressional mandate. From that point forward, television broadcasters will only be permitted to transmit using the DTV format. The impending analog shutdown is nothing to panic about, but you would be wise to understand how this event will affect you and your televisions. This is especially true if you pluck your programming from the sky using a rooftop antenna or old rabbit ears on your TV.
- With the help of an external set-top box, off-air DTV signals can be converted to analog so older televisions can display the signal. According to the FCC, the government will help subsidize the purchase of two such boxes for each qualifying household beginning in 2008.
- You will not need to purchase a new antenna. The same VHF/UHF antenna that receives your analog broadcasts will work fine for DTV.
- If you’re a cable customer, you will be required to have a set-top box capable of decoding DTV. In many cases, you might already have such a box. For example, Time Warner in Columbus has announced that all their cable boxes are essentially digital boxes now. Analog is gone.
- If you’re a satellite customer, you already have a digital-to-analog converter in your satellite receiver box.
- Your analog televisions will continue to be 100% compatible with your VCR, DVD player, camcorder, game console and any other source devices you use with them today.
If you choose to stick with your analog television and go the converter box route, just remember that it’s not a magic box. A converter will not transform your TV into a HDTV. It’s true that you will be able to watch a DTV signal, but you will still be constrained by the resolution of your analog TV - less than half of true HDTV.
Government Help
In the Columbus market, the estimate is that about 13 percent of households receive their television signals over-the-air. This means at least 120,000 homes in central and southern Ohio will face an issue of purchasing a new set-top box to continue to receive programming.
Nationally, it’s estimated that about 70 million sets will need such boxes.
Roughly 20 million of those soon-to-be-obsolete sets are in homes where people don’t subscribe to cable or satellite. The other 50 million or so are in pay TV homes, and used as second, third or fourth sets. Sets hooked up to cable or satellite services should work fine no matter what.
Of course, your representatives in Congress are aware of this little issue. To avoid a consumer revolt, Congress has set aside about $1.5 billion to smooth the transition. Owners of outmoded TV sets will be eligible for two vouchers, worth $40 each, to help buy converter boxes that will enable today’s analog TV sets to receive digital signals.
People are supposed to apply for the vouchers during a three-month window in 2008, and use them within three months. But there probably won’t be enough vouchers to go around, and no one really knows how much converter boxes will cost.
For the latest information about the digital transition that might impact your television set checkout:
http://www.dtv.gov/ (look for the time clock countdown to digital transition)
