DTV transition: Some viewers losing signals

Be the first to comment | I like it!
June 11, 2009, 04:00 PM —  IDG News Service — 

For marketing consultant Richard Kelleher, a transition from analog to digital television in the U.S. hasn't gone smoothly.

Kelleher, who lives in the Phoenix area, is one of millions of U.S. residents who have purchased converter boxes so that their television sets can receive digital broadcasts. U.S. televisions will stop broadcasting analog signals on Friday.

Kelleher received about 10 analog stations, and after hooking up the converter box, he receives only three stations, two of them Spanish-language stations, he said. "With the conversion, the government must be enforcing an agenda of teaching me Spanish," said Kelleher, who calls himself a marketing sociologist. "I live in northeast Phoenix, where there is a mountain range between my home and the [TV] station towers."

Most people receiving over-the-air broadcasts will need to purchase converter boxes to continue to receive TV signals after analog signals go dark Friday. The U.S. government continues to offer coupons to help with the cost of the US$50 to $80 converter boxes. Television sets hooked up to cable or satellite service will not need converter boxes.

With his TV set connected to the converter box, Kelleher gets a "station unavailable" message on several channels. He has an indoor antenna, and has no plans to crawl up on his townhouse roof to install an outdoor antenna, he said. He watches about two hours of TV a week and doesn't want to spend the money to buy cable service.

"Thank God for Internet," he said. "I'm paying the $40 for wireless broadband instead of cable. Most shows are on the Internet the next day."

Kelleher is not alone, according to DTV Across America, a group focused on providing information about the DTV transition. An estimated 2 million to 4 million U.S. households will lose TV signals Friday because they have not purchased a converter box, but others will lose stations because they lack an adequate outdoor antenna, the group said.

On Wednesday, Nielsen reported that 2.8 million American households, or 2.5 percent of the television market, are completely unready for the transition, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said. That's a big improvement over February, when the DTV transition was originally scheduled to happen, the agency said.

The FCC hasn't done an adequate job of describing the need for outdoor antennas, said Nicholas Didow, a spokesman for DTV Across America. The digital signals don't go through obstacles as well as the analog signals did, he said.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

dtv

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Where Google Chrome security fails: the password
I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace