Better TV is coming, but are you ready for it?

Behind the placid pictures, a made-for-TV storm is looming.

Since the first days of television, the method of beaming pictures into our living rooms hasn’t changed much. But on Feb. 17, 2009, television stations across the country will hit the off button on this time-tested technology and switch to new transmitters, sending computerized digital signals through the air.

When the change comes, the estimated 30 million televisions that use traditional antennas will go to snow without a digital converter box. The cable industry is spending $200 million to educate customers, and Congress has set aside $1.5 billion to help subsidize the purchase of converter boxes.

Still, half of American viewers don’t know the storm is coming, according to a poll conducted last month by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing. For the 1 in 5 American households that still use rabbit ears or antennas on the roof, “the day of reckoning is coming,” said Barry Umansky, a communications professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

Not enough spectrum for all those signals
The switch to all-digital television, and a similar switch in the wireless communications industry, is partly a repercussion of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when police and fire communications channels were clogged by too much traffic.

The Federal Communications Commission first ordered the eventual transition in 1996, but Congress didn’t set a deadline until the 9/11 Commission reported that first-responder systems needed a major upgrade. 

Digital TV What equipment do I need? If you currently receive free over-the-air television programming on an analog television set, you will need a DTV converter box to continue to receive television service after Feb. 17, 2009. DTV converter boxes will be available in early 2008. To help consumers cover the cost of the converter box, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will be issuing up to two converter box coupons valued at $40 each to households in early 2008. Information about the DTV converter box coupon program is available at www.ntia.doc.gov. Source: KSHB-TV

The problem, said Umansky, a longtime broadcast industry lawyer, is that “America’s seemingly wide-open skies are chock full of radio signals, and there just aren’t enough frequencies for all the people who need to use them.”

By taking back the analog frequencies, the government will “allow the nation’s airwaves to be used by firefighters, police and other first responders to help the nation when there might be a natural or manmade disaster,” said Todd Sedmak, communications director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Cell phones, alarms, navigation systems also affected
Companies will now have to bid for digital spectrum, which can carry more information more efficiently, allowing them to transmit crystal-clear, high-definition signals, and more of them. The auctions will mean a windfall for the government — and a train wreck for consumers, said Umansky and other experts.

Televisions aren’t the only technology to use analog signals. Some cell phone customers still use analog service, which carriers won’t have to provide under a similar ruling that takes effect Jan. 1. So do about 1 million home and business alarm systems across the country, many of which are small, local operations for which the switch to digital could be prohibitively expensive.

“So you could have your alarm going off and the signal will go nowhere — basically fall on deaf ears,” said Andrew Stevens of Tele-Plus, a telecommunications and security company in Hagerstown, Md.

Likewise, General Motors’ OnStar automotive assistance service will go silent in all models that can’t be upgraded to receive digital signals. That’s every model made before 2002, as well as some made from 2002 to 2004.

“I have a car, I have a blue button, and jeez, it’s not going to work,” said Barbara Montsvil of Morton Grove, Ill. “All right, now what do I do? Send out a flare?”

In a statement, OnStar said: “Like our analog customers, we would have preferred that the cellular industry continue to support analog technology beyond 2008.”

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