Digital TV transition: 12 hours in, how are things going?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jun 12th 2009 1:35PM
posted Jun 12th 2009 1:35PM
Engadget's lead-up coverage:
T-minus one year till the US analog shutoff: are you ready?
The original DTV transition: what could've been
President Obama signs DTV delay bill into law
Digital TV transition spoof video is both informative and hilarious
Wilmington, NC kills analog dead as broadcasters go all-digital
FCC Info:
Station list with transition dates plus pre & post cutover channel numbers
DTV Reception Maps
What You Need to Know
National DTV transition coverage (send new ones to tips or leave in comments):
Read - WIS completes 'The Big Switch' to Digital TV
Read - Smooth digital TV transition is expected
Read - ACA: Members Ready for DTV Switch
Read - Analog TV to sign off starting at noon (Chicago)
Read - Twin Cities public TV bids the analog area adieu
rescanned, my # of channels doubled
That was actually a good reminder... I'll have to do that... I rescanned during the false start and picked up about 2 channels... I'll have to see what happens this time...
oh wait, it happened?
Thanks for that, I would have never even thought about rescanning, now i'm picking up about triple the amount I had before.
Shit, must've missed it.
where is the rescan button on hulu?
um i rescanned but im not getting any channels.. can you tell me whats going on?
They've got until 12:01am tonight to make the switch. Your stations might still be waiting.
good idea! i'll scan when i get home.
In the words of the venerable Dr. Peter Venkman
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Thanks for the reminder! Rescanning, now.
Not good in Los Angeles, lost half of the digital stations, rescanned and nothing new.
Top that off with U-verse was broadcasting Spanish audio over their Fox broadcast.
my TVs work fine....what was the big fuss about again?
Let me guess, you have a cable subscription? -_-
HEY! what happened to my TV?
pretty sure everyone who reads engadget has the same reaction or is lost and cant find tuaw
I can't wait till what I like to call "Old guy syndrome" sinks in and takes over the unaware and bored media.
OGS ftw.
I really hope the indignant ignorant the media puts on the air are at least entertaining.
a "No, I will not fix your TV" t-shirt sounds about right for the IT-savvy folks out there. if people come out of the woodworks to call you, probably shouldn't answer.
Oh snap! Where are all my channels?
5 minutes later after a re-scan. Oh, here they are! All is good here!
So this already happend!? Dont matter thats why I have the great programing of DirecTV
same here. i didn't even know it happened.
Lets be honest, I don't care who your provider is. No one has great programming.
Demand a la carte programming! Call your congressperson!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_la_carte_cable_television
well im in atlanta and its either comcast or DirecTV and compare the prices comcast is to damn expensive!
@que
I like Comcast much more here though, its worth the extra money
After transition, I had a cake.
The cake is a lie!
This was a triumph!
This was a triumph...
I'm making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS!
Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an "unsatisfactory" mark on your official testing record, followed by death. Good luck!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
This was a triumph!
I'm making a note here:
"HUGE SUCCESS!!"
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.
Aperture Science:
We do what me must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there's no sense crying
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
till you run out of cake.
And the science gets done.
And you make a neat gun
for the people who are
still alive.
@gib:
Please proceed into Android Hell!
If you didn't know this was coming, you don't deserve to watch tv.
Er....what?
Ya, it's only been like, umm, two YEARS that they've been harping about this.
Didn't know what was happening?
I don't watch TV. What's going on, again?
Y2K all over again.
No. Like Y2K, numerous people sunk many hours and huge dollars into this so the public WOULDN'T notice. Ironic.
I doubt Cobol programmers are benefiting as much.
Not much difference. I'm getting the same channels as before, just a slightly better signal.
Is it really this will improve the digital channel signal?
Yes, it will improve the visual quality a whole lot. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the audio quality. Hint: looks great but sound like crap.
Ya what is it with the DTV channel audio? It is so quiet in comparison to analog. I have to turn up our HDTV at work to almost max to get the same volume as I did only halfway up with analog.
LOL Half the channels here in San Diego Ca still work becuase they are being broadcast from TIjuana MX
que ??
As long as Sabado Gigante has some nice boobies on in HD Its allll good...
Didn't even remember the digital transition was today, no changes everything is still working fine for me
I thought it was to take full effect at midnight tonight. That is after midnight those transmitters have to be shut down.To quote the government website:
"...Congress mandated that the last day for full-power television stations to broadcast in analog would be June 12, 2009, all over-the-air TV broadcasts will be in digital after that date."
Don't know, don't care.
Well, there was a cumulative update for Vista Media Center that was supposed to add guide data for channels that are full digital, but it broke something now, so there is no guide data at all. That seems like a big hiccup so far.
when all else fails just reboot it. I just left mine sit and it synced back up ok.
Apparently just like with analog, no channel reaches over the mountains from LA to Palmdale. Then again my antenna is the included 3 foot thing with my laptop tuner...
hahahahaha you just got digitally rain shadowed!
Unfortunately it's the same junk that was on analog.
we switched back in january and i dont see any difference. nothing to worry about if you have cable.
Hulu seem to be running just fine
Is this going to affect my 8-track player? What about my polaroid?
Ummm... someone doesn't know that OTA HD is the highest available quality.
In my opinion, people who pay for cable are chumps. Even if you take that money and spend it on entertainment in other forms, you could be getting so much more for your dollar.
OTA HD on a Samsung 40-inch LCD TV
Dual tuner DTV Pal DVR (the new firmware makes it run on rails) No subscription fees and 1080i playback.
PlayON through the PS3 (BluRay, Netflix, YouTube Hulu, ESPN, CBS, Amazon rentals)
Netflix subscription.
Enjoy the stone age, cable subscriber.
You must not be a sports fan.
Find my over the air ESPN, Comedy Central, Speed Channel, etc and I will gladly agree with you. Until then..no dice
Yup, you can get ESPN, Comedy Central, CNN through Free to Air Dish setup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_air#North_America
What is digital tv? The TV with digital numbers in red? Oh, I have one! :D
@superfresh
Let me know when OTA has Discovery, History, Planet Green, HBO, SHO, STARZ, FX and every sports package your heart desires. Yeah, I am a chump that likes selection. Not just 10 channels, sir. Also, FYI - OTA is NOT the highest HD quality available. Blu-ray is. So don't be such a wise ass next time you aim to put someone down.
superfresh...
that true.
my local cable company receives broadcasts via fiber to the station, not OTA...their version is primo, unless youre in the studio
So will it still be a few weeks until the main digital transmitters are at full power, with some possible location changes of the transmitters?
I do need a converter box. I did sign up for a coupon from the government yet I never received one. Looks like I'm headed towards Best Buy to pay them a visit. I do have cable and what not downstairs but my upstairs is still rabbit ears. What can you expect ... free $40 .. my gosh I hope not.
Peoples have kids and they tryin' to entertain with TV. And you mean to tell me we can't entertain our kids? Because y'all didn't order enough boxes?
They shoulda had a tractor trailer out back with extra boxes, on ice, y'know?
And that's all I have to say!
Author, you mean pushbackS . . . February was the second deadline, December 2006 was the first.
Alright already, we're ready.
Well I just use my tv as an alarm clock so I don't really care, but I just need to put a splitter on the cable line and put it in my room.
I live in Fayetteville, NC and 3 weeks about about 2/3 of the digital channels I used to watch are gone, I just a complete rescan and they're still gone... funny thing is - I now have 3 more analog channels than I used to!
I meant about 3 weeks ago 2/3 of the digital channels I used to watch are gone.
5 Mins. in my HDTVs rose up and destroyed the SD TVs in my house.
I went into a local BestBuy about noon today, there must have been 20 people walking around with converter boxes in their hands. How can you wait till the last minute?
I just rescanned the channels on my TV. Most of them are still NTSC analog? Am I confused about what was supposed to happen?
FIOS still looks great
It seems to be off to a nice rough start around my area. I have the converter boxes on the non-HDTVs and I went from having 11 or so channels to 2 channels. I have tried repositioning antennas, rescanning, and even bought some signal boosters, but nothing seems to make a difference.
Oh well, there's always Hulu.
Some channels are better others look less than digital quality they appear worst than they did with analog even though I live in the middle of a big city fox does not come in at all even though I live 5 miles from the station something must be wrong there.
None of the channels from the next big city 20 miles away come in which use to but a station that is about 30 miles south comes in for some reason.
Thank you eecummings.
@ Bradford
excuse me; what the hell is a eecummings
Xoyuji;
E. E. Cummings was a poet who had avant-garde sensibilities about punctuation. He was trolling you about the fact that you have only two periods in a block of text that would benefit from several. Really though, he all sorts of punctuation, just unconventionally:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-light-out/
And I see our grammar Nazi is continuing to spread the oft-repeated incorrectism that E. E. Cummings spelled his name without spaces, capitalization or punctuation. It's E. E. Cummings, mate: http://members.tripod.com/~DWipf/cummings.html#OK
Interesting post... I just got a call from my grandma saying that today her tv wasnt getting a signal. She said she installed the converter box awhile back and things worked just find... guess i have to go over and help out...
The change happens at 12:30PM local time June 12.
So it hasn't happened yet on the west coast at the time I am typing this.
In my area on the east coast, it was neat to watch the channels blink out. Still a couple running analog signals for some reason. The local PBS station is one. After rescanning, it seems like I have about 6 more digital channels and some of existing ones are now giving me a better signal. Looks good so far.
i got rid of cable like 2 mo ago and forgot all about this
So glad you asked. I rescanned and ended up loosing my local affiliate for NBC (KCFW).
Come to find out the government is forcing this transition but is also stopping it from taking place in my neck of the woods. Here in NW Montana, our affiliate has had their transmitter on top of a mountain attached to a US Forest Service Lookout tower for years. Well the local USFS is keeping them from replace their analog transmitter with a digital transmitter. They have yet to determine the impact fees for replacing the old with the new. I am not talking about dollar figures here, this is about the price our environment has to pay for such a change. I would assume that the new goods are much smaller and they have already said that no additional equipment will be added, only the one-to-one replacement of the old stuff.
For those of you in my neck of the woods, KCFW is now channel 9.1 until the above issue can be de-Courted, & hopefully this is not a Supreme issue!
9.1 ended up being the ONLY digital Channel after the re-scan, Whatz up with that Northwest Cable?
Around & Around we go, and might i add, what a circus of a cloak we live under here in the US.
They say ya got to, but then they stop ya!
The True Impact Fee here is these great ideals our government is teaching our youth.
OOOw Rah
i didnt know they had tv in montana or internet for that matter.. but i did hear something about the dakotas getting it last year.
I have 4 lcds they all 100% ok 1080p on 4 screens
What sucks is my cable bl $154 month.,I'm being raped by twarner.,
Where I live if u don't have cable or dish u don't watch television, antennas pick up zero channels,.
For posterity and nostalgia I watched the end of analog on my ancient set from college which I haven't turned on for at least 7 years. At noon broadcasting stopped but then a cheezy infomerical to let people know, for the bazillionth time, that analog is kaput. Is that really necessary? Seems to me if people are that detached maybe forcing them to think this one out would do them some good.
I've lost the first station to transition to DTV, even after rescanning. I had it fine pre 'transition' in digital. Was even fine during their "We're going to test this to see how many people are ready tests." After the transition, I no longer receive a signal from that station. Haven't checked the other stations yet many of them are staggering their transition, the last one going off analog at 6pm EST here in Knoxville.
My God! I got up this morning and now how much I twisted those rabbit ears on my DuMont TV I could not get the early show!
There's nothing but static anywhere. It must be the apocalypse! This means I'll never get to see American Idol again.
Hey, that's not so bad. Maybe I'll learn how to read...or walk outside the house. I hear the sun comes up every day, but I've never seen it because I been sitting in front of my TV like a candied yam my whole life.
Had 1 channel before, have 0 channels now. Thirty miles from broadcast tower did it's job. And yes, I have a DTV tuner.
Help! All I see is snow . . .
Then go back inside!
Frankly I don't care how many people aren't prepared. We've known this was coming for nearly a DECADE. F'ing get with the times people! As for me, I have FiOS TV from Verizon, it works fine and what have you... I mean fer cryin' out loud people, it's 2009... we're -behind- on this bleeding switch over.
I'm sick and tired of the luddites holding the rest of us back by insisting that public policy account for their fear of technology.
Well not everybody can't afford cable dude...let alone a FiOS connection
Frankly, I am very glad for you that you read tech web-sites and are able to afford a FiOS connection. However, there are some folks that do not have an idea what DTV is and who were not reached by the DTV information sheets or have to drive 40 miles to the nearest Right Aid. I would not call them Luddites as they do not come in your home and trash your new home theater set, they simply have other things to worry about in life. SO if you could turn off your shiny HDTV, get in your car and drive around the country for a few weeks, you would probably see how many people are having difficulty understanding why this transition was necessary. And believe me, such terms as the 'white space frequency' and 'freeing the airwaves' will not be helpful in persuading them.
I'm afraid I would have to agree, they would have to be pretty lazy not to have digital by now.
I mean you can pick up a box from the supermarket. (unless they are too busy to eat)
Nooooo!!! I wasn't ready!