TechnoBabble

A real question that I was asked last week by a nice lady from Randolph County. She had been hearing her sons talking about buying new TV's this Christmas because the government was turning off TV in the next year and she didn't think it was fair for us to not broadcast anymore. I get variations on this theme every week and it gets even more frequent as the holidays get closer so with Black Friday looming, now would be a great time to talk about what you really need for the upcoming analog shutdown and digital transition.

I first told the lady that TV wasn't going away. We would still be here for many years to come and it was February 17, 2009 is when things change and we would be the ones changing and she just had to be sure she was ready for it. I asked her how she received TV now and she said she was on a fixed income and all she had were a set of rabbit ears on her 1980's vintage television. I told her that the US government, the National Technology and Information Agency (NTIA), would be providing $40 coupons (up to two per household) to help people in her position be able to continue to watch TV going toward the mandated $50 digital converter boxes making her share only $10. She said she could do that. I told her that after the first of the year the coupons could be gotten through the NTIA in Washington, DC and the converter boxes will be available at Radio Shack, Best Buy, Circuit CIty and other electronic stores. I told her to get her son's involved to help with obtaining the coupon and the converter box so she wouldn't miss out. She said she felt much better now about it and thanked me.

Back in September, the NTIA held a public expo on the digital converter box issue. Here is an excerpt from a TV Technology ariticle about that expo:

Among the companies displaying technology at the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) DTV Transition Expo at Commerce Department headquarters were LG Electronics, Thomson (under the RCA brand), Samsung, EchoStar and, from Silicon Valley, Broadcom.

To show how its converter box might work in your grandmother's house, RCA hauled a 1968 set to the Commerce Department. The converter is the vertical black box to the right of the antenna.



The displays were part of a half-day of events including speeches and panel discussions organized by NTIA tackling the issue of the converter boxes and the nearly $1.5 billion worth of $40 coupons that consumers can start requesting Jan. 1.

LG hooked its box up to an old Zenith and RCA hooked its up to a vintage 1968 RCA set.

As of this posting, the FCC has approved 6 companies converter boxes, they are LG, Thompson (using the RCA brand name), Samsung, Echostar, Broadcom and Digital Stream Technology. All 6 companies will produce a $50 converter box. LG, Samsung and Echostar also produce higher cost models that you can buy now . The difference with the $50 government coupon boxes and the higher cost boxes are features. The coupon boxes are stripped down models and will only decode HD to analog televisions where the higher priced full featured boxes will display HD and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio to true HD televisions. The thought process behind this is that for the coupon boxes, they are only for converting older analog televisions so they can continue to be used after the analog transmitters are turned off and do not need features on them the older sets do not have anyway. That is not to say that the higher priced boxes will not do the same job either, because most of them do, just at a higher cost and with features that are not needed on analog sets. Most of the higher cost converter boxes retail between $170 to $400, depending on what you are looking for. The Samsung DTB-H260F is available locally for around $179 and will connect to either an analog TV or a HD TV. Motorola also has a converter box in the $200 price range. Of course all new TV's being sold today have digital tuners in them so you will not need a converter box for them or if you have cable or satellite, you will not need a converter box either.

We recently upgraded the TV's we use in the newsroom with 20 inch SD models for about $150 each and they had digital tuners in them making them ready for the transition that picked up all of the local digital stations with a modest outside antenna with no problems. A few weeks later I bought two 13 inch SD TV's from WalMart for the transmitter for $89 a piece to monitor not only the analog channel 8 transmitter, but the HD channel 35 transmitter as well and they had good digital tuners in them picking up the other digital stations in the area with no more than a wire stuck in the antenna plug making them digital ready.

So you see you do not have to spend big dollars now to be ready for the Digital Transition in 2009. Just be careful when you buy a smaller set that it is indeed digital ready. The set should have a logo on the front that says SDTV or EDTV or HDTV or Digital Ready since there is still some remaining analog only inventory out there for the smaller sets and by law are required to be labled as an analog only TV that will not work past February 17, 2009. Once this inventory is sold out, stores are not allowed to sell any more analog only TV sets. So buyer beware.

I will continue to blog as things come up but if you have an other questions about the digital transition, you can email dtv@wghp.com or call the station.