Technology360

Senate votes delay of DTV implementation

The local channel here in Washington, DC is reporting that the U.S. Senate has voted (with support from the Obama administration) to delay the implementation of the television analog shutdown from February 17 to June 12.  It now goes to the House.  I was on a conference call with several public television CEOs this afternoon, and a number of them reported they would keep their analog lit until June if this extension passes.

Update 27 January 2009:
Here's the AP story at NPR.org.  --Dennis

The DTV delay and Big Yellow Taxi

 Matthew Lasar has more on the proposed (by incoming Obama administration) delay in the February 17th shutoff of analog television broadcasting, asking if it's too late to turn back for logistical reasons.  Links:  Ars Technica plus another on Consumers Union also asking for the delay here.  That may be the case.

The DTV transition has been in the works for a very long time, however until four months ago, no one predicted that it would coincide with a general financial crisis that has brought a number of broadcast advertising staples -- financials, automotive and retail -- to depression levels.  It's also demonstrable that broadcast stations are more economically reliant on their over-the-air households than their cable and DBS households, magnifying whatever loss they will get in overall households by perhaps double in economic terms.

So, the coupon program is out of money.  Congress should calculate whether it's cheaper to replenish that fund or wait for the television broadcasters to join the growing list of industries looking for a bail-out.

But it's not clear that consumers will be significantly more ready for digital several months hence with more coupons.  These lines from Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" come to mind:

...Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone...

--Dennis

Obama asks Congress to delay digital TV switch

Jim Puzzanghera and Christi Parsons write:

... In a letter to Congressional leaders, John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama's presidential transition team, urged that the Feb. 17 conversion date be extended. A major reason was the announcement this week by the Commerce Department that it had run out of money for a government program to provide $40 coupons for low-cost converter boxes to allow older TVs to receive the new digital signal. ...

Link:  Los Angeles Times.

Update 9 January 2009:
Also see Kim Hart's article in the Washington Post. 

Update 11 January 2009:
FCC's Kevin Martin says delay could cause confusion.  Associated Press via NPR.  --Dennis

"Analog?" So funny, and yet not

The Ides of March come about a month early for television broadcasters next year when millions of over-the-air viewers -- many of them elderly -- must deal with receivers that, without converter boxes, become livingroom plant stands.  Having just installed a new HD set in the livingroom and moved the analog set to an upstairs bedroom and installed one of the coupon converter boxes there for a technology-intimidated friend, I can testify that it's a challenging task.  FOX's Talkshow with Spike Ferensten has a great send-up of the various television spots on the conversion that are now playing on stations across the country.

Do yourself a favor and watch this piece.  But have a Kleenex handy.  It will make you laugh big time, but when it's done, if you're a broadcaster, it might also make you cry.  Link:  MSN Video.  Thanks to Karen Olstad for that link.  --Dennis

Wilmington Becomes Model For Digital TV Switch

I posted Sunday about the Wilmington, NC market switch from analog to digital TV transition, linking to a story on NPR by WHQR's Catherine Welch.  Catherine had a follow-up story on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday.  The link includes text and audio for the story plus additional information on the transition.  Nice job covering this.

[By the way, if you're reading this fairly soon after this is posted, you'll see that NPR's open API already snagged this story and automatically posted it to the column of stories on the left of this blog.  The stories are licensed for noncommercial use, so if you're site qualifies, check it out.]

Also see John Dunbar's story for the Associated Press, Old antennas cause complaints in digital TV test.  Link:  AP.

Big cable thinks it's going to gain subscribers, and they're probably right.  See Deborah Yao's report, also for the AP, Comcast, Time Warner Cable sees digital TV gains.  Link:  AP.  --Dennis

Wilmington, NC cuts over to digital television early on Monday

Since for the past six months I've a radio-only job for the first time in my career, the FCC's transition to the new digital television transmission standard next February is suddenly a non-event, so I can say with Mad's Alfred E. Neuman, "What -- me worry?"  The FCC and the broadcasters in the Wilmington, North Carolina market are trying to determine exactly how much to early tomorrow when the entire market cuts over to DTV early.  Catherine Welch of Wilmington's public radio station, WHQR, had the story on NPR's All Things Considered today.  It will be interesting to see what they learn. --Dennis

We're all dead

The death of broadcasting is a popular theme in web posts.  For example, Doc Searls asks, What happens after TV's mainframe era ends next February? in Linux Journal (you should read it, but that's not my purpose here).  Jeff Jarvis says in BuzzMachine they should Tear down the broadcast towers because Pandora is available on the iPhone.  Those are the A-list bloggers, but it's popular with us  Z to ZZZ-list bloggers as well.  So I decided to do phrase searches to see how the media stacked up in the death department.  Surprisingly, it wasn't old media:

Dead
"death of television", 13,000 results
"death of TV", 28,200 results
Deader
"death of radio", 227,000 results
"death of newspapers", 331,000 results
Deadest
"death of blogs", "death of the blogs", "death of the blog", 81,400 results
"death of the web", 215,000 results
"death of the net", 746,000 results
"death of the internet", 1,910,000 results

--Dennis

A moving experience

A week ago tonight I was in a Spokane, Washington hotel awaiting a morning one-way flight to Washington, DC.  It had been exhausting and emotional week-plus organizing the move of my household goods and that day marked the last one I would spend in the house on a northern Idaho mountain ridge where I'd lived with my family for the past 21 years.  My two youngest children are now grown and gone and my wife and her parents, who'd lived there with us, are deceased, so I was planning to sell the place even before this new job came up rather quickly at the end of February.  What I'd thought might be a two or three month process turned into a two or three week process -- absolutely insane.

But my last day there also had some magic moments.  When the atmosphere is absolutely pristine, I can see to the southeast some mountains on the other side of Elk City, Idaho, about 110-120 miles away.  I've seen them only 3-4 times in the 21 years I lived there, but there they were at breakfast.  And while bald eagles gather in great numbers, usually in January, on Lake Coeur d'Alene some 75 miles to the north-northeast, their appearance around my property is only slightly more common than the distant mountain view.  Yet after lunch, there was one mature one circling my property.  Wow!

Returning to the theme of this blog with a "department of personal experiences" report:

My March commuting to Washington is now over and I'm awaiting my car and household goods in a small 14th-floor apartment in the city.  My new broadcast reception is so far all-digital.  I sent an HDTV monitor and Samsung DTV decoder (5th-gen chip) on by UPS and purchased a Sangean HD Radio component tuner which I'm currently using with the HDTV monitor's RGB input.  I have floor to ceiling door to the balcony and have tried the DTV tuner with two antennas -- a small Phillips model in a weather-proof wing-like enclosure that's meant to be mounted on an outside pole, and a Terk UHF log periodic with a built-in set of standard rabbit ears.  The FM antenna is a standard twin-lead folded dipole laying on the floor in a sort of drooping T configuration.  I don't know where the transmitters are located, but my antennas are looking toward the east.

The HD Radio performs quite well on the FM band.  I can pick up several HDR stations, including WAMU and WETA-FM, the local NPR stations.  The Phillips TV antenna worked well back in Idaho, but here it enables only a handful of channels to be accessed via scanning.  The Terk does much better with the rabbit ears extended, though I've not found any configuration that permits me to pick up the Washington PBS stations, WETA and WHUT.  I can, however, get a Maryland Public Television station as well as the "MHz" public station from Virginia (which is broadcasting five SD channels, all of which look pretty good).

The HD Radio experience is pretty seamless, thank goodness, but the repeated scan/adjust antenna/rescan/adjust antenna/rescan thing on the TV side is a real pain and I doubt many consumers will go through it.  Who invented this turkey?!?  Oh, it does look nice when it locks in on a channel. 

Updated 7 April 2008:
Stephen Hill writes privately (highly paraphrased here), Get cable!.  Yes, I'm going to do that as soon as my large screen shows up, and my unstated point is that so will most other over-the-air viewers.  To traditional broadcasters -- and especially to public television stations -- these viewers will then become economically much less important (see many earlier posts on this topic).  --Dennis

Boy Scouts, Meals on Wheels to help with DTV transition information?

John Eggerton reports:

How far has the federal campaign for the digital-TV transition gone? The National Telecommunications and Information Administration considered deploying the Boy Scouts of America to help inform over-the-air analog TV viewers that they could lose their TV picture at 12:01 a.m. Feb. 18, 2009, just one year from today, unless they get a converter box, a new TV, or are already hooked up to cable or satellite.  ¶  Converter-box retailers held talks with Boy Scout organizations about coming up with a DTV-transition merit badge for helping some older ladies and gentlemen cross the digital divide, although the plan may be scrapped over concerns about sending scouts into strangers' homes. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission is talking to the Meals on Wheels Association of America about delivering DTV education along with food. ...

Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.  Help that elderly person cross the street and give him a $40 coupon, too.  --Dennis

Many Obstacles to Digital TV Reception, Study Says

Oh, really?  That's been obvious to many of us for years, so the headline comes off like one from The Onion (such as "Local Girlfriend Always Wants To Do Stuff").  But these problems have now been "validated" by new study.  Roy Furchgott has a good review of it:

... The study by Centris, a market research firm in Los Angeles, found gaps in broadcast signals that may leave an estimated 5.9 million TV sets unable to receive as many channels as they did before the changeover. It may affect even those who bought the government-approved converter boxes or a new digital TV. To keep broadcast reception, many viewers may have to buy new outdoor antennas, the study found. ...

Link: New York Times.  --Dennis