End of Television As We Know It . . .
7th August 2007
In 560 days, television broadcasting, as Americans’ have always known it, will cease to exist. At that moment, local television stations will take the last step in the transition from analog to digital broadcasting.
On February 19, 2009 this change — of which far to many Americans are totally unaware — is both exciting and potentially troublesome.
Digital television is exciting because it promises theater quality viewing in your own home. The sound quality is similar to moving from LP’s to CD’s — stunning.
At the same time, the shift to digital only signals could be a problem, leaving many viewers, especially those in rural areas and those with low disposable income, without television at all. That’s a problem.
If you’ve already purchased an HDTV set, tuner, and antenna, you’re probably already receiving over-the-air digital signals. If not, you’ll be able to buy a converter that will pick up the new digital television signals and convert them so they can be viewed on your old receiver — admittedly at lower picture and sound quality. If, as most Americans, you subscribe to a cable television service, you won’t notice the change from analog to digital television because your set-top converter box will function just like the decoder described above.
If you own or purchase an HDTV set, you’ll be able to connect it to the cable converter box and view the highest quality signals available. If you still own a conventional analog set, you won’t lose service — but you won’t get improved quality either.
Most homes in America will notice one impact of all these changes. And they’ll feel it on any conventional TV set in the home that is using an antenna to receive an over-the-air signal (e.g., not connected to a cable converter box).
Many of these conventional / analog TV sets will still be in use in 2009. And if viewers watched a favorite program on February 18, 2009 on one of those sets, they’ll find the set’s screen blank the following morning.
Television is changing and the change will be easier on some than others. There are special challenges facing public media, including your local PBS member station. We’ll hit those issues in a future post.