Today is the Big Day!

The DTV Transision is finally happening today! This is the biggest change in existing broadcast formats ever undertaken in the USA.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Technically, the Digital Transition is ENDING today. A transition, by definition, is something that takes place over a period of time, and the digital transition has been taking place for 10 years now. Today is the end of the full-power analog age.

Sorry, that's a nitpick I know, but everyone always talks about the "transition" as if it's something that is brand new, and that's always bugged me.

Anyway, bring it on, I've been ready for this for nearly 5 years now.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

The only thing that "bugs" me about the transition is the way that cable companies (in my area, Cablevision) have taken advantage of the entire situation to try to frighten the unaware into subscribing to cable as the way to insure that their TVs will not go dark today.

You've probably seen the ads: A gentle but serious talking man in a sweater sitting in a living room addresses the audience in an ominous voice talking about the millions of people whose TVs will go dark because of the loss of analog broadcasts. He then suggests that subscribing to cable "for pennies a day" (I love that innocuous sounding but totally non-revealing phrase) will assure the listener (viewer) that he or she will avoid the impending catastrophe. No mention at all about an inexpensive converter box (mostly covered by a rebate) and no need for cable at all for those who, for whatever reason - personal or financial - decide to stay with non-cable or non-satellite approaches.

Of all the things that these leeches have pulled in the past I find this the most reprehensible. They are clearly preying on the technologically unaware - which includes a lot of elderly folk and similar.

Nice lowlife move, Cablevision et. al.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Geez talk about semantics.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Time Warner bought out Cablevision in upstate New York about ten years ago, so fortunately we haven't had those commercials here. The TW ads imply that digital cable is a solution, but they haven't portrayed themselves as the only solution. I did read that TW picked up 80,000 previously over-the-air customers between January and March of this year.

Someone at the local NBC affiliate told me their analog signal would be going dark at 2:05 am this morning, so I stayed up and watched. After Green Day performed "21st Century Breakdown" on Carson (an oddly fitting end), I saw the following:

Re: Today is the Big Day!

My wife called me this morning about the Tivo situation. A channel rescan found that two channels changed frequencies. I expected that. But Tivo has no guide data for them. I didn't expect that. Hopefully a forced Tivo update will fix everything. My fear is Tivo is behind and we won't get revised guide data for a week or more.

This transition makes me wonder again how Feb was ever chosen for a switch over date. It was clearly planned by people who don't actually watch TV...who would put a major transition during the TV season? Summertime, when it's mostly reruns, is a much better time.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Not to mention, if people need to upgrade their outdoor antennas, you're putting the on the roof in the dead of winter.

I get the feeling the people making these kinds of decisions were more concerned about the continued availablitity of emergency warnings (tornadoes, storms, etc.) than reruns.

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Well clearly not if they want people installing roof-top antennas during blizzard season!

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I call 'em as I see 'em.

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Yeah, as much as I griped about the delay, after years of the FCC pumping up the Feb. 17th date, I agree that June makes so much more sense, for all the reasons you mentioned: Better weather conditions if antenna work needs to be done and less programming to be disrupted.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

It was chosen to be after the Superbowl but before March Madness got into gear; that really was the criteria.

...My guess is that it was also chosen by congressmen from the sunbelt.

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I'm watching the last minutes of analog broadcasting on the world's oldest television station, WRGB, right now.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Winter? What's that?

We have 2 seasons, summer, and the couple months when the grass doesn't grow so you don't have to cut it.

But why did they set the new date for 2 weeks into hurricane season? I'd think it would have made sense 2 weeks before the start of hurricane season.

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Inexcplicably, tonight at midnight WRGB's (digital HDTV) signal on DirecTV went dark. Somebody push the wrong button?

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I've transitioned. My TivoHDs are now updated. Life continues. Curious to see if signal reception improves with the analog transmitters off.

I can only hope the end of the world in 2012 (thanks, Mayan calendar) goes as smoothly

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Digital TV uses virtual channels to assign familiar channel numbers to different pieces of spectrum. WRGB is one of the few broadcasters that decided to switch its digital broadcast from the assigned UHF spectrum (the equivilant of analog channel 39) to the actual channel 6 previously occupied by its analog broadcast on the VHF spectrum. The analog broadcast and digital UHF broadcast ended at 11:59 PM last night, as scheduled. The new digital broadcast was supposed to start on VHF 6 at 12:01 AM today. That did not happen. The new signal came online sometime between 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

Judging by the difference between the spotting digital UHF 39 WRGB and the rock solid VHF 6 WRGB, I think digital must work better on VHF than UHF spectrum. Unfortunately, a lot of the "HDTV" antennas RadioShack and its like are marketing only receive channels 7-51, so you're going to see a lot of ticked off customers.

Re: Today is the Big Day!

A few low-power stations are still on the air over here, including one that shows nothing but the Home Shopping Network- they're allowed to stay on at least for the foreseeable future. Are there any new TVs out that have digital but no analog tuners?

Re: Today is the Big Day!

Obituary.

NTSC (1941 - 2009) died today of extreme obsolescence. NTSC is survived by a son, ATSC.

The Friday (almost 3 weeks ago) of the switchover was the first time I ever saw HDTV.

We had seen so many ads over the past 18 months about how we didn't have to do anything since we have cable- the kind without a box. Never had one, don't want a box.

I watched one local channel flip the switch over to digital on their noon news and was unimpressed. It looked exactly the same, but I was at least glad the signal was still there.

This was on a Sony TV that's about 3 years, which supposedly can handle digital channels- otherwise, why would the remote have an analog/digital button?

I switched that to digital, did the channel scan thing again where it goes to see what's out there, and it came back saying it found none. Weird, since that was after we had seen one channel switch over.

For a few hours, I thought oh well, nothing has really changed, but at least we still have most the channels we had before. I did another channel scan on analog and the only change I noticed was that one of the PBS channels just has a slide where the old channel was. Odd.

Later that night I went to my TV in the bedroom, an LCD I got last year. Just for kicks I tried the channel scan on it.

Imagine my shock when it found 300 digital channels! Turns out most of them are just a blank screen, but for the ones that aren't...

OMG- are there really people who can't tell the difference?

I'm sure this has all been discussed here on parts of the forum that I don't read, but I had NO IDEA that we were going to get fractional TV channels, like 8.1 or, even weirder, 113.5, which sounds like an FM station.

You should have seen me switching back & forth between NBC analog (8.0) and digital (8.1).

I had no idea how butchered the shows were that I had been watching.

It was like seeing color TV for the first time after growing up with black and white only.

Or like seeing a movie on DVD for the first time after watching VHS tapes for 15 years.

Conan really is thin, isn't he? And that set seems twice as wide (but not distorted) in digital.
I don't even watch his show- it just happened to be on when I discovered all this, and the NBC cbannel is the only one that figured out to put its digital channel right next to the analog one, making it real easy to compare.

OMG- are there really people who can't tell the difference? Seriously?

Turns out for some crazy reason the other TV can receive digital channels only over the air, not cable. Huh? What is the point of that?

My DVR also cannot tune in the digital channels.

I'm having major Galaxy Quest flashbacks as I see aspect ratios changing without me doing anything, when they go to commercial and back.

Then I found the button on the remote that will display the show name and type of signal, like 720p. Now that stuff all makes sense.

I think I like the live HD stuff with commercials better than the recorded SD stuff that I can fast forward through.  :)

I guess the real answer is to look for a DVR that can handle digital.