Not using HDTV
Eleven years and one month ago, I wrote my first Sunday feature for this newspaper, about an exciting new technology that would soon be sweeping the nation called digital television.
Well, DTV is here, but we're still waiting on the excitement.
That's not too surprising, seeing as how DTV wasn't the brainchild of industry or a consumer-driven phenomenon. Rather, it was a government mandate -- you can feel the oxygen being sucked out of the room by that phrase, can't you? -- that the nation's TV stations were to stop broadcasting the analog signals they'd been putting out for half a century and switch to all-digital signals.
Over the past decade and change, a video revolution did happen, but it wasn't DTV, and old media and bureaucrats mostly stood by and watched. Yes, people started to buy those big screen TVs, not to watch hi-def TV shows but the relatively grainy images of DVDs. We spent more time watching the tube, but instead of the live DTV broadcasts that Congress envisioned, we started saving shows with our new TiVos and DVRs and watched them later, skipping over the ads. And we began watching high-definition TV, but most of our choices came from the likes of ESPN, Discovery and HDNet, which weren't subject to the DTV mandate.
Internet streaming, iPods, mobisodes … the list goes on. How we consume video has changed dramatically since DTV legislation took effect 11 years ago. But these other trends were driven by the private sector, by supply and demand, by “I want” rather than “thou shalt.”
Why was an act of Congress required, when so many other digital revolutions happened without one? Back then, there was a lot of talk about competitiveness and taking back the TV-set business from the Japanese and Koreans. In reality, though, the feds realized there was a lot of money to be made auctioning off the “free” airwaves. By reclaiming the hugely lucrative chunk of analog TV frequencies and selling them to the highest bidder, we could pay for, oh, a good week and a half of the Iraq war.
That auction process was to be underway by now. Instead, everybody predictably dragged their feet. So Congress extended the deadline for the DTV transition to Feb. 17, 2009 -- exactly one year from today.
Only now are industry leaders and the Federal Communications Commission, the agency charged with overseeing the DTV transition, sounding the alarm. Only now are people facing up to the fact that in 366 days, millions of American households could be without television service because they didn't upgrade their sets.
In a best case scenario, this will be Y2K all over again: a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of doomsday predictions, followed by a weird letdown as the media learns that folks were a lot better prepared than they thought.
But in a worst case scenario … well, let's just say there's a reason the deadline for switching off the old TV stations doesn't fall in an election year.
“A lot of politicians are all freaked out at having to deal with a potentially difficult situation,” said Ted Hearn, Washington bureau chief of the trade weekly Multichannel News.
So, to the obvious question: Are you ready?
If your television service is provided by a cable company or a satellite service, or you have an all-in-one service from Everest, Sunflower or AT&T U-verse, the answer is yes, you are ready. That's the vast majority of folks reading this story. Fact is, subscription TV providers have already gone digital and their customers will face little inconvenience other than a few changes to their lineup card. For instance, KMBC currently airs its analog signal on Channel 12 on Time Warner. After Feb. 17, 2009, it will no longer exist and Time Warner will be free to give its digital replacement a new number. Or not. And for those of you who are really on your toes this morning: No, you won't need a digital cable box to watch KMBC in digital.
But what if you're a rabbit-ears person? Or you have a TV in the back room that you never bothered hooking up to the dish?
Well, that's where your freaked-out politicians are looking out for themselves -- oops, I mean working for you. You can get up to two coupons worth $40 apiece toward the purchase of a converter box that will descramble the digital signals you get over the air, so that you can watch network and public TV shows after the analog stations sign off next year. Apply online at dtv2009.gov or call 1-888-DTV-2009.
You won't be able to watch HDTV on your old set; it wasn't built for that. But you will be able to watch the digital channel in standard definition. In fact, you may notice a slightly sharper picture, just because it's digital. You'll also be able to watch any multicast channels available locally. Multicast is when a broadcaster splits up its signal into several channels, each with its own program. That really would be exciting -- if stations would embrace the concept. Sadly, there is little multicasting going on, other than at KCPT and KTWU, our area's public TV stations.
In 2006 KSHB, the local NBC affiliate, started to multicast a second channel for NBC Weather Plus, a national service with local cut-ins. This month KMBC rolled out its multicast channel … and surprise, it's another weather station! That makes four in our area if you count Metro Weather and the Weather Channel.
Hey, here's an idea. What if the government allowed local broadcasters to launch 24-hour weather channels only if they agreed to stop interrupting their main channels for wall-to-wall storm coverage every time a thunderstorm grazed the viewing area?
Now there's a law I'll bet a lot of you could get behind.
