Digital TV transition: Are you ready?
Forgive us if we ask you this question a few hundred times over the next five months but: Are all your TV sets ready to go digital?
On Feb. 17, 2009, every TV station in the country is required by law to shut off the TV signal it has been sending out for the last 50 or 60 years. That analog signal will be replaced by a digital signal - in fact, stations are co-broadcasting in analog and digital right now, so what will happen next in February is that one of the two signals will go dark.
If you have cable or satellite and every TV set in your house is hooked up to your service, you may stop reading now. You are ready for the digital switch. Your cable/satellite operator has sweated the transition as your proxy. TV will look the same Feb. 18 as it did Feb. 16 on your sets. But if you don't subscribe to one of those services, or if you have TVs not hooked up to your service, those TVs won't work.
In which case, go to www.dtv2009.gov right now and apply for a coupon that will knock $40 off your purchase of a converter box. This little number - I got one for $20, with my coupon, from RadioShack - simply pulls the digital signal out of the air, or off an antenna (recommended), and unscrambles the data and passes it along to your TV as though it were analog. As you can see here, it even passes along the closed captioning (though I did find it odd that I was being lectured about the DTV transition while watching a DTV station; I thought KCTV-5 had separate signals for digital and analog).
If you'd rather not apply for your coupon over the Internet, call 1-888-DTV-2009.
More of Aaron's Fall TV preview:
