I have noticed here in northeastern Ohio that the area's TV stations still identify themselves as "W...-TV and W...-DT". I wonder why they are still using the W...-TV ID, as their analog signals have been or should have been shut off by now. I saw this just a few moments ago on the NBC affiliate in Cleveland, although I know the other two network affiliates identify their analog signal this way as well. The stations cannot transmit analog signals any longer, so why have that dual identification. The NBC station in Cleveland is still (to the best of my knowledge; I don't know for certain) transmitting in analog as a "nightlight" station, but that signal will go off the air on 06.29; I guess that's why they are still dual-identifying (which will almost certainly stop when the nightlight signal is terminated), but I don't know why the other stations in town are doing it as well, when their analog signals have been off the air over three weeks now. The only thing I can figure is that the station's production department or whomever is responsible for making cue cards (or whatever they are called in the DTV age) for the station are too lazy to change the ones with the TV station's identifications. Hmmm. :scratch2:

I saw and heard an announcement on the NBC station in Cleveland a few minutes ago, regarding their commitment to children's programming. Normally I wouldn't comment on this, but the announcement also mentioned the station's analog and digital call signs (WKYC-TV and WKYC-DT). I don't think there was, or should have been, any need to mention the analog station in that announcement, as all their analog nightlight signal is carrying is DTV transition information; it is not permitted to carry any other programming as of 06.12 and, as I mentioned above, will disappear in six days (06.29).

My second question has to do with local television broadcast channels on cable in the digital age. I do not have digital cable, only basic service with broadcast channels only. Are these broadcast channels still analog feeds from the stations or are they digital feeds being converted to NTSC for older NTSC sets? I read in a post to another thread a few days ago that cable systems simply send the standard-definition versions (again, whatever that is; I've been out of touch with TV's behind-the-scenes stuff since about nine years ago) of the stations' digital signals over the cable.

Also, if everything is digital these days, how are TV signals being sent by cable systems over coaxial cables in the first place? For viewers with digital cable, I can understand how it's done: with a digital cable box that converts ATSC RF signals to NTSC for processing by the set's tuner on channel 3 or 4. However, for people such as myself, who have the cable effectively connected directly to the television (no digital converter box), how can these raw video signals be viewed? RF must be used somewhere along the line, as older TVs like mine, with no A/V jacks, cannot process straight video signals; if the video and audio are not on an RF carrier, I won't see or hear it. The RF signal must be on the cable somewhere before it gets to the subscribers' TV sets.

The switch to digital only affects BROADCAST television. Cable companies are not required to switch to digital transmission, although some are taking advantage of the media hype over DTV to move in that direction.

I'm not sure what the regulations are regarding the use of the -DT suffix on a station's callsign.

"Digital cable" uses QAM modulation instead of 8VSB as ATSC does for over-the-air transmission. You are correct in that digital cable viewers require a set-top box to decode the digital signal to either RF, composite video, or some other form of display interface technology - the same as using the converter box to receive over-the-air broadcasts.

As I understand it, the analog feeds on the cable of the local channels are done with a slightly heavier-duty version of the set-top converter boxes we've come to know and love. There may be other methods, but I'm not aware of any at the moment. Would love to hear if anyone has further info.

However, since cable television is brought to you on - just that - a cable, there is no requirement for them to use either analog or digital. The signals transmitted down that cable do not exist to the outside world (at least on a good day), so the cable company can send digital signals as well as analog NTSC signals. The advantage to them is that they can pack multiple digital signals into the bandwidth occupied by 1 analog channel. These signals are all RF, just different types of modulation - much like 10M AM and FM - same frequency, same intrinsic information transmitted, but completely different modulation schemes.

-Jim

The switch to digital only affects BROADCAST television. Cable companies are not required to switch to digital transmission, although some are taking advantage of the media hype over DTV to move in that direction.

I'm not sure what the regulations are regarding the use of the -DT suffix on a station's callsign.

"Digital cable" uses QAM modulation instead of 8VSB as ATSC does for over-the-air transmission. You are correct in that digital cable viewers require a set-top box to decode the digital signal to either RF, composite video, or some other form of display interface technology - the same as using the converter box to receive over-the-air broadcasts.

As I understand it, the analog feeds on the cable of the local channels are done with a slightly heavier-duty version of the set-top converter boxes we've come to know and love. There may be other methods, but I'm not aware of any at the moment. Would love to hear if anyone has further info.

However, since cable television is brought to you on - just that - a cable, there is no requirement for them to use either analog or digital. The signals transmitted down that cable do not exist to the outside world (at least on a good day), so the cable company can send digital signals as well as analog NTSC signals. The advantage to them is that they can pack multiple digital signals into the bandwidth occupied by 1 analog channel. These signals are all RF, just different types of modulation - much like 10M AM and FM - same frequency, same intrinsic information transmitted, but completely different modulation schemes.

-Jim


I think you are missing my point. I am wondering how I can get my local channels without a converter box (my cable is connected more or less directly to my television--I say more or less because I have a VCR and a DVD player) if they are not standard television signals. This entire digital TV system has me baffled, and I don't know to this day what all the fuss was about (changing the date from 02.17 to 06.12 and all the other rigamarole that stood in the way of the thing, not to mention all the worrying the FCC did over people not being ready for the transition), as I cannot see the difference in the picture on my set.

The government should have left the old reliable NTSC system alone, as DTV, at least in its early stages, is proving to be more trouble than it is worth for a lot of viewers. I recently read in an e-mail newsletter from Broadcasting&Cable that the ABC television station in Philadelphia had to apply to the FCC for some sort of temporary permission to increase their signal so that it would "reach the fringes", whatever that means. (If viewers are having problems getting that channel or any other in digital, put up an antenna, as people used to do when color television arrived in this country in the 1960s and before there was such a thing as cable.)

I remember when "WDTV" was the call sign of a television station in West Virginia, and meant nothing more. Now, lop off the W and we have the abbreviation for a television standard that has all but turned television as we know it upside down. People are being all but forced to get cable because they can no longer get their area's local stations with an ordinary aerial, as they had been used to for over five decades. I still cannot get used to the idea that my own TV will not work without cable. I've had to downgrade my cable service to Time-Warner's basic level (local channels only) and really do miss being able to get my TV with an aerial. The FCC really blew it this time.

Over and out.

I think you are missing my point. I am wondering how I can get my local channels without a converter box

The government should have left the old reliable NTSC system alone, as DTV, at least in its early stages, is proving to be more trouble than it is worth The FCC really blew it this time.

Over and out.

Analog TV in general is 80 years OLD! Think of that. Even the current NTSC scanning standards were codified in 1946. We have to move on. Everything else is digital, not that that's necessarily a good thing. But with the population of the planet and bandwidth requirements to feed that population being what it is, the much more efficient use of bandwidth provided by digital rather than analog is now a necessity.

Baseband cable is still analog, the cable provider uses digital receivers for the front end and converts the signal to standard NTSC for old fashioned viewers like yourself.

High Definition TV is very pretty, a movie screen in your home. If you had a digital set and convertor you wouldn't raise these questions. Of course there will be hiccups over such a radical change in technology.

Why shouldn't they add the suffix "-DT" for their Digital service? After all, stations have long used the suffix "-TV" to distinguish between television and radio service.

The FCC is planning to delete the "-DT" from call signs unless specially requested by the station:
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/82008

000

It works because your cable system is still sending standard NTSC analog TV signals down the wire. These are the same type of signals that were used over the air, except they are sending them through a coaxial wire. The digital signals are on the same wire, but at a different frequency.

It's possible for analog and digital cable to share the same wire in much the same way analog and digital TV shared the same airwaves. They get along fine, as long as each channel is on a different frequency.

How can anyone still be transmitting analog when every television station in the US has turned off its analog signal? Television stations, and I think cable companies as well, are not allowed to transmit or otherwise use those signals anymore--it is all supposed to be digital or nothing as far as full-power television stations and cable companies are concerned. A lot of TV stations will find themselves in deep trouble with the FCC over this, and cable companies could find themselves in violation of some FCC statute as well for carrying analog TV signals.

Andy is correct. Also, I do not know of any law forbidding the transmission of NTSC analog via cable TV. The DTV law applies to over the air broadcasting(and only to high power stations). I am sure that local stations can provide their analog signals to the cable companies via cable, not via broadcast. Since they are not broadcast, the cost will be very low.

At one time, I worked on an ADSL system where analog phone signals and high speed digital data signals were sent via the same pots(plain old telephone service) lines using different frequencys. Although complex, it worked fine.

In fact I get my analog TV, high speed internet, and telephone signal via one cable at present-no problems.

Jeffhs,
I can answer your question and any others you may want to know how we get and process the signals in the world of cable. Where I’m at this is what is taking place:
We still receive most of the stations over the air (8VSB) we switched from the analog versions late last year. (This is for the SD versions HD has always used their 8VSB version and today at my system we three versions on the system of most of the broadcast stations, SD analog plain old TV, the digital SD version for customers with SD only equipment and the HD version.) The 8VSB receiver converts the stations signal to a format called SDI that we feed into another encoder to make up our MUX for the 256QAM carrier with about 14 stations in it. This same data is used to feed what we call a digital to analog modulator that is pumping out NTSC RF that we have used for years. That is step that the digital to analog conversion takes place. We have been using these devices for several years since we went all digital. All digital just means if a customer has a digital box they are watching only our digital versions of each channel so they get a nice clean picture. One of the reasons this was done is to compete with dish and the telcos. The studio feeds we do get are digital and have been for many years. And yes there is another HD 8VSB receiver for the HD version and different processing too and a different 256 QAM carrier with 3 stations in it. We still have many analog channels and I expect we will have analog RF for several years until all the cable ready sets die. There customers that like not having a box on each set. BTW if a customer has a QAM HDTV the can receive our digital versions of the broadcasters both SD and HD we don’t scramble those channels.

I think you are missing my point. I am wondering how I can get my local channels without a converter box (my cable is connected more or less directly to my television--I say more or less because I have a VCR and a DVD player) if they are not standard television signals. This entire digital TV system has me baffled, and I don't know to this day what all the fuss was about (changing the date from 02.17 to 06.12 and all the other rigamarole that stood in the way of the thing, not to mention all the worrying the FCC did over people not being ready for the transition), as I cannot see the difference in the picture on my set.



The signals your television is receiving are analog NTSC signals. Your cable company has decided to continue sending analog signals down the wire for viewers with cable-ready television sets. You won't see any difference on your set because there is simply none to see.

The following is from the Time-Warner cable web page:

Question:
If I’m a Basic (analog) cable customer, do I have to sign up for Digital Cable?

Answer:
No. Any Basic Cable setup will do. However, now is a good time to consider upgrading to Digital Cable, which offers more channels, as well as On Demand Programming, a free upgrade to HD service, an interactive program guide and more.

There is no law requiring the cable companies to switch to digital transmission. Doing so would be strictly a business decision - increased revenue from renting digital set-top boxes, as well as the ability to fit several digital channels into the space formerly occupied by one analog. However, they would risk losing many customers, who, like yourself are watching television on an analog set simply plugged into the wall.

-Jim

One thing that always irritates me is when people like Melodymaster indicate that DTV is SO much more modern and better than analog. This is not necessarily the case.

For one thing, the digital signal is much less reliable in poor weather than the analog signal was. This so called "free bandwidth" obtained from the transition was not actually free. When we gave this up, we also gave up the reliability of our analog TV system. We did gain some things-HDTV(in good reception conditions), some emergency system bandwith(as well as a bunch of bandwidth-90% is my understanding-sold by the government to people like Verizon so they can sell it back to us at a higher prices).

I am not at all convinced that this transition was actually a good deal for the American consumer.

Remember that AM radio is around 90 years old and FM is around 75 years old. I do not see these systems going away any time soon.

FYI-I have a DTV and serveral converter boxes of different brands, these do nothing but re-inforce my observations.

How can anyone still be transmitting analog when every television station in the US has turned off its analog signal? Television stations, and I think cable companies as well, are not allowed to transmit or otherwise use those signals anymore--it is all supposed to be digital or nothing as far as full-power television stations and cable companies are concerned. A lot of TV stations will find themselves in deep trouble with the FCC over this, and cable companies could find themselves in violation of some FCC statute as well for carrying analog TV signals.

Others have given much more detailed answers, but to sum up..

(1) The signal that is sent over cable is NOT in any way the same signal that is sent over the air by the station transmitter, it is a brand new signal originated by the cable company, in whatever standard best serves the customer. Since this doesn't "Radiate" it is not regulated by the FCC. Though of course there are standards for channel numbering etc.

(2) The cable company generally doesn't even PICK UP the signal over the air, but by some closed-circuit means such as microwave or fibre, so whatever format the broadcaster uses is irrelevant to the cable company. However, if baseband/closed circuit reception is not available the cable companies have been already often been using the broadcasters' digital service for reception rather than analog, because the quality is better.

Satellite is just the same, it picks up the station, then retransmits it using its own methods, then the customer has a box to convert it to what the customer's TV needs, which has generally been VHF RF, if not composite or component video.

One thing that always irritates me is when people like Melodymaster indicate that DTV is SO much more modern and better than analog. This is not necessarily the case.

For one thing, the digital signal is much less reliable in poor weather than the analog signal was. This so called "free bandwidth" obtained from the transition was not actually free. When we gave this up, we also gave up the reliability of our analog TV system. We did gain some things-HDTV(in good reception conditions), some emergency system bandwith(as well as a bunch of bandwidth-90% is my understanding-sold by the government to people like Verizon so they can sell it back to us at a higher prices).

I am not at all convinced that this transition was actually a good deal for the American consumer.

Remember that AM radio is around 90 years old and FM is around 75 years old. I do not see these systems going away any time soon.

FYI-I have a DTV and serveral converter boxes of different brands, these do nothing but re-inforce my observations.

AM and FM radio do not take up the massive amounts of bandwidth used by VHF and UHF TV. The overwhelming majority of "easy" spectrum space is used just by broadcast television, with everything from emergency use through cellphones and over the air broadband internet squeezed into little spots between TV channels. There's an easy alternative to freeing up that space, eliminate 90% of the population...thus less communication bandwidth needed.

I should mention that I am an antique TV collector, with some nice mid to late 1940s sets, and a rare 1956 colour model that's listed with the antique television museum, so I'm sympathetic to analog methods. I'm simply stating that it's a fact of life and modern civilization that we have to go digital. We can't hang on, any more than we should still be producing 78s, which I also collect...

The FCC chose the method with the worst fringe-area recovery. Other methods could have caused an increase in macroblocks while retaining an image, the digital version of a snowy picture, but for reasons I forget they chose the ATSC method that they did.

It's the transition that hurts; do you think that if we waited another ten years there's be any less fuss? Meanwhile the limitations of analog TV will have become even MORE blatant while bandwidth for other communication uses will be even more starved.

000

DTV has a lot of problems, but I have to admit that it was ludicrous to dedicate hundreds of MHz of prime spectrum to Survivor, American Idol, and what passes for the news. A more robust DTV system, or a mix of analog and digital would have been better. Other countries are phasing out analog TV, and getting people to switch by hyping up the extra channels, then adding HDTV later.

Oh don't get me started on "Reality" TV. However a lot of the trash is on Cable channels only, so it's not ALL wasting broadcasting spectrum.

It's noteworthy that although Canada is two years off from the Great Switch, all the channels in the Toronto area are broadcasting digitally as well as on analog. In fact one multicultural channel is ATSC only.

I have no apology for the programming, but to hint that we are "bandwidth starved" when I see drivers blabbing on cellphones everyday is idiotic. Much of the non-TV uses for the bandwidth is just as stupid as the reality shows. It is a fact that most people get their severe weather info via TV. To me, the unreliability in severe weather is the big issue with DTV. I suspect that people will at some point be harmed due to the fact that they cannot now get reliable over-the-air weather information via TV. Having reliable weather information via TV is a much more valuable use of bandwidth than selling it to Verizon in my opinion.

Do not give me "Use the radio for weather info" excuse. Commercial radio is very poor at broadcasting severe weather info and the weather radios have issues(I have one). In any case the information carried via a picture is truly worth 1000 words in severe weather.

Now, if they truly get mobile DTV working reliably(even in severe weather), I could possibly change my mind.

Do not give me "Use the radio for weather info" excuse. Commercial radio is very poor at broadcasting severe weather info and the weather radios have issues(I have one). In any case the information carried via a picture is truly worth 1000 words in severe weather.

Now, if they truly get mobile DTV working reliably(even in severe weather), I could possibly change my mind.

It's not an excuse. Radio was around decades before television, and weather radios that carry the weather bureau's forecasts do a decent job of alerting the public to severe weather or approaching storms (I'll say; many times weather radios sound off in the middle of the night or at all hours of the day--even when the disturbance is miles away from where the listener is located, which is why I don't use my 10-year-old Midland all-hazard FM/weather radio any longer). How did people got severe weather information before there was such a thing as television? Over the radio, of course.

Also, I cannot believe that local radio stations do not, ever, give severe weather information any longer. Radio stations must operate in the public interest, whether their programming is live, automated or whatever. "Operating in the public interest" means, among other things, that radio stations must provide severe weather information when needed, even if it means interrupting automated programming to do so, or by having the station engineer break in with bulletins. If they do not, they could (and will) be cited by the FCC and could lose their licenses. Commercial radio stations are businesses that depend on advertising revenue to stay on the air; therefore, they cannot afford to be off the air for any length of time. Therefore, you can be certain they will adhere to the letter of the law and will correct any problems as soon as they occur, or when pointed out by the FCC during an inspection of station logs. The big network O&O (owned and operated) stations would not dare be unprepared for severe weather events; the networks would not allow such a thing. However, smaller local-service stations have a responsibility as well to the community(ies) they serve (operating in the public interest, again), which means they must have, at very least, EAS (Emergency Alert System) equipment.

To be sure, the EAS has its flaws, but by and large it is better than Conelrad or the Emergency Broadcast System. The former silenced all but one key alert station in the affected area in the event of an emergency; if you were within listening range of the alert station during an emergency (and tuned your radio to 640 or 1240 when the announcer on the local station you were listening to declared an emergency condition, also informing listeners that this particular station would leave the air immediately and for listeners to tune to the designated Conelrad station in their local area), great, but if you were out of range of that signal and could not hear it, you were out of luck. The latter system (EBS) was an improvement over Conelrad as it, like the present-day EAS, broadcast emergency warnings over all stations in the affected area, not just one selected low-power station with very limited range.

In tornado-prone areas, for example, don't forget tornado warning sirens. These are supposed to sound as soon as the weather service spots a tornado anywhere in the area. I'm sure there are other, similar warning systems, supposedly (hopefully) fail-safe, for early warnings of earthquakes and other natural disasters in other parts of this country as well. Note that I said "hopefully" fail-safe. I said this because these systems do fail on occasion, and sirens often are not heard in the very areas where they need to be heard, such as rural areas where homes are often separated by miles, not feet. The early-warning system for natural disasters in this country absolutely must be upgraded, and soon (the sooner the better), so that no one is ever out of range of emergency sirens or warnings in the event of such an emergency, even if the person (people) involved is or are, literally, out in the middle of nowhere.

The issue with weather radios is not their accuracy, this is fine. From my experience it is the way the system is set up. On my weather radio(Midland, the only one sold in my area, as far as I can tell) you cannot disable the alarm when only a watch is present, i. e. it will go off every 30 minutes or so, even when no storms(no warnings) are present. Guess what, most people get tired of hearing this and disable the alarm, so the radio becomes useless.

I wrote the manufacturer and they indicated that the system is set up so that the watch/warning signals cannot be distinqushed by the radio-what a stupid system design flaw if true.

As far as sirens go, my mother lives in rural OK. She has no siren within 20 miles. There are two small towns of about 1000 people nearby, these also have no sirens. There are millions of people in the US living outside the range of sirens. In fact, I live in a suburb in Texas and have never heard a siren tested-I may not have one.

I, for one, have not heard commercial radio(I have the radio on all the time when driving) broadcast a weather warning in years. We have severe weather here every spring and fall. If they are violating laws, no one cares. This lack of weather information via commercial radio is what prompted my mobile TV comment-at least weather warnings would be available when on the road(Hopefully a passenger, not the driver is watching). There have been many times that I have been driving and wondered how bad the storm I saw ahead of me is-but no info came from the radio.

The fact remains ( ask anyone in tornado alley) that TV remains the main conduit of severe weather information to the average person. In my opinion, making this conduit less reliable mainly to sell public bandwidth to Verizon, etc. is criminal.

As far as I know there is no rule that a station has to broadcast any weather warnings. It is in thier interest to do so but they need the staff to support it. As for the EAS system that is a different matter it would depend on the local EAS group and what they wanted monitored. Most stations only have to monitor the LP1 and LP2 station for thier area. As far as the EAS system it is more or less is a joke and I agree it's more or less useless. EBS or Conelrad were never ment for local alerts it was for Washington to tell us the world as we know it was ending. Infact the reason they set up Conelrad was to make it so the bombers would not be able to use our radio stations to home in on our cities.

Jeffhs,
I can answer your question and any others you may want to know how we get and process the signals in the world of cable. Where I’m at this is what is taking place:
We still receive most of the stations over the air (8VSB) we switched from the analog versions late last year. (This is for the SD versions HD has always used their 8VSB version and today at my system we three versions on the system of most of the broadcast stations, SD analog plain old TV, the digital SD version for customers with SD only equipment and the HD version.) The 8VSB receiver converts the stations signal to a format called SDI that we feed into another encoder to make up our MUX for the 256QAM carrier with about 14 stations in it. This same data is used to feed what we call a digital to analog modulator that is pumping out NTSC RF that we have used for years. That is step that the digital to analog conversion takes place. We have been using these devices for several years since we went all digital. All digital just means if a customer has a digital box they are watching only our digital versions of each channel so they get a nice clean picture. One of the reasons this was done is to compete with dish and the telcos. The studio feeds we do get are digital and have been for many years. And yes there is another HD 8VSB receiver for the HD version and different processing too and a different 256 QAM carrier with 3 stations in it. We still have many analog channels and I expect we will have analog RF for several years until all the cable ready sets die. There customers that like not having a box on each set. BTW if a customer has a QAM HDTV the can receive our digital versions of the broadcasters both SD and HD we don’t scramble those channels.

I appreciate all the information, but do not understand the abbreviations you use, as I am nowhere near a television expert. For openers, what is "QAM"? The only thing QAM means to me at this point is a radio station in Miami which uses those letters as its call sign. "MUX"? Again, you lost me. "Eight-VSB"? Huh? "Two-hundred-fifty-six QAM"? You lost me a third time. Please remember that there are people reading these forums who are, like myself, not television experts (just because I am an amateur radio operator does not necessarily mean I know everything about TV technology) and know or care little, if anything, about what goes on behind the scenes at a television station, let alone at a cable headend.

If cable companies are waiting for consumers' cable-ready TVs to give up the ghost, they may be waiting quite a while, as there are far more analog TVs than flat-panels in use in the US at this time; some of the analog sets are only a few years old and still work well. Two examples: My own 1999-vintage RCA XL-100 CTC185 still makes a great picture and still has its original CRT; my 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 also works amazingly well after almost fourteen years. The latter is not currently in use, but it is in line to replace the RCA when it eventually goes belly-up, as I do not intend to have the RCA set repaired the next time it quits; the set is too old already and has been out of warranty for years (RCA tried for quite a while to interest me in an extended warranty for this TV--even after the set was seven or eight years old). The Zenith is fourteen years old, but has only had four years of actual use as it was my daily watcher at my former home; I bought the RCA new when I moved here nine years ago, putting the Zenith in storage in the bedroom, where the latter has been since then--I only use it for cross-checking when my cable goes out or acts up, so the Zenith has very low time on it.

My point is that people who, like myself, still have operating analog TVs will still be using analog RF cable service for some time to come, so the cable companies cannot afford to go truly all-digital any time soon--they will lose too many subscribers. Also, flat-panel sets made by reputable manufacturers are still far too expensive for many people to afford, although the cheaper ones made by offshore manufacturers, with names few people have ever heard of, can be had for under $200--and will poop out within two years. There's $200 or less (pardon the pun) down the tubes. I could get a Magnavox (Philips) FP tomorrow if I wanted a TV with a picture not much larger than an oversize postage stamp (the smaller the picture, the lower the price), but I'm waiting for Panasonic, Sony, et al. 19" sets to come down to around $200. I don't want or need anything bigger than 19" since I live in a very small apartment.

The reliability issue is a factor as well. I don't want a TV that will fail within two years. If and when the state of the art in HDTV reaches the point where the sets will last ten years or more without major breakdowns, I would consider getting one to replace my analog CRT set, but not one minute before.

I had digital cable, with a converter box, several years ago and liked it, but, living on a fixed income, I couldn't afford it for long, so I eventually downgraded to expanded basic analog. Then, when the economy soured, I found X-basic cable still too much of a bite out of my wallet so I downgraded again, to basic cable service--local channels only, plus a couple others such as C-SPAN, local news, WGN America (not WGN-TV 9 The CW in Chicago--there's a difference), and even a couple of X-basic channels the installer told me they couldn't remove from even basic service.

Sorry about any confusion… 8VSB (8 level vestigial sideband modulation) is the modulation format that is used in the US for digital over the air television. This system can handle a digital payload of about 19 mega bits per second. As an example we have to use a 8VSB receiver at the headend to receive a television station. All televisions sold in the US have had to have a 8VSB tuner for several years now. QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) is the digital system used by most cable systems in the US. Most use 256 QAM that hold a useable digital payload of about 38 mega bits per second. Average HD channels take about 12 mega bits per second so we can fit about 3 channels into each RF channel. Each RF channel is still the same size 6 Mhz so they can share the same cable with analog channels. Standard definition channels are about 4 meg bit per second so we can fit about 12 to 14 channels in each RF channel on the system.

A lot of the digital sets also have tuner that can receive QAM so they are cable ready just like the old sets.

I expect we will start dropping analog channels over time to free up space for more digital HD channels. The fact of the matter is this change will be driven by cable needing to keep up with satellite and the telcos. It’s all about money. Yes there will be some unhappy customers but it really gets down to keeps as many customers happy as possible.
The last analog to go will be the standard broadcast lineup.

I am sad to see analog go but it had to happen it was time. But I have many old televisions including Zenith roundies and even have one in my office it’s on every day I’m there and works just fine being fed from a digital cable box. There is no way an average customer could keep these sets running they all need attention from time to time due to age. But I must say this happened yesterday one of my staff needed an analog monitor to test something at one of my hubs (distribution building that is fed from the headend) and went out to store room and pulled out a 12”Sony from about 1982 fired that puppy up and we couldn’t believe how good the picture was on that guy.

If DTV was reliable, I would not be sad to see analog go. We only have one VHF station in our area, so I would need some type of external tuner to watch more than one station anyway on my 50s TVs.

However, from my experience so far, the reliabilty of DTV, even in good weather, is much less than analog. The antenna must continually be tweaked and even then, drop outs(including sound drop outs) occur. In stormy weather, all bets are off. On one stormy day(pre-conversion), the DTV signal froze for 10 minutes, analog continued on just fine. (The antenna issues have continued, even with the conversion complete-I wrote one of the local stations that I have particular problems with asking about increasing power-they are not planning to-this station was fine in NTSC).

They say "get an outdoor antenna". However, indoor antennas worked just fine for analog over decades here. Why should the general public be putting up with this crap mainly so people like Verizon can make more money? I agree that freeing up some bandwidth for emerency services was probably necessary-but it is my understanding that 90 % of the released bandwidth went to Verizon, etc and not emergency services.

I do not agree that it "had to happen". It was done mainly by the phone company lobbyists touting their interests(and the Republicans listening-they passed it 51R-50D in 2005)over what I believe to be the best interest of the general public. I had hoped the Democrats being in power might at least get the law modified, but appearently they also have too much phone company money in their pocket.

The HDTV hoax has reached or will reach into every American household at some point. Question is, why did we allow this? Politicians and foreign corporations knew we were suckers ripe for a plucking. We are draining jobs and money faster than we can handle and all the noise in the media steers us away from this fact. MelodyMaster, if you were feeding your kids from dumpster divings, would you still cheer this loss of industry to our adversaries? I can no longer find work in electronic manufacturing, despite the promise from an old fool in Washington back in the Michael Jackson era that "high-tech jobs are coming to replace the old manufacturing ones" Can you name him?

We are so vain and egocentric as a culture that we couldn't resist something that was newer, better, faster, shinier, more satisfying, etc. Far too many of us were willing to shut-up-and-eat-it.

There is plenty of garbage on TV for all too see in glorious HDTV, trouble is, nobody can articulate as to why we are better off with it. All I hear from its proponents is how we MUST have it or our ____ are gonna fall off.

BTW, I dare any manufacturer of set-top DTV converters to market one in kit form.

I read the post by 3GunColor as to the future of DTV, i.e. which services will go digital when, and was amazed to read that analog over-the-air channels will be the last to be taken off the cable, being replaced by full digital--the only question is when. The cable companies cannot remove the broadcast channels from their systems, at least not yet, as there are far too many analog TVs out there; that is one reason Time Warner (and probably most other cable operators as well) offer a local channels only package, which is usually their lowest-priced tier of service. I live in an apartment building in an area of northeastern Ohio where rabbit ears did not work well at all for analog TV (I only got one analog channel well enough to watch here) and more than likely will not work, period, for digital; therefore, most if not all tenants in my building, myself included, and just about everywhere in this village (there are few if any antennas left on rooftops that I can see) have cable service, although someone here did have satellite service (with a huge dish; I don't think it was for TV, though) several years ago. Another tenant in an apartment building next to me also had Dish Network satellite until he or she moved (or got cable) a few months ago.

I hate to think what will happen to the folks with cable when the analog OTA signals now on all cable systems are replaced exclusively by digital ones. This will force (yes, force) people to either get a new flat-panel HDTV with an ATSC tuner or else go without television if they cannot afford one, even if their analog sets are in perfect working order.

Viewers foregoing television for the foregoing reason will have a huge effect on the networks and their local affiliates, not necessarily in that order. Every lost viewer means X number of dollars in lost advertising revenue for the stations and the networks, which will eventually end in disaster (stations going off the air and networks having to cut back even more than they have so far, especially in this down economy) if it continues for any length of time. This is why I say that analog broadcast channels must not be removed from cable service as long as there are analog TVs in use--and right now there are probably far more analog TVs than HD FPs in American homes. To be sure, most of the analog sets are probably, even likely rebadged black plastic cubes (for example, my own set, an RCA-branded XL-100 CTC185, was made by Thomson), but as long as these sets are around and in use, cable operators must offer local channels only, as a separate tier of service. There is a word that describes perfectly what the government is doing (forcing digital TV on the viewing public whether they like it or not), not to mention the can of worms the DTV transition has opened as far as OTA reception problems in some major cities are concerned, but I can't use it here.

Jeff,
Most cable customers already have converters so they are already watching the digital versions if they have an older televisions. Customers with your level of service are not a big source of cash to support the space analog takes on the cable system. It all comes down to $$$$. If we don't keep up with dish we lose. I believe there some rules inplace on how soon cable system can remove broadcast analog from their system. I just have never looked into because I don't work in programming they just tell me when to add or take off channels. Don't expect any changes for a while. They may take a few of the lower rated cable channels from analog basic but like I said analog broadcast will stay to the end at least the must carry stations will. There is an FCC rule that says cable must carry a local station if they file for must carry. And yes cable can be forced to pay a local station to be carried on the system. Those stations could say it's ok to drop them from analog as part of the deal maybe they get something else on the system or more $.

From what I have read, the cable companies are required by the FCC to carry the local channels in analog until 2012.

Some of them were sneakily moving non-local channels from the analog suite to digital and blaming the DTV conversion earlier this year. The FCC got wind of it and implemented a moratorium preventing this for a period of time(I am not sure how long). They sure are ethical aren't they? In my case, Time Warner stole(yes stole-I got no price break or replacement channel) my National Geographic and 2nd PBS channel.

I think the price difference is around $10-15 between the "expanded basic" and least expensive digital package through my cable company (Cox.) I would imagine that if they decided to do away with analog cable in three years they would do one of two things leading up to it: raise expanded basic up to digital prices (citing all the bandwidth analog requires) or lower the digital service a few bucks. Either way, they'll still rake it in renting out all the additional cable boxes that will be needed.

I'm already renting one cable box ($5.00/mo.) because the wife can't live without a couple of stations on the digital package. I refuse to rent more, which is why my older TVs are hooked to the aerial on the roof (via the DTV converter boxes.)

If it weren't for my wife I probably wouldn't even have cable. There's nothing on those 200+ channels that would compel me to spend over $70 a month.

Comcast has a service called "Digital Lite" that includes the regular expanded basic channels, music choice, and 4 digital programming channels (CSPAN2, Lifetime Movie Network, Hallmark Channel, and the Gameshow Network). The price is $53.50 + $3.25 for each converter rental. Was $51.50 + $4 converter rental.

Analog expanded basic (about 64 channels) is also $53.50. On digital lite, you get the same $64'ish channels plus the four digital programming and music choice channels.

What they did was remove the 4 channels that are now digital from the analog package and then said "but we'll give you a converter to watch those 4 channels". I think the plan was to get a converter in as many homes as possible; then, they could dump analog service when they felt like enough homes were saturated with digital cable boxes. From what I'm hearing from people, I don't think their plan worked like they thought it would. Many people are happy with the standard analog service and not interested in renting converter boxes for their TV's.

When I ordered analog cable in December, 2007; they told me that I'd be better off just to go ahead and subscribe to a digital package because there would be no more analog cable by mid 2008. I told them that I wanted analog cable and we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. Guess what, I still have the same analog channels that I had then.

If there comes a point where I have to rent a cable box; I'll either cancel the service or rent one or two boxes for the most used TV's and connect the other TV's to an antenna.

One big problem with the digital cable boxes: you can not flip through the channels. Pressing "channel up/down" on the remote or the box is a frustrating experience - it takes up to five seconds for the channel to change, and you pretty much have to go one channel at a time.

Besides that, I think I'm on my fourth or fifth box since October 2007. The last time Cox came out the serviceman managed to change the rf connector on the box I have now. But problems with these boxes have resulted in my needlessly rewiring three cable lines in my walls & attic due to the initial insistence of the "techs" that the problem was with my wiring, not their equipment. (The wiring was new at the time.)

I've also heard of these boxes crashing and needing to be unplugged and re-booted. In other cases, I've heard of the cable company having to send a signal to them in order to get them back working. About a month ago, one lady called me to see if I could figure out why some of her digital cable channels were freezing, dropping out, etc. I told her that she needed to lean hard on the cable company. For what cable TV cost, it should be perfect.

Time-Warner Cable is already digital; has been for months, probably close to a year (I'm not sure when they actually switched). I am not sure, either, of how they convert broadcast channels from ATSC to NTSC, although a customer service representative told me over the phone about six months ago that the conversion is done via a box on the roof of, say, an apartment building. The same conversion unit is probably used in private homes as well.

I also asked the TW installer who downgraded my cable from expanded basic to basic earlier this year what types of signals I am actually receiving. His answer (paraphrased) was that the signals at the cable headend are the digital feeds directly from the TV stations (not OTA signals picked up via antennas), fed to the cable companies via coaxial cables or fiber optic lines (in this day and age they are probably using the latter); these signals are distributed over the cable system as such (digital) and are converted by the rooftop box to NTSC before reaching the subscribers' analog TVs.

To receive full digital (channels above 99, at least on TW's systems) a converter must be rented from the cable operator, which, yup, you guessed it, adds to the subscriber's monthly cable bill. It is because of this that I disagree with a previous poster over his remark that Comcast will "give" you the converter in exchange for the four analog channels they are moving to digital.

This is not so. Comcast, Time Warner or any other cable company does not "give" subscribers anything; we pay, often through the nose, for everything we get from them, like everything else these days. The old expression "there is no free lunch" applies here, in spades--and then some. Cable companies are like any other business these days; they are out to get as much money from their subscribers as they can. Their bottom line is all they care about, which is why basic, X-basic (expanded basic) and digital cable rates keep going up and up. I have basic cable that carries only local channels plus C-SPAN, WGN America, and a couple others, but I am seriously considering dropping cable and getting a converter box for my analog RCA CTC185 19" set in my living room. When that set finally goes belly-up, I will not have it repaired, as it is nine years old; I will get a flat-panel, probably a 15" Magnavox (Philips). I know I've said in some of my previous posts that I would never have a flat-panel TV with a picture not much larger than an oversized postage stamp, but considering that I live in a small apartment, a 15" set would probably work out just fine. I was thinking earlier this morning about one of my great-aunts, now deceased, who lived in an apartment in suburban Cleveland. In all the years she lived there, she had 19" and larger B&W TVs, but the first color TV she ever had was a 12" Sony portable (might have been an early Trinitron). It suited her to a T. It was replaced after some 20 years by a 19" Sony, which she used until she went into a nursing home in the late '80s or early '90s.

I got to thinking. If my great-aunt could get along for 20+ years with a 12" analog portable color TV in a small apartment (her place was probably not a lot larger than mine, and I live in a one-bedroom unit in which almost every square inch of space is occupied by something), I could learn to live with a 15" flat-panel.

I've been thinking as well about the much clearer picture I'll probably get with a FP, although the picture I get now on my analog RCA is amazingly clear and sharp as it is, owing to its inline dark-tint CRT. The only quarrel I have with FPs is the short lifespan of these sets; if it weren't for that, I would have replaced my analog set by now. I don't want to have to get a new set after only one or two years; as I live on a fixed income, I couldn't afford it.

Are FPs any more reliable today than they were, say, five years ago? I am referring to, among other things, the video-driver IC's molded into the cable that connects an FP's display panel to the chassis (when these go bad it renders the set useless), as well as to the life of the backlight. Are the smaller sets (for example, the Philips-Magnavox 15" sets I see in my Sunday paper's ad flyers every week) worth the low price they sell for, or are they junk--would I have to put such a set out for the trash (or have it recycled, as Best Buy and most other electronics retailers selling FPs will do when they install a new FP in a customer's home) after only a year or less? I know we live in a throwaway society nowadays, but for crying out loud, this is ridiculous.

I agree 100 percent. People get cable for one of two reasons: either to get better reception than they are currently getting with an antenna or to get more channels than they are currently receiving. People with cable expect crystal-clear pictures on all channels they receive; if they don't get it, they indeed should lean on the cable operator, and not let up until their reception is as close to perfect as the current state of the art will allow. We are not paying cable companies for reception that may be (and in some cases is) worse than we used to get with our old analog antennas. Again, I would demand that the cable company fix the problem(s) that is (are) causing these reception issues at once; if they don't or if they give you any excuses, threaten to pull the plug on them and go to a converter box and an antenna. In many areas converter boxes will give you excellent reception, although you may have to use an outdoor antenna or amplified rabbit ears. For example, in my area here in northeastern Ohio, I am some 40 miles from the Cleveland TV transmitters (there are seven local channels in this area) and would receive a watchable analog signal, using rabbit ears, from only one of them. One channel (NBC channel 3) did not reach here at all in analog; I don't know if their OTA digital signal is better or not, as I do not yet have a converter box and have not yet tested OTA digital.

I had digital cable until about a year ago from what was then Comcast (the cable operator in my area is now Time-Warner, which took over all Comcast and Adelphia systems last year), and I experienced the same problems with freeze-ups, pixelation, etc. from time to time. I'll never forget the mess Time-Warner Cable was, reception-wise, when they were converting to digital; I remember watching (or trying to watch) NBC news on channel 3 one evening during the conversion and seeing a goshawful mess: pictures freezing, pixelization, you name it. I don't think I saw more than five or six minutes (if that much) of the broadcast.

I dropped digital cable after about five years because the rates were too high, and went to expanded basic cable. After a couple years I dropped that because, again, the rates were too high, and downgraded to basic cable, local channels only. It saves me some $30 a month which I will use, at least in part, to buy DVDs of old classic TV shows they don't show anymore, even on cable's TV Land--which used to be classic TV almost all the time. Now that channel has movies that often take up all of prime time, and their idea nowadays of "classic" TV is shows from the '80s and '90s.

I don't miss it. With my DVD player and VCR (I have many VHS tapes of old TV shows and movies), and a subscription to Netflix, not to mention a small but growing collection of DVDs of classic shows/movies, I don't feel I need high-priced expanded basic or digital cable any longer. I liked the National Geographic Channel, but since one of the PBS stations on my cable airs National Geographic and other nature shows, I don't miss it. If I want to see one of the National Geographic programs (they air at an ungodly hour of the morning when I am sleeping), I can tape it and watch it the next day, although the other nature programs are often aired in prime time. Thank goodness for PBS.

I find it interesting that somebody would tell you the analog conversion happens in a box on your roof. Well anyway I guess that's possible. Most cable systems send out the analog from the headend just like it was years ago. For the analog version just look at this way we have very good converters that do the same basic conversion as the $49 converters in the stores. Plus don't count on all the television stations having a direct link to the headend. We still pick a lot of them up with an antenna.

I did talk to someone that got a digital cable box from comcast to receive those extra four channels and they did say that the box was supposed to be free - for one year; then, the cable company would charge box rental. Guess I should have mentioned that earlier.

And, yes, cable rates are constantly going up. Around here, you can count on it at least once a year. There has been CATV service at this house ever since there's been CATV service in this neighborhood, which was before I was born. I remember when the monthly bill was something like $17 (early '80's or so). Then, around '85, Comcast took over the old cable company (TV Selection System) and the prices have been going up and up ever since. They rationalize the price increases by claiming that they are adding more channels and giving better service. What good are more channels if there's nothing on them that I care about. Personally, I liked it better in the '80's when we only had 25 or so channels and the program quality was better. The ONLY reason there's cable here now is because of the internet and there are some shows my Mother likes. If I could find another source for high speed internet, the cable would probably be turned off and there would be an outside antenna and DTV converters on every TV in the house.

I find it interesting that somebody would tell you the analog conversion happens in a box on your roof. Well anyway I guess that's possible. Most cable systems send out the analog from the headend just like it was years ago. For the analog version just look at this way we have very good converters that do the same basic conversion as the $49 converters in the stores. Plus don't count on all the television stations having a direct link to the headend. We still pick a lot of them up with an antenna.

That wasn't just "somebody" who told me that--it was a person who works for Time Warner Cable. As for how the cable company gets local station signals, again, I was told by an installer (who would know about these things, as he does cable installations and repairs all day long for a living) that TW does not use antennas any longer to pick up local stations; rather, the cable operator gets the direct feeds from every station in Cleveland. I don't know what cable company you work for or whatever but that's the way they do it in my area. Time Warner converted its northeastern Ohio/northwestern Pennsylvania cable systems to full digital at least a year ago, and as such has no use for OTA antennas.

I am confused as well as to the FCC's plan to do away with analog cable channels in 2012--or whatever. They shouldn't have to do anything, as the TV stations cannot transmit analog anymore as of 06.12. However, that's beside the point. My question is this: Without an RF signal to carry the audio and video on, how on earth am I still getting my local stations over coax cable? I was told by the installer who downgraded my service to basic that TW uses direct digital feeds from the television stations and that they are converted to NTSC for viewers like myself, with older analog sets. That conversion is being done, if not by converters on rooftops, somewhere between the headend and the subscribers' sets; I have every reason to believe him, as I know next to nothing about how today's cable television systems work. All I really know about my present cable hookup is that it provides a much, much sharper and clearer picture on my old analog RCA TV than I can ever remember getting when this cable system was all analog, and I've had service from this cable company since the early 1980s when it was called Continental Cablevision.

The RF signals for you local channels are being delivered via the cable. They are the same signals as the ones that were previously broadcast. As they are contained within the cable and not broadcast "over the air", the DTV conversion law is not violated. The DTV conversion law does not affect signals being delivered via cable, so analog signals can still be used. In fact, it is my understanding that not sending the analog signals for local channels via cable systems would be a violation of an FCC ruling(at least until 2012) and could result in fines.

The 2012 ruling was to allow users of analog sets to still use their sets with cable until that time. I think this as implemented to reduce the number of analog sets discarded on the DTV conversion date and to make the conversion easier for cable users.

All I really know about my present cable hookup is that it provides a much, much sharper and clearer picture on my old analog RCA TV than I can ever remember getting when this cable system was all analog, and I've had service from this cable company since the early 1980s when it was called Continental Cablevision.

That's because, as has been explained, digital broadcasting is not subject to snow, airplane flutter, and does not require decombing. The picture is better because reception by the cable company of over-the-air channels is better. And as has also been explained, internal handling of the signals is now all-digital instead of analog with bandpass filters.

You still are able to receive analog on your set because that’s what being sent to you. At my headend we never used the broadcasters RF directly on the system. We received their station from the air and demodulated it using a special tuner demodulator. Then we took base band audio and video and put it into what we call a modulator this is basically a transmitter be it very low power. This is how we could put the station on a different channel then they were over the air. You seem to be confused about this all-digital stuff. All it means is we have all the channels available digitally to customers that have the equipment to use those signals. It sounds like you have the lowest level of service and those are the channels still being sent out as analog from the headend. As others have noted cable system are not to turn those channels off for a few years. What that means for me is we have to keep the analog modulators running. I will check into your area and see what they are doing but I would be very surprised if they have a studio feed for every station. We don’t and I’m in the #2 market LA. Now that everything is digital over the air the only thing we get out of the studio feed is it should be operational if the station is having transmitter trouble. But there is always a but sometimes there is more to go wrong with the studio feeds and I’ve had them go down then we have to switch to the stations transmitter over the air feed.

We receive many broadcasters from the air as others have noted they are processed digitally and don’t become analog until the modulator. When we switched to using the stations digital signals last year we had noted improvement even for our all digital customers. On that you should know we were all digital before most of the stations had digital signals so we have digital encoders to take analog and make it digital. We were able to keep the signal all digital through our plant in the headend until the analog modulator.

One note unless your system is very small I would be very surprised if the installers or customer service folks had a good understanding of what is taking place at the headend.

One comment I have is that here, on Time Warner, the local stations( analog) are very noisy with quite bit of interference. Broadcast DTV and NTSC analog are/were better than the Time warner picture. I probably should gripe at Time Warner, but I usually watch the local channels via broadcast. I am far more upset at Time Warner for stealing PBS2 and National Geographic than this. I did contact them about losing the channels and got a letter saying "we can do what want, too bad". There is another cable company slowly setting up shop here. I hope it teaches them a few lessons.

The non-local channels seem ok on cable

In March 2008, we were in an RV park in Del Rio, Texas. Boy, was I shocked. I hooked up the coax to my HDTV, let it "auto tune" and when it finished, I had about 200 channels. No box, no nothing. About 30 stations were HD. CBS and NBC at 1080i and ABC and Fox at 720P. Some other cable channels were in HD, most or all at 720P. For the various OTA stations, they had all the sub channels. I think some in the cable industry have deceived customers by forcing them to rent a box for "digital" and "HD".. It appears a box is only needed if that is what the cable company requires to receive their service. They just want the extra money by making you rent several boxes.

I think you are missing my point. I am wondering how I can get my local channels without a converter box (my cable is connected more or less directly to my television--I say more or less because I have a VCR and a DVD player) if they are not standard television signals. This entire digital TV system has me baffled, and I don't know to this day what all the fuss was about (changing the date from 02.17 to 06.12 and all the other rigamarole that stood in the way of the thing, not to mention all the worrying the FCC did over people not being ready for the transition), as I cannot see the difference in the picture on my set.

The government should have left the old reliable NTSC system alone, as DTV, at least in its early stages, is proving to be more trouble than it is worth for a lot of viewers. I recently read in an e-mail newsletter from Broadcasting&Cable that the ABC television station in Philadelphia had to apply to the FCC for some sort of temporary permission to increase their signal so that it would "reach the fringes", whatever that means. (If viewers are having problems getting that channel or any other in digital, put up an antenna, as people used to do when color television arrived in this country in the 1960s and before there was such a thing as cable.)

I remember when "WDTV" was the call sign of a television station in West Virginia, and meant nothing more. Now, lop off the W and we have the abbreviation for a television standard that has all but turned television as we know it upside down. People are being all but forced to get cable because they can no longer get their area's local stations with an ordinary aerial, as they had been used to for over five decades. I still cannot get used to the idea that my own TV will not work without cable. I've had to downgrade my cable service to Time-Warner's basic level (local channels only) and really do miss being able to get my TV with an aerial. The FCC really blew it this time.

Over and out.

BTW, WDTV used to be a Pittsburgh station on the old Dumont network. It started in 1949 on channel 3 and it was moved to channel 2 to stop interfering with Cleveland, OH. The station was sold and it became KDKA-TV ever since.

I've also heard of these boxes crashing and needing to be unplugged and re-booted. In other cases, I've heard of the cable company having to send a signal to them in order to get them back working. About a month ago, one lady called me to see if I could figure out why some of her digital cable channels were freezing, dropping out, etc. I told her that she needed to lean hard on the cable company. For what cable TV cost, it should be perfect.

We had to do that with Comcast a lot, sometimes the box would drop out and then the picture might come back wide and I would have to unplug it and "reset" it constantly. It is so much of a pain, we went with FIOS. FIOS is no trouble at all so far.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have Time Warner's lowest level of service--local channels only; those channels come in better here, IMHO, than they ever did when the system was all analog. I don't know what the problem is with TW's Texas systems if you are getting noisy reception of local channels; they are supposed to be clearer than analog. However, I am very, very seriously considering getting a converter box and dropping the cable altogether, although I don't know how well it will work since I am in a poor signal area, 35-40 miles from the Cleveland TV stations, and got only one station well enough to watch in analog. I may or may not have better digital reception--I'll just have to experiment and see just what digital channels I do get here. Channel 3, the NBC station in Cleveland, did not reach here at all in analog, 5 and 8 were fair to poor at best, 25, the PBS station here, was also fair to poor, as were 43 and 55. How well these stations come in here in digital is anyone's guess; I really don't know, however, if it's worth spending $40 or more on a converter box that may not last longer than a few months (!) if all I may get is one or two channels, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

As far as TW dropping two channels from analog cable in your area and moving them to digital goes, well, I guess that's how a lot of cable systems operate these days (you are correct; the cable companies are like Jack FM: they do what they want and the heck with the subscribers), and they may continue to do so until all channels are on the digital tier, forcing just about every one of their subscribers to rent a cable box.

Like it or not, the company is trying to get more and more money out of our pockets any way they can. This is one reason I intend to at least try a converter box here, and if it works to get just three stations (the ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates from Cleveland), I will be satisfied, as most of what I watch on those channels these days is the news anyway. I have a DVD player and a VCR (I am taping an episode of Charlie's Angels from WGN America as I write this, and have ordered season 3 of the 1970s NBC crime drama Quincy, M.E. on DVD from Amazon.com as well in addition to having several other series on DVD and a lot of shows on VHS), so I really don't miss the channels I used to get on Time-Warner's expanded-basic service; if my experiment with the converter box goes well I'll bid farewell to basic cable too.

I did talk to someone that got a digital cable box from comcast to receive those extra four channels and they did say that the box was supposed to be free - for one year; then, the cable company would charge box rental. Guess I should have mentioned that earlier.

And, yes, cable rates are constantly going up. Around here, you can count on it at least once a year. There has been CATV service at this house ever since there's been CATV service in this neighborhood, which was before I was born. I remember when the monthly bill was something like $17 (early '80's or so). Then, around '85, Comcast took over the old cable company (TV Selection System) and the prices have been going up and up ever since. They rationalize the price increases by claiming that they are adding more channels and giving better service. What good are more channels if there's nothing on them that I care about. Personally, I liked it better in the '80's when we only had 25 or so channels and the program quality was better. The ONLY reason there's cable here now is because of the internet and there are some shows my Mother likes. If I could find another source for high speed internet, the cable would probably be turned off and there would be an outside antenna and DTV converters on every TV in the house.

Yeah, I miss those days too. Our cable company started as "Astro Cable" which was local, then Newchannels bought them out in the early to mid 1980's, then it was Time Warner, then TCI, then Tim Warner again, then AT&T and finally Comcast. What a headache.

I'm curious to know what "FIOS" cable service is. You mentioned in one of your posts that you and your family now have this service instead of Time Warner, Comcast or any other cable service. How is FIOS different from any standard cable television system? You also mentioned that FIOS gives you a better picture with no dropouts, freezeups, etc. Is this system anything like AT&T U-Verse, which is a hard-wired TV service, or is it more comparable to satellite?

"FIOS" simply stands for fiber-optic cable.

"FIOS" simply stands for fiber-optic cable.

Ah, so! Thanks for the reply. So starts my (re)education on the brave new world of digital TV. I was raised on analog (I worked on analog TVs for years and had a large collection of old sets in my basement back in the '70s) and understand it quite well, but I admit that I have a lot (an awful lot) to learn about DTV.

I'm curious to know what "FIOS" cable service is. You mentioned in one of your posts that you and your family now have this service instead of Time Warner, Comcast or any other cable service. How is FIOS different from any standard cable television system? You also mentioned that FIOS gives you a better picture with no dropouts, freezeups, etc. Is this system anything like AT&T U-Verse, which is a hard-wired TV service, or is it more comparable to satellite?

FIOS is from Verizon, it is a fiber optic cable that goes directly to your home and you can get TV, phone and internet on it. We get all three and so far, it had been great. Cable TV still uses copper cable from the company to your house bit FIOS uses fiber optics that goes to a box in your house and then foes to a copper cable to your TV, computer and so on. Theo nly drawback is if you lose power, you have 8 hours of battery backup. We have the FIOS on the 1982 Zenith.

A I am very, very seriously considering getting a converter box and dropping the cable altogether, although I don't know how well it will work since I am in a poor signal area, 35-40 miles from the Cleveland TV stations, and got only one station well enough to watch in analog. I may or may not have better digital reception--I'll just have to experiment and see just what digital channels I do get here. Channel 3, the NBC station in Cleveland, did not reach here at all in analog, 5 and 8 were fair to poor at best, 25, the PBS station here, was also fair to poor, as were 43 and 55. How well these stations come in here in digital is anyone's guess;

I live west of Toronto and all the Buffalo channels, Toronto Channels, and a few from surrounding areas, come in FAR better (and with crystal clarity) via ATSC using an electronic dish on the chimney, compared with the analog stations using a stacked yagi with rotor on a 36 foot tower. Some of these stations are over 70 miles away and not very high power. Chances are that with a proper antenna you will find a huge improvement in channel choices. In Toronto (Canada) only two stations, CKVR and TVOntario, have not yet started broadcasting in digital. You Americans are lucky, it's done, no more procrastinating; many Canadian viewers are chomping at the bit to get the transition over with.

Theo nly drawback is if you lose power, you have 8 hours of battery backup.

Why would that be a drawback? I would think eight hours of backup power would be better than nothing and would be more than enough to keep your telephone service going, as most power outages (except in very rare instances, like the blackout five years ago or so that left five states, including Ohio, without power for 24 hours) don't last much longer than a couple of hours at most. I have Time Warner cable (basic cable TV service only); I understand, however, from reading the fine print on my cable bill and in the company's ads that show up in my mail every now and then, that with their digital telephone service, there is no battery backup, so when your lights go out your TW digital phone service goes down as well. I think this is a design flaw in the system which absolutely must be corrected, because when your digital phone service goes down, you lose access to 9-1-1 as well--and there is no excuse for that. Nine-one-one is a very important number that everyone needs access to 24x7 in case of emergencies, even if the electricity is out. I am surprised Time Warner didn't think of this when their digital phone system was in the design stage; they should have designed an emergency backup battery (or some other type of emergency power source) into the system so that subscribers would, at very least, have access to 9-1-1 if and when they needed it.

Why would that be a drawback? I would think eight hours of backup power would be better than nothing and would be more than enough to keep your telephone service going, as most power outages (except in very rare instances, like the blackout five years ago or so that left five states, including Ohio, without power for 24 hours) don't last much longer than a couple of hours at most. I have Time Warner cable (basic cable TV service only); I understand, however, from reading the fine print on my cable bill and in the company's ads that show up in my mail every now and then, that with their digital telephone service, there is no battery backup, so when your lights go out your TW digital phone service goes down as well. I think this is a design flaw in the system which absolutely must be corrected, because when your digital phone service goes down, you lose access to 9-1-1 as well--and there is no excuse for that. Nine-one-one is a very important number that everyone needs access to 24x7 in case of emergencies, even if the electricity is out. I am surprised Time Warner didn't think of this when their digital phone system was in the design stage; they should have designed an emergency backup battery (or some other type of emergency power source) into the system so that subscribers would, at very least, have access to 9-1-1 if and when they needed it.

True, plus there is an emergency button where you can press to dial 911 since when it shuts down ,the battery still has "enough juice" for a 911 call. I also have a cellphone plus the FIOS box runs on 12 VDC from a wall-wart, I can rig up a 12 VDC supply, even using my automobile jumper if I really, really had to.

Analog TV in general is 80 years OLD! Think of that. Even the current NTSC scanning standards were codified in 1946. We have to move on. Everything else is digital, not that that's necessarily a good thing. But with the population of the planet and bandwidth requirements to feed that population being what it is, the much more efficient use of bandwidth provided by digital rather than analog is now a necessity.

Baseband cable is still analog, the cable provider uses digital receivers for the front end and converts the signal to standard NTSC for old fashioned viewers like yourself.

High Definition TV is very pretty, a movie screen in your home. If you had a digital set and convertor you wouldn't raise these questions. Of course there will be hiccups over such a radical change in technology.

Why shouldn't they add the suffix "-DT" for their Digital service? After all, stations have long used the suffix "-TV" to distinguish between television and radio service.

There are more so-called "old-fashioned" TV viewers in this country than you might think. Not everyone can afford a high-definition flat-panel TV and some cannot even afford a converter box. I am one of those who cannot afford a large flat-panel, although I could get a smaller set tomorrow if I wanted one with a 15" picture. There was an article in the paper here a week or so before the DTV transition in which a man in a suburb of a large U.S. city said that he could not afford a converter box for his old analog TV because he is on disability, which means he must now go to a friend's home if he wants to watch anything (even the news) on television.

Even those folks who can afford a converter box are not always able to hook up the box correctly or set it up, and some are incapable of understanding that an external antenna is required for proper operation of the box, despite the incessant warnings and everything else in the days and weeks leading up to the transition. The idea of disturbing the wiring in back of their televisions scares some people (they are afraid they might be shocked or killed by electricity on those cables) and puts off a lot of others. Most non-technical people do not know anything about their televisions other than how to turn them on and off, change channels, turn the volume up and down and mute the sound. Digital television has managed to thoroughly bamboozle these people, many of whom have no idea what DTV really is (and let's face it, most non-technical viewers couldn't care less about the behind-the-scenes side of digital)--despite all the PSAs (public service announcements) and print ads about the transition in the months leading up to it. I can imagine the scene in a lot of American living rooms from coast to coast the day after the transition, when they turn on their old (or not so old) analog television sets and see nothing but snow on every channel, even those channels which are supposed to be local to their areas. I can also imagine the large numbers of telephone calls TV repair shops across the land must have had up to closing time on 06.12 from people who found that they could not get their local TV channels anymore, and they wondered if the TV set was broken or if lightning had hit the antenna, the antenna itself was bad, etc.

The digital transition is still causing enough problems for some viewers in large cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia that the TV stations in those cities have applied to the FCC for temporary authority to increase their transmitter power, so their digital signals could reach viewers using antennas in far-suburban or fringe areas. I sometimes wonder why these people don't get cable or a better antenna, as it is not easy for a TV station to get FCC permission to do anything to its signal, and the stations certainly cannot simply raise their transmitter power on their own just because some small number of viewers in far suburbs or in the fringes out in the middle of nowhere are not getting them in digital. Most non-technical viewers do not understand that, thinking that all a TV station has to do is turn a knob on the transmitter and presto, the station will instantly reach from Maine to Miami with a city-grade digital signal.

We AKers know and respect this (that such a scenario as I just described is utterly impossible), but trying to explain this to most non-technical people will get you nowhere, in many cases. Many people will not get cable (even basic, what I call "bare-bones" basic, which is local channels only and is the lowest, least expensive level of service offered by all cable operators) because they claim it is too expensive. Don't try to sell these people on satellite, as you will probably get the same response (even though, in many cases, satellite is even cheaper than cable), possibly being followed by an adamant "No one's gonna put that ugly dish thingamajig on my house!"

What can you do? If someone can't afford or doesn't want cable or satellite, and doesn't understand why their TV doesn't work with just the antenna, there's nothing we can do. Many people refused to believe, in the last weeks of analog TV, that the day would come when their televisions would no longer operate with just an antenna connected, despite the warnings in the PSAs and even a few actual half-hour programs produced by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), detailing what viewers had to do to be ready for the digital transition on June 12 this year. A television station in Cleveland, a year or so before the transition and continuing until the bitter end, really pulled out all the stops to be as certain as humanly possible that everyone here in northeastern Ohio was aware of the digital transition by 06.12; its public-awareness campaign used the phrase The BIG SWITCH which showed on TV screens across the area, in letters darned nearly impossible to ignore; a banner carrying that phrase was shown, I swear, every chance the TV station got. I must say, I got tired of seeing this after just a short time (it ran on Cleveland's CBS affiliate and also on another local station owned by the same company) and am glad the whole thing is over. Except, that is, for the shouting, meaning the loose ends the FCC is still trying to tie up with reception problems and assisting those folks having trouble hooking up their converter boxes.