Commemorating the death of analog TV
 

OK, I'm all set up with DTV converter boxes, my sassy homebrew antenna, blah blah blah.

But how to mark the extinction of TV broadcasting as we know (er, knew) it?

I was thinking of rigging up all of my restored TVs in one room, connected to as many rabbit-ear antennas as I can find, tuned to as many channels as I can manage, pumping up the volume, mounting a camcorder on a tripod, and recording what happens when the airwaves go dark.

Other ideas? Who wants to contribute a video clip?

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Rdios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

ummmm.. nice thought.. but remember Y2K? and basically nothing happened when the clock struck 12:00:01

nothing at all.

true, the analog signals from TV stations will be switched over to newer digital technology, but it's not like the TV airwaves will go dark forever.

I've worked in broadcast TV for the past 25+ years.. and while it's a big change, it's way overdue. The digital age hit us a long time ago.. and broadcast TV stations and the FCC were just slow to roll it out.

Even though a lot of people are now adding a converter box to their TV's, the signal won't look much different on their analog TV's, unless they step up to HDTV. I don't see a lot of 78 yr old grand dads going out and buying a new Philco or Zenith :tongue:

Depending on where you are you may not notice much of anything but then if you are far enough away from the transmitter you may get no signal. Or at least the signal will not be good enough to decode. I plan on facing away from Verizon and AT&T and mooning them since it was their lobbying for the frequencies that got the whole thing in motion. Digital transmission has good points, namely being immune to noise. However, if you know how MPEG2 works expect to see those funny 8x8 pixel blocks on the screen occasionally an hear MP3 sound. Unlike analog, a digital signal does not get snowy, once the receiver cannot distinguish between ones and zeros you get nothing, nada, no peecture.

Oh yeah, this 77 year old granddad did buy a new TV, or at least the local power company bought him one after they screwed up a sub station transfer.:D

9-8-08
 

Be knowledgeable that there will be an early "switchover" to DTV as a full-scale test in the Wilmington NC market on September 8, 2008.

This is being done as a "test run" to determine what sort of problems might be encountered. I posted this little bit of info before with little response. I expect that there might be some interesting results! :yes:

I'm gonna side with Danger Boy here; it will be a bit like Y2K, very likely. People around here are clamoring for converters, and a supplier friend of mine is having trouble finding them, as all of his sources have dried up--at least for now.

I had to go with a recording DVD unit to get FTA digital television capabilities. I did have a free-standing digital TV tuner, but it died within a few months. If we are going to have supply and reliability issues like these I cannot see the television broadcasting industry pulling this off in '09.

...

I was thinking about having some sort of celebration... Here in Los Angeles, KTLA ch. 5 was the first commercial TV station to go on the air in 1947, and actually started broadcasting under experimental callsign W6XYZ before the War. I have friends working there, so I will find out what the actual plan is, regarding the changeover. They've been broadcasting on the new digital channel for 6 or 8 years, which most people don't know.

SO, I think it would be fun to have a bunch of TV collectors and historians over, and have a 1947 TV on, along with many other milestone TVs, and we will all tune in to Channel 5 at the last moments, and witness it live. I will definitely do something to commemorate, and how big will depend on how many people would show up.

Charles

I suspect that some sort of legal challenge will derail or at least forestall the hard conversion date before it arrives. I also suspect that this will happen late in the game... maybe even after the first of the year.

Mark my words... :-)

I plan to tape the last transmissions of two stations on VHS, and camcord a montage of other stations on a group of stacked TV sets.

BTW, the "death" of analog TV is much exaggerated. Low power stations may continue in analog (I'll still have four), stations in bordering countries also will (I'll have five of them), people will still feed video games, DVD players and VCRs into their analog sets, and dozens of millions of people will be watching analog cable with their NTSC sets and RF input.

Rob

Pirate analog TV stations may pop up in inner city areas of major cities. Parts of New York City have been infested by pirate FM stations for years, and when the FCC wacks a few, others pop up like weeds to replace them. Pirate TV broadcasters would have a captive market of lower income residents (who can't afford cable, at $90 a month I wouldn't want to spend that much either) with older TV sets.

I'm hoping in the final minutes of analog broadcasting they play the National Anthem and show that old video that was seen when channels signed-off for the night back in the 50's and early 60's.

There is a video on YouTube of the last moments of 405-line TV in England when they "turned it off" in 1983...Prolly will be something like that. I STILL think this is a big, unnecessary, fat-ass mistake...

My plan will be similiar to Phil and Rob. With my current setup (big amplified UHF antenna in the attic and a decent amplified Winegard out back, but too low) I can get a whopping ONE channel on digital. (two if you count the subchannel) There are others but they are too weak to watch more than 30 seconds without locking up.

By the time the "end" comes I will hopefully get the Winegard on the roof with a rotor. I would like to use every VCR I have to record a different channel, and I like the idea of turning on a room full of TV sets and using the camcorder to record the moment. I'm not counting on anything low-power analog to be close enough for me to view.

I thought about doing this also. Good idea.

The pirate stations in NYC are always playing the best music...no wonder why the demand for them is high! We have junky FM stations here.

I can't wait for pirate-analog TV!!!!

My two converter boxes came yesterday so I tried one with the Terk antenna in the garage attic. Picked up a bunch of stations but while flipping through them I got the 'no signal' message a few times. Then the picture would pop up, but being fringe it would get the MPEG2 artifacts and you would see the 8x8 pixel blocks around the screen. I have yet to try the set in the greenhouse but since it is on an amplified pair of rabbit ears I am not expecting miracles. I could tell what my translation of FCC but this is a family group.