[Jeffhs]

Channel 3 in Cleveland stopped analog at 10:00 this morning, along with channels 19 and 43 in the same area. I believe channels 5 and 8 signed off their analog signals at the same time as well, but it's impossible to know (unless the station announces it) since I have cable (Time Warner)--which uses direct digital feeds from the TV stations.

Channel 49, one of two PBS channels TW cable offers in my area, will switch at midnight tonight; channel 25, the local PBS affiliate in Cleveland, has already switched and in fact is broadcasting at full digital power, even as I write this (the station announced this via a screen crawl most of yesterday afternoon and into the evening).

I set my VCR last night to tape the last few hours of analog on channel 3, but again, since I have cable, I could not tell the difference on the tape when they rang down the curtain on analog NTSC, except that the picture seems quite a bit sharper and clearer now (even on my nine-year-old RCA XL100 CTC185, and probably also on my Zenith Sentry 2, which I didn't check--yet) than I can ever remember it being in analog.

Now all that's left is to get those other million-plus holdouts still using analog TVs connected directly to antennas hooked up to cable or to a DTV converter box (and the proper antenna(s), of course).

I think, however, there are going to be a sizable number of viewers who still refuse to believe they need a converter or cable ahead of their old set. The old saying "seeing is believing", however, applies here in spades; when these people turn on their old (or not so old) analog TVs tomorrow morning and see their favorite TV shows gone, replaced by nothing but snow on every channel, they will then, hopefully anyway, take the bull by the horns and get a box or subscribe to at least basic cable. However, there are people who will think their TV is broken, and will immediately put it out for the trash....even if the set worked perfectly well when all TV was analog.

I can't help wondering how many old (these days meaning mostly '80s-'90s black-plastic cube offshore-manufactured CRT receivers, including flat panels that conk out after only a year or after the warranty expires, whichever comes first) TVs we will be seeing on curbs and treelawns from this day forward, having been replaced by HDTV flat panels. There may also be folks who will decide that television isn't worth the bother anymore, that TV is a dreadful waste of time, or both, and will not replace their old set(s) when the transition is finally, fully complete at 12:01 a.m. 06.13.09. The digital transition only improves television signals from a behind-the-scenes technical standpoint which will go unnoticed by the average person; it will not and does not (unfortunately) improve the quality of the television shows broadcast over those signals.

Garbage on television is garbage, whether it is viewed on a 19" screen or a 50" one. I bet more people will subscribe to DVD rental services such as Netflix or Blockbuster, or purchase their own DVDs from Amazon.com, et al. after the transition, as much of today's junk that passes for programming on broadcast television (including those afternoon talk shows that replaced the afternoon movies and old off-network reruns on daytime TV several decades ago) won't look any better in digital HD than it presently looks (or looked, until the transition) in NTSC analog.