Jake Herringbone

Speaking truth to HD FUD

So pretty much everyone knows about the big switch to digital TV that’s coming in February. You know why? It’s been advertised heavily by companies that think they can sell you something you don’t need, by misleading you about what’s really going to happen on Feb 17. I’ve seen ads for it, and I don’t usually see a lot of ads in the course of my daily activities, so I’m guessing most people have seen them too.

It makes me mad when my poor grandmother thinks she has to buy an HDTV because they are shutting down the old TV. No one has to buy a new TV, and no one has to buy a new antenna, and in fact

You probably don’t have to buy anything.

Really, you don’t. Maybe you’d like to go buy something, after all, this is America (unless you live somewhere else). But this big digital switchover only affects you if you’re watching analog broadcast TV right now.

If you pay a cable or satellite bill for your TV, you don’t need to buy anything.

That’s assuming that your cable company hasn’t decided to change your service on you to take advantage of the confusion right now. There’s no reason your cable company can’t give you the same thing they have been.

If you have an antenna, and you get bad reception all the time, but you got your TV after March 2007, then you don’t need to buy anything!

That’s how you know you have broadcast TV now. You probably get up to adjust the antenna now and then, or there’s a big one on your roof. But your antenna is just fine, and your TV is just fine, too! There’s perfectly good digital TV coming over those same airwaves, exactly the same way as HD radio is overlayed on regular analog radio.

You can get that digital signal on your TV, because there has been a mandate from the FCC that:

By law, beginning March 1, 2007, all television reception devices (including TVs, VCRs, DVRs, etc.) imported into the U.S. or shipped in interstate commerce must contain a digital tuner.

If you have only thirteen channels, and you get bad reception all the time, and that bad reception looks like snow on your TV, and your TV is a few years old, then you may have to pay around $30 max.

All you need is a digital-to-analog converter at $40-$70 – and you can get a coupon from the government for $40 of that.

So please, if your grandmother is like mine, please help to clear up the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that’s being spread around the digital TV switch.

(On a side note, it makes me crazy that PCs still only have analog video on them. That’s 40-year old scan-refresh technology out of TVs. Your grandma is replacing it by February, but you just got it in your new Lenovo ThinkPad? Outrageous.)

Tags: analog, digital, DTV, grandma, HDTV