Your Rabbit Ears Might Not Catch All Digital TV Signals

If you use rabbit ears to watch Lost, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, NBA basketball, or Dancing with the Stars, you might soon find yourself staring at a black screen with a NO SIGNAL box.

That's because some homes that receive grainy reception on analog over-the-air television might not pick up a signal from certain stations once the digital transition happens in June. Homes using indoor antennas -- rabbit ears -- are the most likely to be affected.

WHTM-TV, ABC channel 27, has conducted signal strength tests throughout the market and found that areas south of York, from Hanover to Red Lion, might have trouble receiving the digital signal on rabbit ears alone, said station general manager Joe Lewin. Homes farther south, in places like New Freedom and Stewartstown, Lewin said, might require an aerial antenna with an amplifier.

Over-the-air digital television is an all-or-nothing proposition, Lewin said, meaning a television will either show a picture as clear as cable, or no picture at all. It's commonly called the "cliff effect." When the station has held phone banks to address viewers concerns, most of the calls were about reception, Lewin said.

In some areas, "It's going to be an issue," Lewin said, adding that most people will need either a rooftop or attic antenna.

Congress ordered the switch from analog to digital television in an effort to free spectrum bandwidth. Originally scheduled for Feb. 17, Congress last month delayed the transition until June 12.

WITF-TV (Ch. 33) and WLYH-TV (Ch. 15) both made the permanent switch to digital television on Feb. 17, eliminating their analog signals in the process.

Since hooking up their digital converter boxes, some York County viewers have found they're on the wrong side of the cliff effect for some channels.
Right now, WHP-TV's (Ch. 21) digital signal can be difficult to pick up in some areas because it is sent out over a weaker frequency, said station engineer Rob Hershey. Once the FCC transition happens in June, the station will start sending out over its main frequency.

Anyone that can see WHP clearly in analog should receive the digital signal in June, Hershey said.

WHP and WHTM both broadcast in the Harrisburg area, as does WITF, meaning their signals may have to travel farther than WGAL-TV (Ch. 8), which broadcasts in Lancaster County, and WPMT-TV (Ch. 43), which broadcasts in York County.

Hershey is also the station engineer for WLYH. The first day after going all digital, the station received about 25 calls, Hershey said. The biggest problem was that viewers did not re-scan their converter box, which they need to do so the box recognizes new channels, Hershey said.

When shopping for antennas, Hershey said, it's also important for people to realize they need one that picks up both UHF and VHF bands, since the digital broadcasts still use those bands.

John Zitnyer, of Dover Township, has lost PBS, ABC and CBS since hooking up his converter box. Now that WITF has gone all digital, he said he's going to miss out on his favorite programs, like Frontline and Masterpiece Theater.

"The digital (picture) is a whole lot clearer, but we got more channels on analog," Zitnyer said.

Not everyone is complaining about the digital transition.
Dale Mundis, of Winterstown, has a rooftop antenna and a large amplifier. Since setting up his converter box, Mundis said he's been able to receive all the local channels, plus stations from other markets.

Article from TMCnet.com

Influential Legislation Affecting the Digital Transition

The digital transition period has been quite confusing for consumers, many people learned about the need to acquire digital converter boxes and the government DTV coupon program long after it ran out of funding to provide coupons for everyone who signed up. Many consumers were left unprepared for the digital transition. To address these problems, shortly after president Obama’s inauguration, congress passed two laws to literally buy some time for consumers to prepare for the digital transition.

The first important piece of legislation known as the DTV Delay Act pushed the transition date back from Feb 17th to June 12th; providing consumers a few extra months to prepare for the transition, whether they need to upgrade their antenna, or buy a converter box for their TV. There are a few exceptions to this new law, some stations were granted waivers by the FCC to allow them to transition into digital early, before June. The cost of broadcasting in analog and digital simultaneously for the extra months would cause these stations to go bankrupt trying to afford their power bill. The DTV Delay Act also slightly altered the rules of the DTV Coupon program, allowing consumers with expired coupons to get a second chance – one replacement coupon for each card that expired.

The second piece of legislation affecting the digital transition is the $787 billion dollar “economic stimulus package”. This law allocated an extra $650 million to the coupon program created to subsidize the cost of up to two digital converter boxes per household. The NTIA coupon program ran into funding limitations, and as it got closer to the transition date, more consumers were applying for cards than the coupon program could afford to send out. In order to ensure a smooth transition for low-income households the coupon program required more funding to continue issuing coupons. To compensate for such a high demand for coupons the NTIA created a waiting list for consumers to register under while waiting for cards to expire, freeing up unused coupon money. The coupon waiting list eventually got up to 4.2 million households before more money was finally allocated to the program.

Now that additional funding has been secured, they are processing applications as quickly as possible. Once the long queue of consumers on the waiting list has been processed, the NTIA will begin allowing people with expired coupons to re-apply for their second chance to use their $40 coupons.

Soon enough the headaches will be over. Everyone will be able to sit back, and enjoy free, over-the-air digital broadcasts, watching their favorite television programs with crystal-clear digital picture quality.

NTIA Whittles Coupon 'Queue' to 3.4 Million

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration no longer has a DTV-to-analog converter box coupon program waiting list, but that is partly only a semantic change.

According to an administration spokesman, NTIA no longer has a waiting list, with all those coupon requests moved to a "processing queue." That "queue" for applications for the $40 coupons is down to 3.4 million from the 4.2 million on it when it was still a waiting list last week--before OMB freed up the $650 million from the economic stimulus package to fund more coupons.

NTIA is getting those requests out of the queue at the rate of about 400,000 per weekday--applications are not being processed over the weekends. It says it will have the backlog cleared up in 2-3 weeks.

Although the law changing the DTV hard date and extending the coupon program changes the program to allow anyone with expired coupons to reapply, NTIA is not ready to process any of those requests yet. Any reapplications it receives before it is ready will not be put on a waiting list, or even in a queue, but will be rejected, said NTIA spokesman Bart Forbes.

He warned that even if the rule is published and the date change law is published in the Federal Register this week that does not mean NTIA is ready to start processing reapplication requests. One is a rulemaking, he said, the other is changing the systems to accept reapplications.

That is still a week or so away and NTIA says it will let everybody know when it is open for reapplication businesses.

Changing the DTV hard date from Feb. 17 to June 12 was driven in large part by the waiting list for coupons, which started building up in early January after NTIA ran into a funding ceiling due to an accounting problem.

Article from Broadcasting & Cable.com