This Friday: the end of an era (farewell, analog TV...)

[Stanislav]

By midnight Friday, there will be no full-power analog signals left in the U.S. (with the exception of a few dozen stations that will "nightlight" with DTV info for a few weeks). The only analog signals left will be most translators and LPTVs (a small few have or will soon be converting), plus border-crossing signals from Canada and Mexico (Canada is set to switch off analog in 2012, I believe; Mexico way up the road -- I think their goal is 2020 or 2030 or some such?). BTW, I've read of some TV-DXers who, while annoyed by the difficulties of DTV DXing and nostalgic about losing analog, are yet salivating at the prospect of all those open lo-band channels where they might now get Canadian, Mexican, Cuban, etc. skip signals that used to be blocked...

I'm not posting this to incite any debate or argue over the pros and cons of DTV, nor the money and politics involved. (I have done so at length in the past; any arguments or dissensions I might have are moot now, anyway.) I'm just reflecting on how incredible it is to think that analog TV remained, at its core, unchanged for over 60 years. (Of course, AM radio fans will point out that that technology has been more or less unchanged for even longer. But I digress, as this is a TV board...) Once we had the current VHF channels set, settled on a 525-line standard, and established the basic technical parameters, all further developments, improvements, and add-ons (UHF, color, stereo sound, etc.) were backwards-compatible. You could restore a late 40's TV set and it would still display current VHF analog signals fine, or you could time-travel back to circa 1948 with a current set and still be able to watch Uncle Miltie and Bishop Sheen. That's pretty amazing when you think about it. And until recent years, cable and satellite TV (both DBS and TVRO) also depended on the analog NTSC standard.

So, what are your thoughts as June 12 approaches?

 

[landtuna]

Who da thunk it?

TV antennas on rooftops again.

Everything old becomes new again. ;D

 

[LibertyNT]

Who da thunk it?

TV antennas on rooftops again.

Everything old becomes new again. ;D

That is so true ;D
Ive seen so many new antennas come out in the past 3 years

 

[crainbebo]

Everyone in Bellingham put up your antennas and watch CBC's news every night!!!! For 2 years.

Everyone in San Diego watch mexican stations like a blink of a eye.

Everyone in Miami watch Cubans like they are clear as a bell!

-crainbebo

 

[Markxxx]

I will admit I hate DTV 'cause I can't get it. It's just sour grapes on my part. Maybe if I move someday I'll be able to get it.

I think it'll be interesting to look back in 10 years and see if anything really new happened with the change.

Like were the subchannels actually used to make TV better or just to run more infomercials?

And more importantly did digital really provide better options for the consumer.

Also since DTV technology is outdated now, it'll be interesting to see how many more years it'll be till we have to go through this again. I read some say as early as 2025 and other say as late as 2050 when we'll have to junk our technology and start over. Of course many of us will be long since gone and the young kids will see switching technology as part of the norm. For instance from 1980 -2000 (20 years) we went from Vinyl to Cassettes to CDs to mp3 and people are getting use to buying new forms of the same old stuff.

 

[fybush]

I will admit I hate DTV 'cause I can't get it. It's just sour grapes on my part. Maybe if I move someday I'll be able to get it.

I wish I understood what was causing your problems. I was just back in Chicago earlier this week for a couple of days, this time staying right in the city (Hilton Garden Inn, Grand & State), and the results indoors were nearly identical to my results last June from Oak Brook and last February from up in Evanston - solid reception from both Hancock and Sears signals (this time I could even see the elusive WBBM-DT 3!) with very little antenna fiddling required.

Antenna was a Terk HDTVi (the Silver Sensor with rabbit ears added for VHF), receiver was the relatively numb Magnavox DVD recorder.

The only differences this time from last June were that I could see WBBM-DT (but then I didn't have a proper VHF antenna last time out), and that I couldn't get WYIN-DT from downtown, whereas I could from Oak Brook. Also, WFLD-DT seemed to be at extremely low power this time, probably related to the transition.

Back to the topic at hand - yes, it is indeed the end of an exciting era. I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings. Later tonight, I'll go watch as two of my other locals, WHEC-TV 10 and WHAM-TV 13, leave the analog airwaves forever.

And this afternoon I logged what I'm guessing will be my last-ever U.S. analog E-skip, WSAV-TV 3 from Savannah.

Hard to believe it's really all over...or almost over, anyway.

 

[landtuna]

Geez Scott.....yer bringin' tears to my eyes. :'(

 

[hubcity]

Back to the topic at hand - yes, it is indeed the end of an exciting era. I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings. Later tonight, I'll go watch as two of my other locals, WHEC-TV 10 and WHAM-TV 13, leave the analog airwaves forever.

And this afternoon I logged what I'm guessing will be my last-ever U.S. analog E-skip, WSAV-TV 3 from Savannah.

Hard to believe it's really all over...or almost over, anyway.

...and folks will be posting clips of the last-ever analog sign-offs and nightlight services - and emergency broadcasts, if there are any - to YouTube to be kept for posterity...right? (Wish it had occurred to me that this might be a big deal...)

 

[mleach]

Back to the topic at hand - yes, it is indeed the end of an exciting era. I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings. Later tonight, I'll go watch as two of my other locals, WHEC-TV 10 and WHAM-TV 13, leave the analog airwaves forever.

And this afternoon I logged what I'm guessing will be my last-ever U.S. analog E-skip, WSAV-TV 3 from Savannah.

Hard to believe it's really all over...or almost over, anyway.

...and folks will be posting clips of the last-ever analog sign-offs and nightlight services - and emergency broadcasts, if there are any - to YouTube to be kept for posterity...right? (Wish it had occurred to me that this might be a big deal...)

Between that and those "get the word out" psas. I remember seeing a PSA on You Tube from the Indianapolis market that showed all the GMs of all the Indy stations gathering around each other explaining to the viewers about the switch to DTV. Even though I know very little about the Indy market, I still thought that was interesting seeing those GMs putting the competition factor aside all for public service.

On the flip side of this, there was that DTV psa I heard on the radio in West Virginia. While the information was correct, the PSA did kept usuing the term "...it's the LAW". While the swtich to DTV was the law per-FCC, that PSA did make it seem ( at least to me anyway ) that for the viewers "it is the LAW" for them to get that converter. So what happens if they don't? Hmmmmm ...call 911?

 

[azumanga]

I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings.

What happened -- are they going to strictly rely on the PBS feed and other outside material?

 

[radioman148]

I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings.

What happened -- are they going to strictly rely on the PBS feed and other outside material?

WGN Radio devoted their all night show to questions about the switchover.
Better late than never.

 

[fybush]

I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings.

What happened -- are they going to strictly rely on the PBS feed and other outside material?

No, no, we're still doing plenty of local productions - which are all being seen on WXXI-DT 16!

 

[KeithE4]

I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings.

What happened -- are they going to strictly rely on the PBS feed and other outside material?

No, no, we're still doing plenty of local productions - which are all being seen on WXXI-DT 16!

You're not ID'ing as WXXI-TV 21 even though your RF channel is 16? Or is your PSIP 16.x now and you kept the -DT suffix?

 

[fybush]

I had the privilege tonight of being part of the very last live studio production that will ever be seen on WXXI-TV 21 here in Rochester, the station I grew up with almost from its beginnings.

What happened -- are they going to strictly rely on the PBS feed and other outside material?

No, no, we're still doing plenty of local productions - which are all being seen on WXXI-DT 16!

You're not ID'ing as WXXI-TV 21 even though your RF channel is 16? Or is your PSIP 16.x now and you kept the -DT suffix?

No, no, we PSIP as 21.x. I'm not sure what the decision is yet about keeping the -DT suffix. All I was trying to say, in the midst of a very long, very sleepless night of shuttling between analog shutoffs in two markets, was that the "DTV 101" show last night was the last local production to be seen over the venerable analog 21 signal here. Sheesh...

 

[pqgeorge]

I definitely feel the sadness of the end of analog TV, both locally and on e-skip. I saw WPBT/2 from Miami this morning live for one more time under local WGBH. Both signals were as strong as usual with the same programming on both stations. I also watched WPBT on http://dxfm.com from Gerard's receiver in Lexington, KY this morning. Other than the possibility of getting a nightlight signal via e-skip, this basically brings to a close e-skip DX'ing for all intents and purposes. DTV on e-skip will be extremely rare and very hard to receive due to the need of getting a long enough stream to decode.

I'm disappointed in WBZ and WSBK's abrupt shutdown. WBZ just went to DTV programming and WSBK just pulling the switch ("POOF!").

Oh well. DTV will never be a perfect replacement for analog. You either you have it or you don't. At least analog still provided a usable signal even when the signal was weak.

R.I.P., analog TV (1941-2009)

 

[4dude]

YES IT TRULY IS SAD.........

Analog is so much better and reliable.........

 

[gr8oldies]

We still have a couple more years of Canadian, Mexican and deep South American E Skip. Gerard recieved a Mexican channel 3 as soon as the local channel 3 left the air. I think there's more fun ahead.

 

[4dude]

Yes but for many of us the channels STAYED ON THE SAME FREQ,just went to digtal crap.....

 

[Stanislav]

Yes but for many of us the channels STAYED ON THE SAME FREQ,just went to digtal crap.....

Almost all my locals (Orlando) are staying on their pre-transition DTV channels. Only WRDQ and WOTF switched their DTV signals back to their original analog channels last night (27 and 43, respectively).

I read that the FCC has already been inundated with phone calls, but they have mostly been seeking advice or answers about rescanning, antennas, etc. -- very, very few of the "what the hell just happened" variety from the totally clueless and unprepared. I'm willing to bet a lot of calls came from people who didn't even unwrap their converter box until sometime yesterday and are dismayed to find it doesn't work quite like they are accustomed to. ("I hook what up where? What's this business about 'scanning?'") One of the biggest misunderstandings I've encountered when talking to non-geek "laity" is that many folks were not even aware that DTV signals were already on the air and have been for several years -- they thought they couldn't even use their new converter or digital TV until this weekend.

 

[Stanislav]

We still have a couple more years of Canadian, Mexican and deep South American E Skip. Gerard recieved a Mexican channel 3 as soon as the local channel 3 left the air. I think there's more fun ahead.

Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and Central America are all within single-hop skip range of at least part of the U.S. Not only will locals be gone (except for those unfortunate DXers who have a lo-band DTV), but much of the "clutter" of signals typical of a skip opening will be cleared, making those more exotic loggings more of a possibility. Double-hop from South America is also much more likely now.

I've even heard DXers talk of translator "skip" -- there are quite a few translators still active on lo-band analog. It's not unheard of -- I'm told there have been a few (VERY few) cases of translators bring logged by e-skip -- but very rare with all those hi-power signals mixing on the channels during an opening. The death of the full-power lo-banders may also enable rare loggings of this sort.

Plus, there are several lo-band stations "nightlighting," so they can still be seen by skip for the next 30 days. Of course, from what I hear, all the nightlighters are running the same looped PSA sequence, so ID-ing them might be tough unless they have a prominent "bug" that can be seen.

I'm kinda sorry I never went into DXing whole hog -- it's fascinating what some of these guys have seen. I've dabbled and stumbled into a bit of DX here and there over the years, but never had the patience or dedication (or time!) to make it anywhere near a full-time "hobby."