Switching to digital TV

Sure, many of us have succumbed to the wiles of an all-digital world, with fancy plasma or LCD HDTVs parked in a prominent place in the living room.

But a few folks still on the other side of the digital divide — you know who you are, what with your 8-track tapes and Beta VCRs — in year-and-a-half will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital age. In February 2009, folks still watching free analog TV with rooftop or "rabbit ears" antennae won't be able to examine the latest "CSI" or gaze at "Gilligan's Island" reruns.

That is, without a humble, little set-top converter box.

When broadcast stations make the government-required switch to digital transmission, nearly 70 million TVs will lose reception without those converters.

The National Association of Broadcasters estimates that nearly 20 million households get TV exclusively through over-the-air signals — rather than cable or satellite TV service — and about 15 million more have secondary TV sets in bedrooms and kitchens that get over-the-air signals.

In a world where SDTV, EDTV and HDTV create technology alphabet soup, the move to digital television, or DTV, is contributing to people getting their proverbial signals crossed.

"If they know about it (the DTV transition), they're confused, but many of them don't know about it," Jim Barry, spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association, said during a recent visit to Salt Lake City. "What we have is a huge education effort that is beginning.

"I get a lot of questions about this, and usually it's about, 'What is this I hear that I'm going to have to buy a new TV or that my TV is not going to work?' That's floating out there."

Misperceptions aside, the good news for analog-clingers is that government-supplied coupons will help them afford the converter boxes and there is plenty of time before the DTV switch happens.

"There is a solution that doesn't require you to buy a new TV, doesn't require you to make any huge efforts except to pick up a couple of coupons and buy one of these (converters), and you've got about a year to do it," Barry said.

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