R U RDY 4 DTV?
If you can read the title properly, then you are likely ready for June 12th. Are you ready for DTV seems silly to ask only a few weeks away, but it’s a fact that not every house is ready. The FCC released the statistics from last Thursday’s Nationwide soft test, and North Carolina ranked high in the call volume. Charlotte placed in the top 10 of callers to the FCC help line. I didn’t really see any surprises except the category “Did not know about the transition” is still listed, and still picks up numbers. Albeit small percentages, but my goodness people! Where have you been to not know analog TV is going away over the air next month?
I was not surprised the biggest number of callers were about reception issues, followed by converter box set-up, coupon questions and scanning channels. Um, yeah, that’s what I’ve been posting here for a while now. Get a good antenna and converter box and you’ll be fine.
I do have to say I totally understand the confusion on this stuff. It’s new, it’s different, it’s something new to learn. It does not behave the same way as analog TV did. Just don’t let fear make it more difficult than it really is. It’s something you can do yourself. Just jump in and play with it.
One viewer called in about the test because he didn’t see it. If you haven’t seen it, all the stations put up a screen on the analog signals giving information about the conversion, and the FCC number to call. This gentlemen I spoke to did not see the color bars, and continued to see the programming as usual, but he was confused because different folks had told him different things. If you didn’t see the color bars at 7:28 AM, 12:28 and 6:28 PM last Thursday, you’re fine. Your TV, cable or satellite provider is ready and no changes need to be done.
There have been some questionable marketing techniques by some providers attempting to up-sell customers to higher digital packages and set top boxes, but I am not aware of this happening in our area. Cable can be particularly confusing by the nature of how they provide some services. If you just want basic channels, they have a package for you, and most TVs will tune in the free channels fine. If you want premium movie channels or pay per view movies, then you do need to upgrade your box or purchase a cable card, but you can certainly wait a little while if you want to. You do need to do some homework, but you can keep what you’re getting now with no upgrade if you want to. The transition only affects those of us with antennas. Cable and satellite will not be any different after June 12th than what you have right now. If you are happy now, you’ll be happy next month!
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