I was thinking of several fat ladies standing outside Congress shaking their fists and shouting rather than singing. This project has been a total screwup from day one. They needed the bandwitdth for fire and police etc. Really? Is that why Verizon and AT&T wound up with the lion's share and so far no one has picked up on the public service part as yet.

Why, even though the standard allows for a 4:3 signal inside the 16:9 broadcast do we get letterbox viewing?

This was a blatant grab by the cell phone companies, and why not cellphones print more money than the mint.

Well, this blows. I'm gonna be at work when the shutdown here happens! :grumpy:

KAIT 8 is going off at 7AM friday
KEMV 6 is going off two hours later at 9AM.

Well, there's the direct VCR method, connect as many VCRs as you have to antennas, and program them to record from 10:30PM Friday night to 2,4 or 6 hours later (depending on the tape speed you select). Then you'd see if the stations just kill the carrier in the middle of Conan, or play the National Anthem, and or a public service announcement saying "tough bananas if you didn't get a converter box".

Well they must be planning on giving the cops and firemen cell phones...

Maybe I'll get better service then. :thmbsp:

Im pissed, my Sony Watchman is now obsoulete. I enjoyed watching it in bed sometimes. If I am watching it tommorow afternoon, will it turn to dust at noon?

Some modulators, standard amplifiers and a decent antenna will keep your watchman happy :thmbsp:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/create_channel_3.html

Modify the RF modulators of a couple of converter boxes to get a channel 2 and a channel 5 or 6 like I did in this thread: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=220321
Feed the resulting channels 2, 4 (from an unmodified converter box set to ch4), and 5 to the amp. Then you can change channels on the vintage set at will.

Well, I'm all set...

All my TV's have been attached to cable for a very long time. In fact, I attached a set of bunny ears to my old DuMont RA-105B "Sussex", and will watch analog blip into the history books.

BTW, I granted an interview with the Press on the "Demise of Analog Broadcast Television", and, it made today's local cable TV news. All my vintage TV's are filmed in action.

Here is a link, enjoy:

http://www.necn.com/Boston/SciTech/2...244756863.html

I had great fun doing this interview.

LJB

Wilmington is STILL there!
 

As many of you are aware, Wilmington NC was the test market for a full-scale early swapover on September 8, 2008.

It appears to have survived.

It was still there last week when I was working on a project there.

According to the reports in the local newspaper, it took place with little mayhem and civil unrest. :D


Of course, my tiny Casio LCD TV I carry with me as I travel is pretty useless now. :sigh:

Hey Lee- great interview. The closest I get to your hobby is my old sony watchman but that segment has peaked my interest. You have some cool "conversation pieces" there!! After watching it I gotta get up tommorow and hook up a few old TV's I have and watch big brother flip the switch.

I turned on my 1970 Zenith b/w 23" metal cabinet (14NC22 chassis) to see what I would get with the antenna. First I found buzzing in the sound that didn't belong. I've had that set for 7 years and it never needed a single repair ... until now. Anyway, what I did get was some message on ch 2 and 4 about programming a converter box. (And ch 4 must have reduced it's power - it used to come in much better) There seems to still be regular programming on ch 6 and 9. Nothing on the other vhf stations. I know we used to have a ch 13 and a ch 5 and a ch 7, now I get nothing but static on them. (I haven't really lived here long enough to memorize all the stations, what they are and where they're from.) I didn't look at uhf.

looks like stations that intend to keep their analog channel for digital have been pulling the switch early today, so as to give their engineers time to swap out antenna connections from the analog transmitter to the new digital transmitter set up on the analog TV channel. In NYC, channels 7, 11 and 13 are taking back their analog assignments and placing their digital signals on their old analog assignment. There's one case where a digital channel 33 is being handed off from one broadcaster channel 11 to another, channel 2. Wouldn't be surprised that that all that needed to be done for that was to change the baseband digital data stream feed from one station's studio to the other station's studio. And using the same transmitter and antenna. "Channel 11" becomes "channel 2". I suppose tonight, if you didn't rescan your box, and you punch in "11", you'll see "channel 2", and not channel 11.

Over at a New York City radio station listener forum, there are DTV reception reports: http://www.musicradio77.com/wwwboard/

No DTV in NW MI yet...
 

Here in the Traverse City area, we currently have one analog station still broadcasting until 11:30pm to ensure that we all will be able to watch Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Other than that, there are NO digital OR analog stations on the air!:tears:

Seems they all shut down their existing DTV signals first, then the analog, and we are STILL waiting for the digital to come back. Promised deadlines have come and gone... with only new estimates that come and go. :thumbsdn:

So much for a seamless transition!:thumbsdn:

Was that Channel 7 in Traverse City? Today was a good day for dxing I live in Escanaba across the lake and picked up Channel 7. Up here our NBC station switched off the analog. The had a low power digital for a few months now they said they were getting a new stronger amplifier for the big switch. Guess what .....crapo signal. After much digging and my own deduction they have yet to up the power like they claimed they were going to. Now it's perhaps by the end of summer. Sucks to be them. Our pbs station broadcasting from the same area switched early this week and has a good signal. Our Fox is not working well. I will give them a couple days and then start harassing them. And it's not a question of equipment on my end. Bottom line is Digital transition has failed.

final countdown
 

I guess the big losers will be people that want to use antennas in fringe reception areas. What was a watchable snowy picture will now have the "no signal" text bouncing around on the screen or be blank. The winners will be Time Warner and the other cable/satellite providers.

Has anyone seen a list of the frequencies and bandwidths for the new digital system? How many digital channels will there be?

We are going to stay up tonight and see how a few stations sign off. I didn't get my 1951 RCA fixed in time to watch tonight. I'm waiting on a "doorknob" HV cap. to arrive from china to fix it....

Very little radio/TV/electronics production in the USA, GM bankrupt, value of the dollar going down...It's easy to understand why people enjoy watching Andy Griffith on a old B&W set.