Will you lose your signal?

Yes, I told you so. If you’ve followed my rants on the subject, you’ll remember my prediction at the transition to digital TV – just five weeks away as I write this – would be a disaster in the making. Well, that prediction is coming true.

After months of assurances from government agencies and industry flacks that plans for the DTV transition were going great guns, President Elect Barrack Obama has asked Congress to delay the switchover, now scheduled for Feb. 17.

The reason: millions of perfectly good analog TVs will go dark because they can’t receive the new transmissions and won’t have converter boxes attached. Those are boxes the American public has to pay for – and a $1.34 billion subsidy program to help viewers buy them has run out of cash with more than 7 million households still at risk.

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For months I’ve been getting complaints from readers who say some of their favorite cable TV channels are disappearing. Depending on where they live it may be Discovery, or MSNBC or some other cable-only channel with a dedicated,  if not overwhelmingly large following. The cable company tells customers it has moved the channel to its “digital tier.” If viewers want to  see the channel again, they’ll have to rent a digital cable box for $10 a month.

A lot of victims think this is part of the great DTV Switchover, and they blame the government. But it’s not. It’s a case of cable companies trying to wring a few extra dollars out of their subscribers without raising overall rates and free up more bandwidth for the high-definition broadcasts that their premium customers want. Here’s the story: › Continue reading…

If you’d like to see more access to cheap, high-speed wireless Internet service for handheld gadgets, the folks at Google, Microsoft, Phillips and a bunch of other giants think they can shoehorn it into television’s “white spaces.” The notion has touched off a battle royal between the geeks of the broadcast TV and wireless industries — now joined by PR minions on both sides.

The “white spaces” are unused frequences between TV channels that the FCC allocated over the years, originally to keep broadcasters from interfering with one another. Thanks to better equipment, that’s no longer an issue, and with with the switch from analog to digital broadcasting almost at hand (Feb. 17, 2009 if Congress doesn’t chicken out), an organization of industry giants called the White Spaces Coaltion wants the FCC to make the vacant real estate between UHF stations available to unlicensed digital devices. This week, Google turned up the heat, launching a Free The Airwaves campaign, complete with its own Web site and an online petition for visitors to sign.

“What outrage!” cries the TV industry, which has jealously protected its spectrum from interference over the years — and will have even more trouble with the switch to less robust digital transmissions next year.  ”What outrage!” cries the wireless microphone industry – which just happens to use those very same frequencies in stadiums, theaters and other venues. “What outrage!” cry wireless microphone users, whose numbers include the National Football league and most of Broadway — people with some very deep pockets.

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See, it wasn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination. Apple has released a software fix that’s supposed to help users stay connected to AT&T’s 3G network and prevent dropped calls. Users have been complaining about spotty reception for weeks. What’s frustrating is that no one will say exactly what the problem is. Here’s the AP report.

TV Phone

One casualty of the DTV transition is the industry’s plan to popularize direct-to-phone TV broadcasts in the U.S. Although Verizon and AT&T both offer paid TV broadcasts on some models, the MediaFLO service is a limited repackaging of highlights from network and cable channels over a specialized UHF system that requires special hardware in the phone. It’s not a full, portable medium for real-time, network broadcasts of entertainment, news and sports. With analog broadcasts disappearing on Feb. 17, 2009, the technology will need some time to reshape itself.  Read the AP report.