The Secret of Signals

The switch to digital TV within the US will happen in less than three weeks. However, according to the Government run DTV web site, 42% of the TV broadcast market has already made the transition.

If you're reading this page via the Internet, I'm guessing you've already made your DTV switch. However, just in case I'm wrong, or you have family or friends who don't understand the DTV switch, the FCC has contracted with vendors to provide DTV support centers and events, which can be located in this DTV help center map. There are also DTV converter box coupons still available, though it's probably too late to get the coupon before the conversion.

As for antennas, based on my own experience, I recommend the Terk HDTVa Indoor Amplified High-Definition Antenna. Once I installed it, I was able to pick up an additional 5 channels, and I've had a much more consistent signal from all the channels. It's one of the larger indoor antennas, but the price is good (I purchased at Amazon, where it's currently listed for $36.85), as is the performance.

Congress today voted to make the DTV transition even more confusing by pushing back the date given on every billboard and in every commercial an additional four months. The cut-off date is now June 12th...sort of.

According to a Washington Post story on the delay

The House today has voted to delay the nation's transition to digital television by four months, less than two weeks before broadcasters were scheduled to turn off traditional analog signals and air only digital programming Feb. 17.

An additional impact of the new legislation is that DTV conversion coupons that expired are now good again, for a limited time.

What all of this means is that the people who ignored all of the warnings and pleas for the last year, can now ignore another four months of the same. This also means that those of us who did what was necessary for the transition have to put up with the constant barrage of noise about the DTV switch for another four months.

What's worse, though, is that those stations ready to make the switch can switch, which will now result in a patchwork of cut-offs, rather than the one clean cut-off date for everyone.

Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael J. Cops said today that 143 broadcasters have already terminated their analog signals and another 60 stations plan to do so before Feb. 17. Other stations have told the agency they plan to shut off analog signals on the original transition date, but they may choose to remain on the air.

Except that it typically costs a station $10,000 a month to continue with both analog and digital signals at the same time. I think we'll find more than a few stations making the transition on the earlier, February 17th date.

Additional information at Broadcasting and Cable.

The premise sounds good: rather than subscribe to a cable or other video service, access movies and television shows via the internet using either our computers, or specialized set top boxes.

I bought into the concept when early last year I purchased an AppleTV, followed up by purchases of not one but two Roku boxes: one for me, one for my roommate. After all, the cost of the equipment was more than compensated for by the savings I achieved by not subscribing to either the local cable service (Charter), or the newly available AT&T U-Verse.

We already had a subscription to Netflix, and the Watch Now capability delivered through the Roku boxes was, for a time, very satisfying. The service supplemented our access to local programming through indoor antenna and digital conversion boxes, and at a fraction of the cost of cable.

Then came the big change at Netflix: support for streaming HD movies and TV shows. Of course, some would say the HD quality isn't true HD, and the streams left something to be desired, but I found them to be excellent on my 720p television, as did my roommate on his older CRT-based TV.

However, when Roku started rolling out HD support to all Roku users, something started to go wrong. The first public releases of the beta software would cause the Roku boxes to spontaneously reboot. Later releases coincided with several people, who previously had reliable service, suffering stream and buffering issues, especially during peak media times, such as weekends and evenings. By the time that build 1.5 909 was released, both my roommate's and my boxes became unusable, with the constant, and extremely slow, rebuffering.

Though the Roku people have since released another build to try and address the issue of re-buffering, the problems associated with the service have not improved, leaving me to wonder whether I am now the proud possessor of two black bricks.

A favorite game with Roku owners is to guess which service will be added to the box, first. The game is now over, because evidently, Amazon's Video On Demand is going to be the next video entry for the Roku boxes.

This puts the box on par with AppleTV in offerings. Well, actually a little beyond AppleTV, with Netflix streaming. Add Hulu and Roku is a video killer.

Two stories of interest this week.

The first story is about the FCC's decision to open the so called "white space" spectrum, to allow for new wireless services. This is good news for those hoping for more competition in the broadband market, and has been long anticipated by companies such as Google, Dell, and other companies. The decision wasn't without caveats. For instance, since wireless mics use the same spectrum, in larger cities, white space broadcast services cannot be located near stadiums or theaters.

This is about the only positive glimmer of news to those of us who also heard this week that AT&T is now testing broadband caps in the Reno, Nevada market. Broadband caps which will, most likely, be rolled out to the rest of the country early next year.

The caps are aggressive, too. For instance, Comcast set its cap at 250GB, but AT&T is looking at only 20GB for its lowest subscriber plan, and 80GB for its highest vanilla DSL account. You only get the 150GB cap the company mentions most frequently in the press releases, bundled in with the company's Uverse services.

How will this impact on services such as Netflix's WatchNow, which has also been so much in the news, recently? Especially with the new Netflix WatchNow HD offerings on XBox 360 and Tivo?