Digital TV test shows the FCC will need more phones*

Although Monday's apparently successful test of the digital TV conversion in Wilmington, N.C., still must be fully analyzed, new data released today indicates one thing: Federal officials are going to get a whole bunch of calls from confused viewers when the rest of the nation makes the switch in February.

The Federal Communications Commission said that 797 Wilmington residents called a special government helpline on Monday after the region's five commercial TV stations permanently turned off their analog signals at noon EDT and began broadcasting only in digital. On Tuesday, the number of calls dropped to 424.

The FCC noted that those first-day calls represented "less than one-half of 1%" of the region's 180,000 TV-viewing households. And combining the second day calls, the figure is still well under 1%.

But translate that to the rest of the country, which has 112.8 million TV-viewing households, and even a call volume of 0.5% would produce approximately 564,000 calls. In the Los Angeles market alone, that would be about 28,000 calls.

And if you figure that many of those calls in Wilmington probably came from people who depend on antennas to watch TV, the national impact could be much higher. About 8% of Wilmington viewers rely on antennas, compared with 12% nationwide. That's 50% more over-the-air-only viewers, which could boost the number of calls from across the country.

The FCC brought in extra staff to answer calls from Wilmington, but a spokesman could not provide an exact number today. Based on the calls, the FCC determined that most viewers ...

...were aware the switch was taking place -- only 23 callers said they hadn't known it was happening or hadn't known the date of the conversion.

"The results of the digital television switch in Wilmington shows that the collective efforts of the commission, the community and industry to inform viewers of the early transition in this local market were effective,  FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said in a news release today. (Download a PDF with the call data here.)

Most of the first-day calls related to technical problems: 232 people were unable to locate the new digital signals of certain stations; 178 callers had difficulties with their antenna or weak signals and 161 had trouble getting a digital-to-analog converter box working (meaning they'd see the message on analog TVs like the one pictured above.)

Wilmington firefighters and other organizations helped people, particularly the elderly, with converter box problems on Monday. The FCC is hoping to duplicate those efforts when the rest of the country makes the government-mandated shift at the end of the day on Feb. 17.

But given that the FCC devoted significant resources to raise awareness in Wilmington before the test, it might need an army of volunteers to go with all those people answering phone calls.

-- Jim Puzzanghera

Photo: An analog-only television set displays the message that began broadcasting at noon Monday after Wilmington stations switched to digital-only signals. Credit: Logan Wallace / Associated Press

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*UPDATED 6:01 P.M.: FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said in an interview that the percentage of calls in Wilmington, while low, shows the challenges ahead when the nation makes the change in February.

"If you extrapolate, that's still a lot of people who could end up having problems," he said. Martin noted that the FCC added about 30 to 35 people to its call center for the Wilmington test, and it's seeking an additional $20 million from Congress for digital transition-related efforts in part to pay for more people to answer the phones after the nationwide switch. 

Comments

[antennaguy]

Coverter Boxes, Off-Air Reception and Digital Antennas

Some Off-Air viewers who buy a converter box have problems receiving the same stations digitally with the box installed as they did without it or get no broadcast stations at all (with converter boxes that don’t pass analogue signals). Excluding the possibility that they have a defective converter box or have installed it incorrectly, there are many more likely reasons why this happens:

1. They have an old antenna that has corroded over the years
2. They have the wrong antenna (VHF only) for UHF reception where most of the digital broadcast signals are and will be located
3. They may have received an acceptable analogue picture for years, but a) the broadcast station analogue signal was not that powerful in the first place (signal power or distance) producing a little snow) and/or b) the old antenna is not powerful enough to receive and send a strong digital signal to the digital tuner in the converter box. Unlike analogue, no strong signal, no picture, just a blue screen
4. Many of the TV antenna designs now in use and on the market today such as the Yagi and rabbit ears have technology roots going back 30 years or more and may not work well with the digital chip sets in converter boxes.
5. The analogue signal passed through trees, but the digital signal passing through tress, especially through pine trees, will not be strong enough to be decoded by the digital tuner.
6. Their antenna is aimed at the old analogue tower location and the digital towers have been relocated or it was aimed wrong all these years, but received a marginal analogue picture.
7. The digital stations may be broadcasting in low power until the transition.
8. If you live less than 5 miles from the station, you might need an attenuator to reduce the signal strength and prevent overloading the tuner.
9. They may be dealing with multi-path. Multi-path (bounced signals) is caused by buildings, hills and any other hard object in the line-of-sight to the broadcast towers. They cause signals to reach the antenna out of phase, confusing the ATSC (Digital) chip set in the converter box (or digital TV set tuners.
10. They may have not performed the correct search procedure on their TV to find the digital stations. Many stations have changed channels, mostly to UHF (14-69)
11. The old incoming cable and/or connectors may be bad. These do not last forever.

There are many converter boxes on the market, with more coming. As with any new technology, their quality, efficiency and price vary considerably. So the selection of a converter box will be an important variable to desired digital reception.

For those viewers who have not yet purchased a converter box, Consumer Reports has just upgraded their ratings on some of the available converter boxes at: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2008/08/ratings-of-dtv.html

As for those viewers who wish to continue to view low power analogue broadcasts also, as far as I know right now, the $40 coupons can be used on 16 brands of converter boxes with the "analog pass-through" feature: APEX DT250, Apex DT500, CASTi CAX-02, DIGITAL STREAM DSP7700T, DIGITAL STREAM DTX9950, DIGITAL STREAM DX8700, DISH Network DTVPal, Jiuzhou DTT9001, Magnavox TB-100MG9, Microprose MPI-500, Philco TB100HH9, Philco TB150HH9, RCA DTA800B1, Skardin DTR-0727L, TATUNG TDB3001 and Venturer STB7766G1. There are probably more.

But there's an even more important variable - TV reception starts with the right antenna.

Viewers should certainly try their old antenna first. It’s true that any of these older antennas will pick up some signals, maybe all the broadcast signals a viewer wants to receive, depending on their location. If they’re getting all the OTA channels they want and almost completely uncompressed DTV and HDTV, unlike cable or satellite, than they’re good to go.

While it’s correct that antennas can’t tell the difference between analog and digital signals, there are definitely certain models which have higher DTV batting averages than others. Not all antennas are equally suited for DTV. A percentage of viewers will require something a little more tailored for DTV reception.

While cable and satellite program providers will continue to serve the great majority of homes as the primary signal source, missing HD local reception, compression issues, higher costs, billing add-ons, service outages, contact difficulties, in-home service waits and no shows have left many of these subscribers looking to OTA antennas as a good, alternative.

With one of the newer and smaller OTA antennas, with greatly improved performance, power and aesthetics, viewers may also be able to receive out-of-town channels, carrying blacked out sports programs, several additional sub-channels or network broadcasts not originally available with analogue. And for those with an HDTV, almost completely uncompressed HD broadcasts.

OTA viewers can go to antennapoint.com to see quickly what stations are available to them, the distance, UHF or VHF and compose heading to help in choosing and aiming their antenna. And if they decide to buy a newer antenna, they should buy it from a source that will completely refund their purchase price, no questions asked, if it doesn’t do the job for them.

[Derrick G]

Your report fails to mention that the largest number of calls, 232, were because people couldn't get NBC affiliate WECT. Presumably, most were in the Florence/Myrtle Beach, SC, viewing area and weren't aware a new station, WMBF, is now serving that area. WECT has a much smaller digital broadcast area than it did analog because WMBF's digital area covers a large area of what WECT's analog area did (WMBF went on air as digital only). That won't be a problem on a nationwide-basis.

[Somewhat informed tech]

AS I have recently emailed every station in my area:
I have a fairly new VHF/UHF antenna
in our areas these are the analog channels you can receive:
2 5 7 8 10 12 17 22 32 49 and marginally 20 24 (religious) 54 (Spanish)

I am behind a hill, that is a hill is between me and the broadcast antennas.
Back scatter means all analog stations are received with a reasonable signal strength except as listed above. now digital:

We receive one station without pixels. ONE
marginally (meaning it runs a good 5 seconds before going pixel then dropping) we get 22-1 -cartoons and really dumb cartoons too.
All Digitals Channels we can receive with pixels and crap are
8-1 8-2 10-1 10-2 22-1 22-2 and 24 1 through 7 (all religious)
as 8-2 is the weather and comes in long enough to see today's high temp, the TV works acceptable to me, and as I miss all yes ALL the commercials it is a boon to my life style. I am getting in far more reading. Thank you FCC and Congress for removing television from my life. it helps.

[Paul in San Francisco]

I keep reading that a "better" antenna might help: "certain models which have higher DTV batting averages than others." But I cannot locate any source that has published ratings of antennas. It is preposterous to expect me to keep buying one after another until I chance upon a "better" antenna. Indoor is necessary. Any suggestions?

[Unhappy in Indiana]

I currently have a roof top antenna coax and amplifier and live around 20 miles away from my local stations. I am only able to pick up two out of the five stations and only in the evening. During the day they freeze and show black squares. With my set up I am able to currently pick up signals at my home over 100 miles away. Now I cannot pick up a station 20 miles away. The FCC has got the Coal Mine and We got the SHAFT! I feel we have been lied to and this is a ploy to force cable and satellite on us. I feel like the time I watch television they are a rip off. A local television engineer told me that their band width has been sold to cell phone companies. Personally I do not want to watch television on a cell phone. As far as I am concerned a cell phone should only be a phone.