The 2009 Digital TV Transition: Flirting With Disaster

If you don’t understand the DTV transition set for February 17, 2009, don’t be too alarmed. I don’t understand much of it either, but what I’m finding out as the Day the Television Dies approaches is that the cable television industry isn’t telling the whole truth on what’s about to happen to your cable service.

The industry is telling you “not to worry—if you have cable television, you’ll be fine.” As it turns out, that’s not entirely the case. A more honest statement would be that if you have cable, and a digital converter box that is HD/DTV ready, you haven’t much to worry about.

If you’re like me, and have a direct-to-TV connection, and that TV is not Digital Cable Ready, be prepared to kiss your ESPN, Comedy Central and cable news buh-bye, unless you’re willing to pay to get a converter box or CableCard (for most Digital Ready TV’s).

Think I’m joking? Call your local cable provider—you know who they are; they’re the only cable provider in your municipality—and ask them.

Better yet, read what MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan wrote in July on the subject here.

The bottom line, here, is if you have a direct coaxial connection to your TV? Your cable’s going down. And more importantly, not necessarily on 2/17/09; it could be any day now. As a matter of fact, if you live in Wilmington, North Carolina, it’s coming at high noon, on Monday.  No, Tropical Storm Hanna didn’t knock your cable service out–Time Warner did, and on purpose.

That’s right; any day now, you will turn on your set, and you will see nothing but snow. And you’ll be on your way to the phone, calling BigCableCo to ask if the cable has gone out, and they will tell you that you need a box, because they’ve gone to full digital. You, and a million others on that system will overload customer service centers, be on hold for hours, and be told that you’d either have to come on down and pick up a digital box—which will bump up your bill by at least $5 (oh, and did I mention you will have to upgrade to digital service tier by default?)—or have said box delivered to your house in the dreaded four-hour appointment  time frame.

If you think calling the FCC to complain is an option, save it; they’ve already made their verdict on the matter:

“However, if you subscribe to cable service, the DTV transition should not affect any TV sets that are connected to your cable service. The DTV transition applies only to full-power broadcast television stations – stations that use the public airwaves to transmit their programming for free to viewers through a broadcast antenna. Cable companies are not required to switch their privately-owned systems from analog service to digital service. In fact, if your cable company offers any analog service, it is required to provide you with your local broadcast stations in analog so that you can watch them on an analog TV without a cable set-top box.

Some cable companies have decided to switch to digital service. This is a business decision made by the cable companies and is not required by the federal government. Your cable company may decide to move certain cable channels off of its analog service tier and onto a digital service tier, or it may decide to switch to all-digital service at once, so that there is no analog service tier for any subscribers. If your cable company decides to move some or all of the channels it provides onto a digital service tier, it may notify you that you need to get “digital cable” equipment to continue receiving that cable service. This may include renting or purchasing a digital cable set-top box or purchasing a digital cable ready TV equipped with a “CableCARD” slot. This digital cable equipment is different from the digital-to-analog converter boxes discussed above, and digital cable equipment is not eligible for the $40 coupons. If you have a digital TV, you may be able to view broadcast stations through your cable system without additional equipment. You should ask your cable company about the equipment options that may be available to you, including any options to purchase equipment from a retailer if you do not wish to rent equipment from your cable company. –Statement from the Federal Communications Commission, “DTV Transition Does Not Require Cable Systems to Switch to Digital”

Note that the qualifier in that statement is that “as long as the Cable companies offer any analog service…” which then leads into, “…but if they decide to go all-digital tomorrow, that’s their call.”

So, you’re SOL if you don’t have a converter box or CableCard to hook up to, and even though the transition date has been given in February of 2009, it is merely a deadline—doesn’t mean that service will last that long. In fact, I predict that 95% of the cable bandwidth will have gone digital before that date, and most of the transition (or analog shutdown) in most of the major markets in the U.S. will happen within a week of the conclusion of the Super Bowl.

Further, this idea that you can merely walk into a Circuit City and purchase equipment to convert cable is a crock; the cable companies invest millions of dollars in trying to keep control of those converters.  Basically, the FCC is telling you what the Cable company is telling you; walk into the store, look for CableCo’s kiosk, and buy (lease) the equipment there.

You’ve been warned.