Got my DTV converter boxes today

[nisiprius]

I ordered my "coupons" from 1-888-DTV-2009--you can also get them now atwww.dtv2007.gov--on January 1st.(Yes, they were taking orders on the holiday). The coupons were promised for "February." By February 20th I was getting impatient, called, and was told that they "were going out tomorrow." In point of fact I received mine yesterday, so they kept their "February" promise, if only by virtue of its being a leap year.

Rather to my surprise, the local Wal*Mart had them stacked up in the electronics department, priced at $49.95. They had a little trouble processing the "coupons," which are actually plastic cards like credit cards or gift cards, with a magnetic stripe and holograms and stuff, but they got it straightened out. Brought it home, plugged it in, works fine.

I used to have mediocre reception, now I have perfect reception. I get every station I get on analog, maybe one more, and a couple of them have subchannels, so overall it's pure gain.

Only annoyance is that the box, a Magnavox TB100MW9, is slow "flipping." There's perhaps a second's pause while it says it is "scanning."

Been wanting these for years now... I belong to the generation that prefers wired telephones and wireless television.

I don't know how many analog broadcast TV users are aware of the transition. I had thought it was being grotesquely mismanaged. All I can say is, if you know about it, the coupon and retailer programmers seem to be working smoothly, and I was pleasantly surprised at the retail price. I don't think $12 (with taxes, after coupon) is much of a burden.

P. S. I think people have underestimated the demand. The clerk at Wal*Mart who helping me said she'd sent for her coupons, too. I said "Really? I thought almost nobody but me still had analog TV." She says, "Well, of course, we have cable... but we have two TVs in our house that aren't on the cable." Hmmmm...

[tibbitts]

I'm confused. Do I need this box:

1. To convert analog cable (I'm told analog cable will remain available, indefinitely) to a digital TV? If your new TV lacks an analog tuner, how will it receive analog cable?

2. Only to receive the new over-the-air broadcast signals?

Paul

[rpike]

1. To convert analog cable (I'm told analog cable will remain available, indefinitely) to a digital TV? If your new TV lacks an analog tuner, how will it receive analog cable?

2. Only to receive the new over-the-air broadcast signals?

These boxes are only needed to convert digital over-the-air broadcast signals for older TVs without digital tuners.

Another Rick

[VictoriaF]

I just ordered one. It took about five minutes.

Thank you, nisiprius,

Victoria

[tfb]

Do you need digital antenna to work with this converter? If yes, where do you get that?

[Ken Schwartz]

Do you need digital antenna to work with this converter? If yes, where do you get that?

From http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html -

Will I need a special antenna to receive DTV over-the-air?

In general, dependable reception of over-the-air digital TV programming will require the same type of signal reception equipment that currently works to provide good quality reception of analog TV programming. If you need a roof-top antenna to receive analog TV broadcasts, the same antenna generally will work to receive digital TV broadcasts. You should not have to purchase new antennas that are marketed as “digital ready” or “HD ready.”

Best wishes,
Ken

[nisiprius]

DTV signals are more or less in the UHF range. I'm afraid I don't know the details. I'm just using a regular UHF antenna. I wasn't sure how well it would work, but it seems to work fine.

[nisiprius]

Do you need digital antenna to work with this converter? If yes, where do you get that?

Just found this site: www.antennaweb.org. The set of stations I'm getting by just plugging in the UHF antenna that's in my attic, not on a rotator, a setup which got watchable but not terrific analog reception, is pretty much the set of a dozen or so stations that they show as "yellow," which the predict as being easy-to-receive with a "small multidirectional antenna."

For what it's worth, the stations I can get with the converter includes every station I used to be able to get with analog and one or two more... plus a few of them have several subchannels, so I get at least four or five more program choices than before.

[tibbitts]

Sorry, I still don't get it. If there is a difference between analog and digital tuners, how will a digital-only TV receive analog cable signals?

Paul

[ted123]

Sorry, I still don't get it. If there is a difference between analog and digital tuners, how will a digital-only TV receive analog cable signals?

Paul

I'm not sure if there is such a thing as a "digital-only" tv. Some older HDTVs have no tuners at all--for digital or analog signals--and must rely on an external tuner (like a cable box) to select channels. AFAIK, the ones that have tuners can display both digital and analog signals. [edit: I don't know if this is because they have tuners complying with both standards or if the new standard includes the ability to receive signals compliant with the old standard.]

That said, analog signals are never high definition. (IIRC, analog hi-def was considered back in the 80s/early 90s, but digital was preferred for a number of reasons.) If you want high-definition, you need a digital signal either over-the-air or from your cable company. Your cable company will almost certainly require that you get a cable box to convert its digital signals.

If you have an analog set, but receive your signals from your cable company, the transition doesn't affect you because the cable company converts the digital broadcast to analog for you.

*I think all of this is true, but I might be mistaken about some details. I'm not sure if it answers your question.

[indexfundfan]

If you have an analog set, but receive your signals from your cable company, the transition doesn't affect you because the cable company converts the digital broadcast to analog for you.

I remember reading somewhere that cable companies are required to convert until 2012 (?) or so. After that, all bets are off if they will continue to do the conversion.

[indexfundfan]

Sorry, I still don't get it. If there is a difference between analog and digital tuners, how will a digital-only TV receive analog cable signals?

Paul

AFAIK, all TVs on the market currently have both analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC/QAM) tuners.

[preserve]

I remember reading somewhere that cable companies are required to convert until 2012 (?) or so. After that, all bets are off if they will continue to do the conversion.

I've been researching this a bit. I have yet to find anywhere, that there is any conversion law for cable.

The main reason for the Over-the-air conversion law is so that the government can collect more revenue through the auctioning of the broadcast rights.

[indexfundfan]

I remember reading somewhere that cable companies are required to convert until 2012 (?) or so. After that, all bets are off if they will continue to do the conversion.

I've been researching this a bit. I have yet to find anywhere, that there is any conversion law for cable.

The main reason for the Over-the-air conversion law is so that the government can collect more revenue through the auctioning of the broadcast rights.

OK, I found one link:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... -2012.html

cable operators will have two choices come February 2009. They can either convert the digital SD signal to analog SD and pipe it across their lines (which means using more bandwidth and carrying three versions of a single channel) or they can offer digital SD only and roll out converter boxes to all their subscribers (which could be expensive).

Either way, cable companies need to support analog TVs until 2012. Without this ruling, I believe cable companies would have cut off the analog transmissions to save on bandwidth as well.

[nisiprius]

[Either way, cable companies need to support analog TVs until 2012. Without this ruling, I believe cable companies would have cut off the analog transmissions to save on bandwidth as well.

Wild speculation here. I suspect that getting people to take analog TV sets out of service will be hard. It will be easy to sell new digital TVs, so the percentage of analog sets will decline, but that's not the same as actually getting them out of service.

It's too bad that they figured out all that solid-state circuitry back in the seventies that keeps the picture bright and color-balanced even as the tube ages. Analog sets are practically immortal, and expensive to dispose of. That doesn't bode well for convincing people to get rid of them.

On the other hand, the chips to do the DTV-to-analog conversion are probably not very expensive. They can retail-price a converter box with a box and a power supply and three kinds of analog output (S-video, composite, RF-modulated) and a cable and a remote and batteries for the remote at $49.95. So what does it cost to design in a converter chip, modulator, and jack to a cable box that already HAS the power supply and the remote and so forth? I'm guessing $5, if that.

If cable companies want to discontinue analog service, my suspicion is that they will probably find it attractive to replace cable boxes with new ones that accept digital signals from the cable, but offer down-converted NTSC, RF-modulated on channel 3 or 4, at a jack on the rear panel along with everything else.

It makes it easy for everyone. The cable guy bringing the new box knows that he'll be in and out of there in fifteen minutes no matter what. The time he won't have to spend dealing with fixed-income Grandmas crying or throwing hissy-fits when he says she needs a new TV would more than offset the extra cost of building analog conversion into the digital cable box. Grandma will like the nice man who gave her a brand-new cable box for free, instead of running screaming to her son-in-law who's on the Toonerville Cable Committee.

[ted123]

On the other hand, the chips to do the DTV-to-analog conversion are probably not very expensive. They can retail-price a converter box with a box and a power supply and three kinds of analog output (S-video, composite, RF-modulated) and a cable and a remote and batteries for the remote at $49.95. So what does it cost to design in a converter chip, modulator, and jack to a cable box that already HAS the power supply and the remote and so forth? I'm guessing $5, if that.

If cable companies want to discontinue analog service, my suspicion is that they will probably find it attractive to replace cable boxes with new ones that accept digital signals from the cable, but offer down-converted NTSC, RF-modulated on channel 3 or 4, at a jack on the rear panel along with everything else.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but cable companies have been deploying digital set top boxes for use with analog TVs for quite a while, for reasons unrelated to the broadcast transition.

For anything other than standard tier cable service, the signals are usually compressed digitally then decompressed at the cable box. This allows the cable company to offer 200+ channels instead of 60.

And some companies, like Verizon FIOS, already offer 100 percent digital service. Only the very basic tier --the local broadcast channels plus government access -- are offered without set top boxes, as required by law. I believe Verizon accomplishes this basic tier function by putting the converter in the Network Interface Device, where the fiber network connects with the copper and coax in your home.

[preserve]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... -2012.html

cable operators will have two choices come February 2009. They can either convert the digital SD signal to analog SD and pipe it across their lines (which means using more bandwidth and carrying three versions of a single channel) or they can offer digital SD only and roll out converter boxes to all their subscribers (which could be expensive).

Either way, cable companies need to support analog TVs until 2012. Without this ruling, I believe cable companies would have cut off the analog transmissions to save on bandwidth as well.

Thank you for the article.