Digital TV

Are you ready for the switch to digital TV (DTV). Most people by now realize that the federal government has mandated that all television broadcasts be converted to digital signals instead of analog by February 17, 2009. Among the reasons given are clearer pictures, more programming options, and more frequency available to emergency responders. However, probably the largest reason is that the federal government was then able to sell the frequency spectrum that will be made available due to digital signals requiring less bandwidth then the analog version.

However, I did witness the advantages of DTV this weekend. I was at my sister's house on Saturday for a family birthday party. There were a number of football games and my sister is one of the people around that still use rabbit ears (you don't need a DTV converter box if you have cable or satellite TV). The game that I was most interested in (GT vs. VT) was fairly fuzzy due to poor reception on channel 4. I was talking to my brother-in-law and I realized that he had already purchased two digital converter boxes using the government coupons which are available plus an additional $15. However, my brother-in-law thought that you could not use the converter boxes until next February. I explained to him that was the mandatory date, but all of the local stations are already broadcasting digital signals. In a matter of minutes we had the digital converter box hooked up and we were able to watch a crystal clear TV signal on all channels. As a matter of fact, they had more channels then before thanks to some of the broadcasters which are using multiple channels now (i.e. ETV/PBS is broadcasting 3 different channels all with different programming).

I recently read this review from CNet of the available DTV converter boxes available. They have some definite recommendations, but of the top few that I clicked on, none appeared to be available from online retailers yet.