June 10th, 2009 
joel There is a lot to like about the digital television transition: free high definition pictures right to your home, multiple content streams which look better than “old TV” even in standard def, companies making major investments in our community and local economy, ease of use…I could go on.
But in reading Jim Martin’s front page story in yesterday’s Erie Times-News, I felt a twinge of sadness that somehow in this bigger and better conversion, we’ve lost something. Perhaps it was said before when music went digital 25 years ago, but there is a down side to that perfect picture or sound.
The nature of digital broadcasting is that it’s either on, or off. So if during a big storm you are watching on your rooftop antenna-connected 52″ HDTV flat screen the supercell coming your way, and Joey, Rob or Tom says to go to your basement, there’s no little 7″ B&W Radio Shack TV to continue watching while the storm passes. And if you are fortunate to have one of these cool DTV portables, there’s a strong probability that the rabbit ears attached won’t pull in your favorite (or any) meteorologist:
But take the crisis out of it. Don’t you know of folks, senior citizens particularly, who enjoy watching the Saturday afternoon baseball game on Fox or some NASCAR on their deck or in their garage during the summer on some old portable?
Again, I’m wondering that with WICU’s analog signoff Tuesday morning, if we just haven’t disenfranchised a good portion of people, or at minimum just made life more difficult for folks that don’t deserve it.
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It’s not just the folks watching baseball in their garage. How about the people that work for the Erie Parking Authority that are stuck in those tiny ticket payment booths? Many of them had little portable TV’s to help pass the time. And I’m sure that there sre others in similar situations.
I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we have better portable digital TV’s…but that doesn’t help things now.
Making life difficult for people is what America is all about these days.
They’ve lost viewers. We hardly watch TV at all anymore.
I can see what you mean – in all of my decades of watching tv i have had the pleasure of many lil portables that often could only pull in one or two channels (I can remember, with great fondness, a lit thing with a screen all of maybe 6 or 7 inches that could only bring in WICU – spending many a sunday afternoon in the fall watching two football games on two seperate channels in the kitchen).
Right now i am reading a book called “The Greatest Ballpark Ever” and it talks about how when baseball was first broadcast on TV people would gather around TVS in store windows to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers play. Growing up my parents used to tell me similar stories – its amazing to me that TV actually used to be the centerpiece of community making now seems to be t he centerpiece (or a co centerpiece with the internet) of isolation.
Of course at this point i would just be happy for WICU to come in clearly on one of the two channels its supposed to come in on.
It’s our nature as humans to be afraid of change, it’s true. The one thing that stayed constant in every persons life since the first TV broadcast has changed and everybody is fearful of where it will take us. This digital transition is one of the best things to happen to TV since HD. It give us better sound, better quality, more channels and even free HD channels (that sounded like the commercial). Now yes, there is a dependency on the over-the-air TV stations to provide a good, strong signal to its viewers. Not to mention actually broadcasting in full-power DT. Some stations, while they say they’re broadcasting in digital, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re full power. To run the transmitters at the hundreds of thousands of watts is expensive. And unfortunately for Erie, we have a cheap station owner, aka Brian Lilly. The Nexstar stations in Erie, WJET-DT and WFXP-DT are in full power as well as WQLN-DT. On June 12, all TV stations must be in digital. However, I have yet to hear when they have to be operating in full power DT.
People keep looking at this as being horrible and just a bad move for the broadcast industry. But it’s not, it’s a great move! Technology is evolving, TV has to keep up with it. Think back, way back to when the internet first made its appearance in homes across America. Remember dial-up connections? Remember paying for a 100 hours of internet a month through AOL? Now remember when broadband came on to the scene and offered all of these great enhancements like faster speed, better reliability and an always on connection? And remember how people didn’t want it and how upset they were when they had to get extra hardware just to use it? The DTV conversion is the same scenario. It will give us such an improved product and enhance our viewing experience. Yes there will be some bumps in the road for stations to fine tune there signals. The same thing happened to broadband internet. But now, who wants to go back to dial-up? Who wants to sit and wait 10-20 minutes for a song to download when now all it takes are seconds?
The transition of analog to digital TV is following the same acceptance pattern as dial-up internet to broadband. DTV will get better as time goes by. How long will that take? Could be six months, could be a year. It’s dependent on the stations.
But remember the reason why the switch is happening in the first place. On September 11, 2001, emergency personal could not communicate effectively with radios because there simply wasn’t enough space on the spectrum they were using. Fire, EMS, police could not talk to another company or precinct because there equipment wasn’t compatible and there wasn’t enough space in the airways. Only so many people and devices can be on one alloted frequency. Opening up the analog TV spectrum to emergency personnel can allow them the ability to communicate effectively. Plus, opening up that spectrum will also allow for more advanced forms of communication as well as wireless data transmission.
The DTV switch is great. You just need to give it time to accept it. Don’t put it off so quickly.
Remember the good old days before the polio vaccine too. Granted the up side on that one was pretty amazing but still I bet a lot of Iron Lung repair men were pretty upset. I am actually opposed to the digital change over because of the fact that it is mandated by the government. The airways are ‘owned’ by the people and stations used them for free ( which I approve of) but Congress sees that those airways have value and so they sold them because they like spending other peoples money.
I know that this thread isn’t about Congress but I couldn’t help myself. I got a small 37″ HD Tv for Christmas and get HD off Dish and I love it. I have a great surround system too all I need is a Blu ray player and I’ll never be productive again!