Switchover Scenarios: Tracking The DTV Transition

This May Be The Last Post

2009-09-17T11:39:00.005-04:00

I last posted here on July 30, promising an update on ongoing DTV reception problems "in the near future". So I'm a bit behind on that.

One reason I've been holding off is that I've been waiting for more follow-up stories. These have dried up dramatically in the last few weeks, at least as far as the news sources I've been following (Multichannel News, Broadcast & Cable, TV Week and a few others) are concerned. In fact, the last local newspaper story my sources pointed me to was dated August 17, and dealt with problems in New Jersey. As for the national situation, this August 18 article describes the FCC as continuing to work with two or three dozen stations (mostly rural) on reception issues, employing methods such as moving stations from VHF to UHF, boosting power and even moving from one VHF channel to another. What has been cleaned up in the month since I can't honestly say. You still see threads in AVS Forum's HDTV Technical forum regarding the problems individual posters are having - these are usually ascribed to something getting in the way of the signal or bad antenna placement, issues which are more important in DTV than analog, and which are sure to continue causing grief to OTA viewers going forward.

But whatever is still going on out there, it doesn't seem to be attracting much journalistic attention. For instance, the last update that I was aware of from Nielsen concerning DTV stragglers (those who had not yet converted) was on July 29th (98.9% adoption rate at that time). The September 4 follow-up - which updates that percentage to 99.4% - wasn't reported on (I just found it a couple of minutes ago). Of course, with those kinds of numbers, that pretty much is the end of that story.

Which means I really don't have much to report on these days. I will keep looking, and if I find a story that provides a significant update (or an interesting piece of analysis dealing with how DTV has changed TV viewing), I'll post it here - but I have no idea how often (or even if) that will happen. If you know of ongoing problems or other developments in your area, please leave a comment on this post.

I do intend to keep this site up as a historical record. For almost three years (starting in March 2006) I produced a monthly update showing how this story evolved over time, and it may be of some interest to researchers. For most of that time, those monthly updates also chronicled the rise of HDTV, so that material may of some interest as well. Other than that (and the possible occasional post as I mentioned above), my work is done here.

Thanks for dropping by, it's been fun!

One More Milestone

2009-07-30T13:25:00.002-04:00

With the Nielsen people saying that DTV-unready homes are down to 1.1% of the total, we have now cut the number in half from the one that was reported two days after the transition.

However, that remaining 1.1% is about to lose out on one important transition tool - the converter box coupon ends tomorrow, (7/31/09 at midnight) so if anyone has been holding off, now's the time to make the application.

Of course, if you've been living without broadcast TV for more than a month already (and with the analog "nightlights" having gone out weeks ago) perhaps you've discovered that you just don't need it.

This leaves reception problems as the largest remaining issue. I'll update that situation in the near future.

The Unfinished Work of the DTV Transition

2009-06-28T17:37:00.003-04:00

If you go by the mass media, the story of the DTV transition has been told. I'll be surprised if I see another story on its aftermath on network news. Perhaps there'll be a small bit in the Business/Tech section of the newspaper (by and large, the story never graduated from there to the front page).

And yet there is still work to be done.

The two most obvious areas involve hooking up the stragglers and restoring lost reception. The stragglers issue will probably resolve itself fairly soon. Already we have gone from 2.5 million non-DTV households on June 14 to 2.1million on June 21, a gain of 400,000 households in a week. Luckily for the remainder, coupons are still available until July 31.

Loss of reception may take somewhat longer, even though we had plenty of advance warning from the experience of all those stations that transitioned between Feb 17 and June 12.

From everything I've read, it is clear that there is one major source of reception problems - stations going back to VHF from their original DTV assignments in the UHF spectrum. On the surface, this was an attractive idea for stations - VHF signals take a lot less power (thus, a lot less money) to go the same distance as UHF - but they are also far more subject to interference.

This has been causing unhappiness all over the place - just check out the comments attached to this TVNewsday story. "All over the place" definitely includes my place (the Boston area), as shown by the problems afflicting WHDH, our NBC affiliate. In this case, the station has actually had to reactivate their UHF signal and simulcast it with the VHF.

Elsewhere, the situation in Chigago and Philadelphia was bad enough for the FCC to send staffers to look at "all available options" to resolve things. I'm not sure what all those options are, but one thing that was done in Philly was to allow station WPVI to boost power to the maximum (30.6 kW) allowed in that region. How effective power boosts will be nationwide remains to be seen. If that doesn't fix it, what will? Perhaps more translators?The FCC does report some success with its recommended technique of double re-scanning (where you clear out the box by unplugging the antenna, re-scanning, unplugging the box itself, re-connting everything and then doing a second re-scan). This part of the story is not nearly over.

There are other issues as well. A small number of stations are actually not ready to transmit digitally and have gone dark (most are owned by one company in bankruptcy). The original Broadcasting & Cable article listed 35 stations, but four stations were later cut from the list. The FCC says it expects the stations not in bankruptcy to return to the air by the end of this year.

Challenges for some bring opportunities to others. In this case, the problems facing stations in getting their over-the-signal out to their usual OTA audience is creating an opportunity for cable, as a recent survey shows that 5% of US television households have already switched because of the transition, a number we can expect to rise if the current problems are not addressed soon.

Then we have the issue of DTV and portable devices that have previously received analog transmissions (different from "mobile DTV" that's been designed from scratch for handheld devices) . While I am just now beginning to see ads for DTV-enabled portable TVs (there was a $99 set advertised in today's CVS flyer), the installed base of portable TVs (long popular amongst campers and tailgators) has a problem - you need a battery-operated box that is small enough not to negate the advantages of portability. And if you're a camper who has installed your TV in your RV, you have your own set of issues. Then there are even smaller devices - radios that receive the audio portion of TV broadcasts. To illustrate, here's a story from someone who thought he was completely prepared for the transition, only to find something missing the first time (after June 12) he took his clip-on radio with him while running.

It should also be remembered that there is, in fact, still some analog broadcasting left, namely the low power stations. These have small audiences that have just gotten smaller, what with many converter boxes not having analog pass-through circuitry and with cable (which doesn't have to carry LP stations) nibbling away at the OTA audience. Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps has just requested $1 million in part to prepare for these stations' transition (and the timetable for that is something I need to do more research on).

So, in fact, the story is not quite over yet, and there are still things to talk about. I don't have any regular publishing schedule in mind, but as significant events occur in the "wrapping up" of the above stories, I will come on from time to time to update their status. Thanks for reading!

News From All Over

2009-06-17T00:07:00.001-04:00

First, a couple of updates. The "truly huge number" I was expecting from the main FCC call center in fact turned out to be pretty big (317,450) but actually only about twice as big as the previous day's record (based on reports as of 2 PM, I had expected it to be three times as big or greater).

One thing I left off the "signoffs" post was the most impressive production of them all, yet not tied to any particular station. I'm talking about Univision's half-hour DTV countdown special from 11:30 to midnight from Times Square. This featured a Spanish-language countdown screen on the same building that counts down New Year's Eve, plus extensive reports on DTV mixed in with some of their regular news. I'm going to save this one in hopes that someday I'll know enough Spanish to translate it for myself.

As far as the rest of the news goes, rather than trying to weave a narrative around many overlapping accounts, I'm just going to give you a list of stories I haven't used yet from Friday and Saturday. Here it is:

A story on businesses that will benefit from the transition.

A report of the first NYC stations to go off the air Friday.

What happened when Raycom's 44 stations left the air.

Various Friday reactions, covered by the New York Times and Broadcasting & Cable.

FCC Reaction.

NAB comments about call volume to stations (as of 8 PM)

Saturday overviews from the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN and CNET.

A TVNEWSDAY editorial commending broadcasters and government on a job well done.

Another New York Times story covering the author's efforts to get better reception.

And that's how things went. My next post will deal with the unfinished work of the transition (restoring lost reception, et al) and talk about the kinds of stories I'll still be looking to tell here. That could be this weekend, but more likely sometime later.

Some Station Sign-Offs

2009-06-14T15:31:00.007-04:00

Here in Boston, everything just blinked out without fanfare, but thanks to the diligent posters at AVS Forum's Stories of the Digital Transition thread, I now have a nice little collection of station sign-off ceremonies to share with you. Here's the list:

Twin Cities Public Television Hosted by the first person seen on KTCA in St. Paul, Minn. back in 1957.

KCPQ 13 (Seattle, WA)

KSTW 11 (Seattle, WA)

WYFF 4 (Columbia, SC)

WCCB 18 (usually referred to as FOX Charlotte, Charlotte, NC) Features Paul Stanley from KISS flipping the switch!

WLTX 19 (Columbia, SC) Picture fades to an LP analog station's very fuzzy signal.

WTMJ 4 (Milwaukee, WI) Switch thrown by the second engineer hired back in 1947.

WITI, FOX 6 (Milwaukee, WI) Features the national anthem over a station-history montage.

WISN 12 (Milwaukee, WI) Features footage from previously-aired station-history documentary, plus an old test pattern.

WMVS 10/WMVT 26 (Milwaukee, WI) Features 1957 first-day signon, national anthem over scenic montage, old test pattern and comments by station manager.

KTLA 5 (Los Angeles, CA) Another station vet throws the switch. Reporter incorrectly states that TVs with converter boxes will receive HD!

In addition, you can find lots of videos (from Feb. 17 to now) by going to YouTube and searching on "analog shutdown".

My next post will be in the next few days and consist of another link list of stories generated since Friday. The one after that will deal with the problems some people are having (such as reception). After that? We'll see...

Just like Y2K???

2009-06-14T00:30:00.003-04:00

So America woke up to no analog (full-power analog, that is) this morning (it's still Saturday as I write this, although it will be past midnight when I post it) . How smoothly did that go? Well, of the three major network newscasts, only CBS even bothered to run a story about it today. Mostly it was about how people who had waited to the last minute to act were now rushing around buying boxes and such, although it also made a slight mention of reception problems and showed Americorps volunteers coming to the aid of a grateful senior citizen. ABC and NBC didn't even consider it worth their while.

Part of the CBS story had FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein saying that the transition had come out more like Y2K than the Bay of Pigs, and I've already seen "Y2K" linked to the transition in that they were both "non-events".

And there is one way in which that's true. In my programming days, I worked on a Y2K project (for a large insurance company), and lemme tell ya - the general public has absolutely no idea of the enormous amount of time and effort that went into making Y2K a non-event. That's what we got for succeeding - no one thinks we actually accomplished anything.

So I wouldn't be completely shocked if history remembers this the same way, and future generations wonder why we "wasted" so much money on coupon programs, PSAs and so forth. Trust me, if we hadn't they'd be wondering why we hadn't taken action.

Early Returns

2009-06-13T00:48:00.001-04:00

By the time I finish this post, the analog age will be over. But for now, I'll just deal with the information I have so far, and deal with the rest later.

In general, the terminations we've seen today seem to be going the way of earlier terminations - lots of calls, but mostly from people who need help with the process, not people who have been taken by surprise. As anyone familiar with human nature would guess, there've been plenty of procrastinators, with almost 320,000 coupon requests coming through on Thursday (that's a week or so without TV right there). Call volume to the FCC has been furious, with over 120,000 calls logged by 2 PM (the day before, there had been 37,187 calls by that time, but 149,206 for the whole day, which suggests a truly huge final number for Friday). In fact, they had to add another 1,200 operators after FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell tested the system and couldn't get through for 20 minutes.

But both at the FCC and at this No. Carolina call center, the calls were far more about rescanning, hookup problems and so forth. As stated above, a very small percentage of the callers were unaware of what was going on.

While I'm still curious to see what tomorrow brings (many stations waited until 11:59 to switch off), especially in Los Angeles with its 250,000 unprepared households, so far people appear to be taking this in stride.

More info tomorrow, including a special post collecting some sign-off ceremonies (although sadly none from Boston - I'm disappointed in us).

Today's The Day - Sources (and One Answer)

2009-06-12T09:41:00.005-04:00

Going through my visitor logs (biggest day yet, as you can imagine), I find the most common search query leading people here is "what time is this happening?". The simple answer is that it varies by station, and some have undoubtably happened already. From what I've seen, there should be a lot of turnoffs around lunchtime, dinnertime and finally at 11:59 tonight. There's been a certain amount of confusion as to what all the coverage referencing "midnight" referred to. It's the one that comes between Friday and Saturday, not Thursday and Friday.

There are two places I would keep checking today and over the next few days. One is the AVS Forum transition thread [now LOCKED, see update below] I mentioned in my last post. I expect that people will be contributing local reactions from all over the country there. Another is the AVS Forum "OTA" (for Over The Air) thread for your area (not all areas have one). Go to the thread index to have a look (if there's no "OTA" thread for your area, check the "HDTV" thread instead).

That's all for the moment!

UPDATE: The AVS transition thread mentioned above has been LOCKED. Two new threads have been started for news starting today - Stories of the DTV Transition for first-person accounts and A Day of Reckoning for general discussion. Check them out!

One Day Out - Final Preparations

2009-06-11T21:00:00.005-04:00

Tomorrow is the day when analog TV broadcasting ceases. During these last few days of the analog era, everyone involved has been making their final preparations. What have they been up to?

The FCC certainly has been busy fulfilling its oversight role in the process. They recently got an additional $10 million to fund their call center (the one that got 55,000 calls during the national soft test on May 21) at full strength (4,000 operators) beyond June 16 (on the grounds that it's better to be overprepared than underprepared). They also held a final status meeting on June 3. At that meeting, officials stated that were sufficient coupon funds and dealer inventory to satisfy consumer demand for converter boxes. Concerns were also raised, among them seasonal interference effects (acting chairman Michael Copps's own box started having problems after the leaves began showing up on the trees in springtime). There was also a plea for more stations to "nightlight" (use the analog signal for DTV education rather than simply switch off) for up to 30 days after tomorrow (here in the Boston DMA, the PBS, CBS and ABC affiliates will be nightlighting).

The FCC has also been issuing final instructions to TV stations, clarifying the conditions under which they can do their 6/12 shutdown before midnight, letting them know that they can choose between the "-TV" and "-DT" suffix for their channel name and reminding them of their responsibilities to assist viewers during the transition.

They've also partnered with vendors, stations, libraries and consumer groups to set up a large network of walk-in help centers (vendors will also be providing installation assistance). You can check what's available in your area by going here and doing a zip-code search. In addition, they've partnered with AmeriCorps (a national service program for people between the ages of 18 and 24) to provide assistance for groups such as low-income individuals, minority and rural communities and others.

Assistance is coming from other areas as well, such as Boston's Commision on Affairs of the Elderly (this Boston Globe article details a visit from one of the installers).

In my last post, I pointed out that one reason the June 12 date held was that no one in Congress would support a further delay. That doesn't mean that no one is worried, 'tho. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (the main architect of the original delay) is still urging the various parties to do more for the consumer, raising the issue of in-home assistance with the FCC, possible converter box shortages with the NTIA (National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the overseers of the coupon box program) and asking the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) to urge that at least one station in all 202 eligible markets to remain on in "nightlight" mode (that's twice as many as actually are doing so at the moment).

Speaking of broadcasters, they've been busy as well. The NAB held its own press conference today, and produced a figure of 1.75 million unready, much lower than Nielsen's final figure of 2.8 million (they did this by taking another survey's 2.2 million and deducting 440,000 households that were in the process of getting ready.

Broadcasters have also been informing their audiences over the air. I checked out today's late-afternoon newscasts to see how my local stations were doing. WBZ 4 had the best report, including mentions of possible reception problems and a list of local walk-in centers. They also were the only ones to mention their own shutoff time (12:30 PM). WCVB 5 also had a pretty good report. WHDH 7 had a shorter report, and if you relied on it you would think that the entire country was "switching to digital" at exactly midnight tomorrow (no mention that digital broadcasting exists today, or that other stations had transitioned months ago). I didn't see FOX 25's entire newscast, so perhaps I missed their story (I'll check their late news), or perhaps the fact that they themselves transitioned earlier makes this a less important story for them.

All of this activity, of course, is to deal with the remaining population of unready viewers. The final Neilsen numbers (2.8 million households, as mentioned above) include a breakdown of unreadiness by area, and you can see that the Los Angeles area clearly has the most, with over 250,000 (almost a tenth of the total). Perhaps that's why acting FCC chair Copps made a special visit there on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm proud to say that Boston/Manchester fares much better with 27,704 (1.15%), although the Centris study I've mentioned a number of times indicates that our reception problems may be worse than most.

There's one more player in this game, one that stands to benefit from issues such as poor reception - cable & satellite. For cable's part, Kyle McSlarrow of the NCTA (National Cable Television Association) assured a "rapid response" to any issues that arise concerning operators' coverage of digital broadcast signals (he also had some things to say about allegations that the cheap basic service they are offering to broadcast refugees was being used as a hook to upsell new customers on more-expensive services).

And that's how things look right now, with the beginning of The Day coming in less than three hours. Tomorrow and the days immediately after should be interesting! I'll be passing on what I see as often as I can.

(NOTE: Thanks again to the posters of the AVS Forum transition thread, who have uncovered a lot of great stuff, and the Boston/OTA thread as well.)

One Week Out - Making It Official

2009-06-05T20:56:00.003-04:00

If there was anyone left out there still harboring the hope (or illusion) that some mighty wail of anger and despair would rise up from the still unprepared and knock the transition off course again at the very last moment, those hopes have just been conclusively dashed by the President himself.

Speaking of making things official, the FCC has clarified the fact that while stations have to cease analog transmissions at midnight on the 12th, they don't have to wait until then - they can quit any time on the 12th, unless the new digital assignment interferes with an analog neighbor which has not left the air yet (in which case they have to wait until that station vacates).

According to this Broadcasting & Cable article, we'll be down to 447 analog stations by 6 PM next Friday. After midnight, 99 or so stations will run "nightlight" service (i.e. transition info only) for as long as 30 additional days. And then that will be it!

Why June 12 Has Held

2009-05-26T00:24:00.002-04:00

With the only reported reaction to the May 21st national soft test of unconverted stations having been a one-day spike in FCC hotline calls (between three and four times as many as on a usual day), it's pretty clear that there is just about zero chance of the analog shutdown being delayed past the current date of June 12. The inevitable confusion and anger over reception loss (which I think will be a bigger problem than any remaining lack of awareness) will just have to be lived through until technological fixes (signal repeaters, power boosts) come through and/or people make the necessary adjustments in their behavior (going cable/satellite, getting their shows online, investing in a better antenna, giving up TV altogether).

When the original delay happened, I read many comments (both in board posts and in the comment sections attached to articles) from people who were convinced that we would have the same situation to deal with now that we did back in February. But things did not work out that way, and here are some reasons why.

1) INCREASED READINESS - During the debate a few months ago over the original February-to-June delay, it was commonplace to hear people state that those who were not prepared after all this time would surely be just as unprepared on June 12. This struck me a strange argument at the time, seeing as how there were several million people on the waiting list for converter boxes at the time. These people had taken action, they were just a bit late. And in the last few months, the DTV-unreadiness figures being released on a regular basis by the Neilsen rating people have borne that out. As the waiting list has cleared out, the percentage of households deemed unready for the transition has dropped from February's 5+ million households to the May 13 figure of 3.3 million. However, as the figures in this Neilsen press release show, progress has slowed recently and we appear to be getting down to the true hard core of unreachables who may not be willing to do anything until they absolutely have to.

2) LACK OF POLITICAL WILL - Though there have never been any truly grass-roots organized protests against the transition, many in Congress have previously voiced concerns on their constituents' behalf, concerns which culminated in the February delay. However, that delay required bipartisan cooperation to pass the Senate, and the support of Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson was key. But Sen. Hutchinson made clear back in March that once was enough and that she would not be on board this time. Perhaps that's one reason why no one else in Congress (at least that I've read about) is willing to entertain an idea that would be fairly certain to go down in flames.

3) EARLY TERMINATIONS - One of the things that has helped lessen the fear of a total shutdown is the lack of any truly serious disruptions from the terminations we've already had, terminations which have already removed more than a third of American stations from the analog ranks. As I pointed out in my last post there have been a number of articles about large numbers of calls to various hotlines when stations transition, but little reporting about continuing problems in the weeks and months after. That's not to say that there aren't any, but apparently these don't rise to the level that would give serious pause to our lawmakers.

So it appears that we will find out soon if the large urban centers (which have been mostly spared in the early-termination process) will present larger problems than we've seen so far.

The Next Step

2009-05-14T00:05:00.004-04:00

This is just a quick post to take note of the next notable date in the transition - May 21, the date of the FCC's proposed national soft test of all unconverted stations. This story came out on May 5, and while it's important to note that this plan is entirely voluntary, as of two days ago the FCC and broadcasters appear to be working together on this. The plan appears to be for three five minute tests (7:30 AM, 12:30 PM and 6:30 PM). I've had my doubts about five-minute tests in the past, but if every station in town is running them at the same time, that should get some additional attention.

As previously noted, the last notable date was April 16, when 75 stations transitioned. I was only able to find this one story regarding that, in which the Denver Post reports that the FCC hotline got a lot more calls than anticipated (and leads with an example of reception problems). We've seen these kinds of stories before. What we don't see are the follow-up stories that tell us how things are going a month or two later (which would give us a better idea of how things will go on and after June 12).

So, can you fill in the gaps? Have you or anyone you know (friends, family, co-workers) lost your signal (caught by surprise or reception problems) in the ongoing transition? Was that situation resolved, and if so, how long did it take?

More Early Analog Terminations Thursday

2009-04-12T16:01:00.001-04:00

I still owe this blog my thoughts on whether the latest "hard" date for termination of analog broadcasting (June 12) is going to hold. That will be forthcoming sometime in the next few weeks.

For now, I'd like to point out that we're within days of another batch of early terminations. Actually, as this new FCC list shows, a small group of stations (I count 13) transitioned on March 30 and 31, followed another eight in the first week of April. The rest of the list shows the 137 stations (158 minus 21) that will be transitioning before June 12. Of these 137, 75 will transition on April 16 (this coming Thursday), the first day allowed under the latest FCC order related to the transition (the small group of stations that transitioned at the end of March and first week of April were noncommercial/educational stations that were granted an exception for financial distress reasons).

Looking at the whole list, you can see a strong tilt towards PBS, smaller networks such as ION and TBN (religious broadcaster Trinity Broadcasting Network) and independent stations. This is because the aforementioned FCC order specified that early terminators either had to not be Big Four affiliates or that after they terminated there would still be one Big Four affiliate available in analog in their market (these rules were behind their rejection of two early-termination requests). The FCC is also imposing stiffer consumer education requirements including the possibility of smaller reception areas or the need for a new antenna. Which is to say that April 16 should be pretty much of a non-event, reaction-wise.

Among the remaining 900+ stations that are waiting for June 12 to leave the air are the kind of stations the FCC does not want to leave the air yet - the Big Four stations in our largest markets. I continue to believe that we would have a better idea of what June 12 will bring (assuming that it is the real end date) if at least one of these markets (like Boston or Detroit or Chicago) went all-digital before then, but that's clearly not going to happen, so whatever the FCC thinks we're still not prepared for, we'll have to deal with it all at once.

421 Stations Transition, A Nation Yawns

2009-02-19T09:53:00.011-05:00

So far, so not all that bad.

Reports are coming in from all over, and most of them are fairly positive. Many of them deal with a bunch of locations at once, so let me pull out a few interesting pieces of data from these TV Newsday, Broadcasting & Cable, TV Week and NPR articles.

When it comes to large-scale turnoffs, we are not dealing for the most part with the biggest urban centers. We have Providence, but not Boston or New York. San Diego, but not Los Angeles. Scranton, but not Philadelphia. Overall, the FCC seems to want to give the biggest cities (which may have a larger concentration of poor and/or non-English-speaking residents) the most time to prepare. According to TV Newsday:

The most populous places where many or all major-network stations are cutting analog this week include San Diego and Santa Barbara, Calif.; La Crosse and Madison, Wis.; Rockford and Peoria, Ill.; Sioux City, Iowa; Waco, Texas; Macon, Ga.; Scranton, Pa.; Rhode Island and Vermont.

The news from San Diego sounds pretty good, according to both Broadcasting & Cable and this Los Angeles Times story, with a modest amount of calls, mostly from people who already had boxes and just needed technical advice (such as the need to rescan), although there were antenna-related calls as well. This also seems to have been the case in Pennsylvania, according to a quote in the B&C article from an official in the Pennsylvania Broadcasters Association. Similar statements were made by officials from the Michigan Association of Broadcasters, the Florida Association of Broadcasters (whose CEO made a Y2K reference), the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mark III Media (operating out of Caspar, Wyoming) and the National Association of Broadcasters. There were also articles taking encouragement from the experience of Springfield, IL, Fort Myers, FL and Nashville, TN

Nationally, the FCC hotline actually had fewer calls Wednesday than the day before.Again, the failure of consumers to understand the need to re-scan for new channels was an issue, causing the FCC to issue a consumer advisory on the subject.

It wasn't all roses, 'tho. President Michelle Vetterkind of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association reported that stations have been getting calls "in the hundreds", but characterized the callers as frustrated rather than angry. Call volume was particularly heavy in Providence, with one call center worker telling TV Newsday that he kept having to explain to callers that the transition was not just a scheme to extort money out of them. The biggest issue for callers appeared to be antennas.

Antennas were also an issue in Vermont, due to the hilly terrain (which I experienced from family visits growing up) causing difficulties in UHF reception (which is where several channels were moving to).

There was a certain amount of date-related confusion reported (although Lori Needham of the Rhode Island Broadcasters Association said that this was not a problem in Rhode Island). The mass media just barely managed to cover the June delay in the first place, the fact that hundreds of stations were going ahead anyway got much less coverage than that (of the network news shows I've been watching, I saw one mention lasting about five seconds). And I haven't seen any TV news stories on the Feb 17 moves. Overall, this remains a story for the Business/Tech section of the newspaper.

I also got the impression that converter-box sales have picked up dramatically in the affected areas.

BTW, if you're a cable/satellite viewer like me and wonder what it was like to see an analog station to sign off, here's a video of three signoffs (from The Orlando Sentinel via The New York Times).

P.S. Thanks to the commenters from the last post for their field reports. How are people in your town reacting to all this?

It's Feb. 18. Tell Your Analog Shutdown Stories Here.

2009-02-17T23:27:00.005-05:00

It's now Feb. 18 (despite what the date/time of the post says, that's when I started writing), what was supposed to be The Day After the digital TV transition, the first day of the post-analog era. That was until the DTV Delay Act pushed the transition back to June 12.

But in many TV markets, a fair number of stations are now gone, thanks to the early termination procedures set down by the FCC. According to the final FCC count released on the 16th, the number of stations that had dropped their regular analog programming before the 17th had risen to 220, supplemented by 421 yesterday, for a total of 641 (13 more than in my previous post).

Please note that many of the 421 aren't going completely blank, but will be continuing in "nightlight" mode (broadcasting local news plus DTV education videos) for a period ranging between a couple of weeks and a couple of months. This should ease the confusion of people who might otherwise conclude that their TV was broken.

What I would like to do is find out what the situation is in your area. How many stations have dropped analog altogether, how many are in "nightlight" mode and how many are unaffected so far? Has your local media run any stories on this? Do you know people who were caught off-guard (friends, family, co-workers)? Anyone you know (or you yourself) disappointed with your area's digital reception?

I plan to do a follow-up post sometime Thursday trying to summarize what's known at that time, and will reflect your input as best I can. See you then!

OK, So 190 Plus 491 Minus 123 Equals 558. Plus ???

2009-02-13T15:30:00.018-05:00

The count of stations that will be digital-only after midnight on Feb. 17 continues to change. After issuing their initial list of regulations for shutting analog on that date, they issued a master list of 1800 full-power stations, listing in red the 190 stations that are already digital-only and 491 new ones that were following the FCC's instructions (for a total of 681, or 37.8% of the total number full-power stations). However, the FCC also said that they could turn down some of those requests if public-interest considerations required it.

They have now done so, issuing a new list of stations that are being challenged, and which will have to submit to additional regulations (spelled out in their latest public notice),and declare their willingness to do so by 6 PM today (Friday, Feb. 13). The list focuses on those areas where all (or at least the Big Four) stations in a market are terminating. The conditions are fairly daunting (among other things, providing educational assistance including consumer "walk-in" centers), and my gut feeling is that the FCC is trying to ensure that at least one station per DMA stays in analog until June 12 (the notice specifies that at least one station per DMA must commit to providing two months of "nightlite" service including demonstrations of how to install boxes etc.). Until we know how many stations are willing to comply, the count of stations that will be all-digital as of Feb. 18 is now 558 (just about 31% of the total). Still enough to make Feb. 17 a significant "dress rehearsal" for the overall transition.

Monday is a holiday, so we may not have the final numbers until Tuesday (the 17th, yikes!)

UPDATE: SUN., FEB. 15 These aren't the final final figures, but pretty close. First of all, apparently there were only supposed to be 106 stations in the "challenged" list instead of the 123 originally listed (the differences attributed to unspecified technical considerations). The FCC's notice of Feb. 13 announced that 53 (exactly half) of those 106 stations had agreed to the FCC's conditions (see above) and could go ahead and cease analog transmissions on Feb. 17; they are listed here. Forty-three other stations decided to continue in analog, while ten others would like to keep to Feb. 17 but could not meet all the conditions; the FCC will decide what to do with them shortly. So leaving those 10 out for the moment, we get 491 minus 53 for a total of 438 stations terminating analog service on Feb 17, joining 190 already in digital-only status for a total (so far) of 628 all-digital stations on Feb. 18, or just over 34.8% of total U.S. full-power stations.

ADDL UPDATE/CORRECTION SUN., FEB. 15 At least some of these 438 will remain on the air as "nitelite" stations, broadcasting local news and transition info. An example (for Providence, RI) can be seen here.

What WILL Still Happen on Feb. 17?

2009-02-08T12:37:00.019-05:00

I was originally going to write something today about whether the recently passed DTV delay (to June 12) would be the final delay, or whether the same drama would play out a few weeks before that date as well. That will be coming, but needs some more thought. What interests me the most at the moment is the question of how much analog is still going to be around by then.

Officially, Feb. 17 no longer has the meaning it has had for the last few years, and given that that's the date on which U.S. auto makers are scheduled to report on their viability going forward, the transition might well have been a distinct also-ran in the news that night even if nothing had changed. But it still remains a landmark date for those paying attention, because many analog stations will still leave the air at that point.

Just how many will do so is the question. Early on, there was a lot of discussion as to how the date change affected the rules for early sign-off, but that was settled by the FCC on Thursday, Feb 5. Essentially, stations have until midnight this coming Monday (Feb 9) to let the FCC know if they would like to end broadcasting as originally scheduled on Feb 17 (previous declarations to this effect are no longer in force) and air at least 120 PSAs announcing the fact in those few remaining days. Beyond Feb 17, the early termination rules are based on the June 12 date, so that no stations can shut down between Feb 18 and March 13 due to the required notifications in advance of June 12. In addition, the FCC can deny requests if it feels that public safety is affected, as in cases where all stations in an area plan to shut down (and yes, they are looking at loss of all reception as a public safety problem). Another caveat is that stations shutting down on Feb 17 must remain on their temporary DTV assignment until June 12. The entire FCC ruling can be seen here.

So, how many stations will follow this procedure? I've seen a lot of announcements regarding this (from places like Eastern Iowa, West Virginia, Charlottsville, VA, Providence, RI and others. However, some of these may not have taken the new FCC rules into account, and the feeling I get from the AVS thread that is tracking all this is that there may be some backtracking going on, so don't regard any of the above announcements as being set in stone. We know for a fact that many stations will be sticking it out until June 12 (unless their transmitter fails or something). This includes those stations that are owned and operated by major networks (the Big Four plus Telemundo - I haven't seen anything regarding the CW), plus many stations owned by station groups such as Hearst-Argyle, Gannett and Meredith Broadcasting.

I suspect the number will still be pretty large. I'll put up a post on the morning of Feb. 18 which will be for the purpose of collecting reader reports as to what is happening in their area, and follow it late afternoon or early evening on Feb. 19 with a report on what we know at that point. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: WED. FEB 11 - Thanks to the anonymous commenter for posting the URL of the FCC's master list of 1800 full-power stations (including the 491 stations that plan to go all-digital on Feb. 17th, joining the 190 who already are for a total or 681, or just over 37% of the total number of full-power stations). The list is here (the now or soon to be all-digital stations are listed in red). One caveat; as this TV Newsday article mentions, the FCC may still deny some of these 491 if they find that to be in the public interest. It's an interesting list, with some large markets like Boston staying with June 12 (for the big stations), while nearby Providence will have very little analog left after Feb. 17.

House Passes DTV Delay - June 12th It Is

2009-02-04T16:44:00.005-05:00

Here's the story from TV Week.

Not much to say at this point. I'll post something regarding the chances for this to be the final delay sometime this weekend (probably Sunday). As stated previously, I don't know what my publication schedule is going forward just yet.

UPDATE: And here's Multichannel News' take.

All Aboard For June 12th [NOT SO FAST!!]

2009-01-27T00:42:00.006-05:00

Well, with the unanimous passage in the Senate of the DTV delay bill, it doesn't look as though much can get in its way once it's taken up by the House. The old countdown is just about dead.

I'll have more in the next few days on June 12th's chances for being the real,no fooling end to this process.

UPDATE (WED, 1/28): Well, I guess I shouldn't assume. The House has just defeated the attempt to pass the delay bill "on suspension" (an expedited process that requires a 2/3rds vote). The vote totals (258 for delay to 168 against) show that the bill would pass easily if it went through the usual (i.e. full debate, amendments, etc.) process. The question is, will delay proponents reintroduce the measure with time running out? I have already seen one local station that had dropped its crawl start it up again.

One Month (???) and Counting: Will We or Won't We?

2009-01-25T11:34:00.004-05:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than one month until the date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is scheduled to cease - but suddenly all of that is in doubt, with the "date certain" now anything but. This was supposed to be the 34th and last monthly recap of developments affecting the various players in this story (with more frequent updates leading up to The Day). However, 12 days ago I wrote a post describing how we got here (followed by one on the Hawai'i transition), so instead of trying to recap the whole last month I will just bring you up to speed on the various aspects of this story. Many of these links come courtesy of this AVS thread that has been tracking the evolving situation - my thanks to all the posters who put them up originally.

New voices were heard from on both sides of the delay debate. Current FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps joined the two former FCC Chairs in the pro-delay camp (though fellow Commissioner Robert McDowell still believes the date can be saved, but only if the FCC itself is better able to handle the avalanche of calls that will be coming in). And Verizon, once opposed to the switch, now has joined fellow telco AT&T in support provided the delay is only for a few months.

Those who want to keep the date as is include outgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin (who would prefer to just fix the coupon program) and wireless companies (who not only paid a collective $20 billion in the spectrum auction, but much besides with their investments in next-generation mobile broadband technology). Also, I speculated in my previous post about the probable concerns of local broadcasters (additional costs to continuing to run two transmitters, etc.) - here are two articles reflecting those concerns.

But who supports or opposes this idea may be irrelevant fairly soon, as legislation to implement it is moving ahead. After Sen. Jay Rockefeller's bill (which did nothing but move the date to June 12) failed to pass by unanimous consent due to Republican opposition, Rep. Henry Waxman's more comprehensive bill (which includes provisions for fixing the coupon program, mandating the FCC to come up with a plan allowing some use of the auctioned spectrum by its new owners and allowing analog stations to leave the air voluntarily) was put on hold, and it was even thought that they might opt to just keep the date as is. However, Sen. Rockefeller then managed to get Kay Bailey Hutchinson (the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee) to co-sponsor a new version that also strengthens the coupon program and allows for voluntary shutdown. In addition, it allows for the use of the spectrum allocated for public safety (in response to Sen. McCain's concerns on that matter). My guess is that if this passes next week it will reactivate the Waxman bill in the House.

So if these pass, it looks like what could come out of the conference committee is a bill that mandates some shutdowns (to clear pubic-safety spectrum and whatever the FCC orders for wireless broadband use) and allows other stations to leave the air voluntarily. What the eventual coupon provisions would be I can't say (Waxman's bill allows for an immediate backlog cleanout, but not Rockefeller's).

All in all, this sounds like a really messy business. The "underserved" communities that are the focus of concern for those advocating their interests will still lose a lot of stations and the rest of the public will still have to have all of this explained to them. Some stations who want to shut down will not be able to (or to go to full power) because of analog stations that are still using the spectrum designated for the first station's final assignment. And there's this as well - Sen. Rockefeller has left open the possibility of future delays based on a definition of "substantial progress" that may not take into account the fact that a certain percentage of the population simply will not change unless they absolutely have to (more on this point below).

So, given all the above is it still possible to save Feb. 17th? Though the next week or so may make the argument moot, let's look at the main objections cited by delay supporters.

First, the coupon program. This is the easy part, authorize some more funds and mandate First Class delivery so that even those who are caught off guard can get their converters within days, not weeks. In addition, the Obama team was widely known and praised for its tech-savviness, so the new administration might be able to quickly modify the coupon site to allow for a printable coupon (with the necessary unique identifying info). They might even be able to set up a simple site for retailers to log in and get e-coupon authorization at the point of sale. Who knows, that might even allow the retailers to be reimbursed more quickly than when submitting all those pieces of plastic (if that's how it works, I admit that I don't know the actual process here).

Secondly, reception difficulties with the converter boxes. This is a real problem, but I don't know how much better it can get by June 12. In addition, it was a revelation to me to learn that at least some of the problem is due to many stations' inability to get their digital signal to full power due to existing analog signals (maybe a commenter can explain the technical details here?), so that a full shutdown is in fact part of the solution to the reception problem. I certainly think it should be a post-shutdown priority to do as much as possible as quickly as possible to get those signals up to full power with as wide a coverage area as possible. In the meantime, I imagine that people will find it easier to muddle through with some stations than with none.

Lastly, the fact that members of certain communities (the poor, the very old, nursing home residents, non-English speakers, etc.) may still somehow be unaware or unsure of what to do at this point. I've expressed my concerns about this all through the run of this blog, but I'm also aware that life is imperfect and there are limits to what you can do. The public education campaigns may have started late and may be flawed, but they have truly been at saturation levels the last few months - those who have chosen not to pay attention cannot completely escape responsibility for the results. And as stated above, there are those who will simply resist change as long as they can. If the once "certain" date is changed to accommodate them, what will make them take June 12th any more seriously? The government could easily find itself in a position similar to that of Bullwinkle J. Moose trying again and again to pull that rabbit out of his hat ("this time for sure"!). Though I've stated my dismay at the hostile tone taken by anti-delay commentators towards the unready, these are valid points that no amount of good intentions can sweep under the carpet. And as noted above, if the coupon program fix includes expedited delivery, that inconvience will be measured in days, not weeks. If not, perhaps the more effective path for those political activists that have built their lives around serving the underserved would be to focus their energies on stepping up and organizing their friends, neighbors and supporters to help deal with these problems as they arise in their communities. I'm sure there are converter box (and possibly even antenna) manufactures out there that would jump at the chance to reap the public relations benefits of partnering with such groups to provide free or heavily-discounted equipment to the most impacted (as well as loaning their best tech-support people to provide instruction and installation).

My conclusion, then, is much as it was 12 days ago - the "least bad" option is to immediately fix the coupon program and forge on. But if I had to guess, we'll probably be dealing with most of these arguments again in a few months.

In which case, what happens next with this blog? I was originally going to do a "Three Weeks and Counting" recap on or soon after Jan 27th, but the delay in getting out this post makes that extremely unlikely. If we are still counting down to Feb. 17th on Feb. 3rd, I will try to post a two-weeks-out recap ASAP, but if the date is moved before then I'm not sure what my publication schedule will be. I've been making my own "post-shutdown" plans for what I want to do with my spare time after wrapping up this blog, and I'm not sure if I have any big recaps left in me after The (Original) Day. I may just adopt the mode of most blogs and only comment on individual events or trends that seem to truly merit it - we'll see.

And that's all I have for now!

In Hawai'i, Transition Goes Off On Schedule

2009-01-18T17:43:00.002-05:00

I haven't been giving the Hawai'i early (Jan 15th) transition the kind of extensive coverage I gave to Wilmington, N.C., mostly because the local media refused to treat it as anything that was very important (and there seemed to be little of the FCC handholding that was evident in Wilmington). Along the way, we found out that the early date was unconnected to any wish to be a pioneer, but rather due to the need to avoid conflict between the demolition of the analog towers and the nesting season of an endangered local bird species.

This no-big-deal approach seems to be in force even after the fact. Just a couple of days after the transition, this story from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is not linked from either from the site's front page, or even from the front page of the Business section where it appeared (I had to use site search to find it). Both the article and this video from station KITV describe a fairly smooth process (the FCC call-center workers interviewed in the video reported fewer calls than expected). Most of the calls appear to concern problems with installation and use of converter boxes rather than a lack of awareness of the transition itself. But not everything was roses - one of the comments left on the newspaper article was from a reader who was unable to get any digital channels with her converter and who was now "resigned to watching movies and getting news from the computer". Still, there seems to be no sign of public outcry over missing channels.

With the current uncertainties concerning the overall transition, the Hawai'ian experience will surely receive a lot of scrutiny in Washington. Whether they draw more lessons from the lack of outcry or from the experiences of people like the one who left the comment I just quoted remains to be seen.

Voices In Opposition

2009-01-13T18:00:00.004-05:00

There's 35 days to go to the analog shutdown - or is there?

When I started this blog nearly three years ago, one of things I wondered about the most was if or when we would begin to see signs of real opposition to the change. I never discounted this possibility, largely because I know a lot of people who have no particular interest in DTV and their opinion at the time I started out was that this date would surely be pushed back once again. As time went on it seemed they were being proven wrong. Though occasionally you would see a site such as stopsnow.rccrg.info which would urge slowing things down if necessary to ensure that the poor and the old are not left behind, they didn't seem to be having much visibility or presence.

Then came the first early transition (Wilmington, N.C.) and word that call centers were flooded with thousands of calls despite extensive handholding by the government (including the giving away of large numbers of converter boxes). Many of these calls concerned reception problems, and helped to raise awareness of the fact that many digital stations may end up with a smaller reception area than their analog predecessors. Still, there were no reports of widespread public outrage, and we have to assume that in the end people made the adjustments that had to be made (possibly including a new antenna) or decided instead that continuing to receive TV just wasn't worth the additional effort and expense.

In the meantime, however, awareness of these reception problems has been growing (check the comments section of this article.) Anecdotally, I've been noticing more and more comments of that type in local (non-videophile) bulletin boards and from people I know. This problem in itself might not have led to a rethinking of the deadline, but then came another major stumbling block - the coupon program ran out of money and more than a million people signed up for the program's waiting list within a few days (with hundreds of thousands of new requests coming in daily). Apparently the accelerating fiscal downturn has made more people opt for a converter (as opposed to a new TV) than the program's designers could have envisioned back in pre-recession days. While new money will be released as older coupons expire, the rate of requests currently is far greater than it was 90 days ago, so you can see where this trend is headed.

And apparently this was enough to start the ball of reconsideration rolling. On Wednesday, January 7th, Consumer Reports urged the government to delay the transition, followed in quick succession by the Obama transition team, two ex-FCC chairs, and at least three of the four major networks (with CBS being "open to the suggestion").

Committed transition supporters, were, to put it mildly, not amused by any of this, as you can see from reading the comment sections on these posts. Collectively, they express exasperation bordering on contempt for those who are at risk for being left behind, apparently convinced that this is all about lack of awareness rather than lack of resources or anger over having spent their money only to get less coverage than they had before. Perhaps it's not so surprising that a sample drawn from people who frequent technology websites might have a little trouble accepting that there actually are a fair number of people out there for whom paying full price for a converter (or a new antenna) might have an effect on whether their kids get new clothes this winter.

The point is also raised that there is no constitutional right to have television in the first place. But perhaps those who say so should take a moment to consider this from an eminent domain perspective. Millions of Americans paid their money for a device that still works perfectly well (an analog TV), and may do so for decades to come, for the specific purpose of watching broadcast television. Now a government mandate has rendered that core functionality worthless, degrading the value of their property. When the government takes your property (let's say they need your land for a new freeway off-ramp) you are owed fair compensation. Why should the same principle not apply when the government makes your property less valuable?

But there are more substantial objections to changing everything so close to February 17. Since April the government has been pounding out the message that this change is going to take place on a certain date, and the potential for mass confusion is very real if this happens not to be the case (who wants to write the next series of PSAs?). And though the networks appear to be OK with this, their local affiliates may not be, having made their plans to stop leasing transmission towers (which leases now may be too late to extend) as well as having redone their budgets to include the substantial electricity savings they've been counting on achieving, as Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Association points out. And then there's the public safety agencies (AKA first responders) who have been counting on spectrum in the 700Mz band (so perhaps we should exempt at least that slice of spectrum from any delay). Not to mention the companies who have ponied up $20 billion for the rest of that spectrum. How long before we have to give that money back?

What, then, is the best outcome, or the least bad one in any case? My own hope is that the threat of this delay will cause a rapid unblocking of coupon distribution (and that all expired coupons be made usable again). In addition, with all the money we are plunking down for economic stimulus and financial stabilization, perhaps it wouldn't be too crazy to offer a direct tax credit for monies spent out-of-pocket (on converters and antennas alike) by consumers to restore this basic function to their TVs, one of the only forms of affordable entertainment for millions of Americans, and often a main source of companionship and connection for the sick and the elderly.

One more thing. If this date moves, what happens to the schedule for this blog? Until the date actually moves (or seems very likely to do so), I will keep "counting down". But whether we go with this date or another, the tightening of focus I adopted recently remains in effect. If you look in the "Blogroll" section on the left, you will see some good resources for HD coverage. From now on, the broadcast transition story is the only one you'll read about here.

Please stand by...

2009-01-09T01:12:00.002-05:00

I was going to do a post on the problems surrounding the coupon redemption program, but a new development reported today takes precedence over that - President-elect Obama would like to delay the transitionfor an unspecified time. I'll have more on this sometime this weekend.

UPDATE OK, so it's taking a bit longer. Tuesday for sure!

From Here to the Grand Finale (and After)

2008-12-27T11:57:00.003-05:00

A few months ago, I began to tighten up on the range of stories that this blog covers, and I'm about to take that a step further.

Since I started covering the story of broadcast TV's digital transition, I've also been covering the related story of high definition programming. When I started out, practically everyone who knew about the transition was an HD fan, so it seemed a natural fit. But it is a separate story, and more importantly it's a story that will go on unfolding for years after the last person who is affected by the broadcast transition makes whatever adjustments they need to make in order to keep getting their broadcast stations. So as we get down to the wire, it's time to cut that story loose.

How will that change the blog? Well, we won't need the HD NETWORKS section anymore, and 90% of the stories in the PROVIDERS section also no longer fit the new format (however, their plans to get new customers from the ranks of disgruntled over-the-air viewers are still relevant). In addition, I've been finding that more and more of the basic transition-related stories I've been following have elements that could place them in either the PUBLIC, GOVERNMENT or BROADCAST sections, to the point where keeping those separate sections seems increasingly artificial. So from now on, no more sections, which I hope will allow me to sequence stories more naturally.

That brings us to the schedule. Up until recently the way I wrote these updates was to gather links from the 18th of one month to the 17th of the next, and then lock myself away for a couple of weeks to write it all up. With so little time left, that's obviously not going to work as far as keeping things current. So starting with the most recent update I've been writing up stories as they come in, and despite the fact that this requires a lot of rewriting (as new information comes in that that updates the old or casts it in a different light), I was able to get that update out only three days after the 17th. I expect the one-month-out update to come out in a similar timeframe. After that, I plan to go weekly with three-weeks-out, two-weeks-out and one-week-out updates. In the last week, I'll try to post things as they come up (before that, stories of particular urgency may also come out separately if they can't wait until the next update).

I'm planning to take a few days off work during transition week (The Day is on a Tuesday, but since broadcasters have until midnight to switch off, most of the immediate fallout will develop over the next couple of days) and will report as much as I can. After that, I'll report on follow-on developments as they come up, but not on any set schedule. If the country reacts the way Wilmington, NC did, there may not be that much to write about after a couple of weeks or so.

And after that? It's possible a new blog might take up the HD story again, but not until I've had at least a couple of months off to catch up on life in general. It can be argued that the ongoing conversion to true HD production within the digital TV universe constitutes its own kind of transition, but I need some time to survey the plethora of HD news and opinion sources to make sure I'm not just repeating what someone else is doing better. As for this blog, it's possible I might do some retrospective posts tracking various topics over the blog's history, or I might just leave the 30-some updates up as resource material for media historians who might like to see how the story unfolded month by month.

So that's where things stand right now. Expect at least one more post before the one-month-out update. See you then!

Two Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-12-20T21:49:00.006-05:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than two months until the "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 33rd of 34 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story (it used to be 35, but I will be doing more-frequent updates during the last month). Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). However, you'll notice that I have recently tightened the focus. For more on the reasons why, see my post regarding focus.

That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 11/18 and 12/17 (with the occasional exception of a later story that just can't wait until next time). Major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable, TV Newsday and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - Before I start this month's look at public awareness of (and preparedness for) the digital transition, I have to report on the first really big change to the overall plan since the hard date was first announced a few years ago. A bill introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (Senate) and Rep. Lois Capps (House) (and which passed the Senate as well as the House by unanimous consent), allows stations to use their analog transmitters for DTV education and emergency information for 30 days after Feb. 17th. This idea was introduced during the earlier transition of the Wilmington, NC market and will give those who may not have been paying attention a better idea of what has happened than the screenful of snow they would have otherwise had to interpret. It's currently awaiting President Bush's approval.

So, just how many people haven't been paying attention? Recent surveys show progress, but if you project the last month's progress - from 7.7% completely unready to 7.4%, and 10.7% partially unready (houses that have a mix of ready and unready sets) to 10.3% - and project it forward two months, you can see that we are not getting to zero. The linked article also breaks these numbers down, with the real surprise in the breakdown being that homes where the head of household is over 55 are better prepared than those headed by adults under 35, the opposite of what you'd expect if you went by the stereotype of the technically savvy young vs. the clueless old.

One thing that could bring those numbers down faster is the acceleration of analog-turnoff tests, which seem to be happening all over the country, such as the ones that took place in Sacramento and Dallas on December 4th, plus Buffalo's on Dec 15th, Providence's on Dec. 17th and an ongoing series of weekly two-minute tests in Detroit, plus another ongoing series in West Michigan. What's frustrating is that I'm seeing far more announcements of upcoming tests than the after-the-fact reports that tell us what actually happened (why would the same news outlets do the first and not the second?). A welcome exception was Hartford's Dec 3rd tests, two 30-minute shutoffs that seem far more useful than the one and two-minute tests common elsewhere. Those tests got over 1,700 calls to the toll-free hotline. Even more (4,000) calls were received due to the L.A. area's Dec. 2nd test, and the area has now scheduled two follow-ups on Dec. 17. But I have a story here that says that KMEX (the L.A. Univision affiliate) did their test on Dec 3rd and recorded 3,000 calls - is somebody's date wrong, or did Univision do their test a day later?

Boston's test on Dec 9th was only for two minutes, but repeated three times and was supported by a "DTV Day" campaign in which all local analog feeds featured a crawl that directed viewers to a loop of the 30-minute program Get Ready for DTV running on PBS affiliate WGBH. The film, produced by PBS and featuring Norm Abram and Kevin O'Connor of This Old House plus Maria Hinojosa, can be viewed online here. I've watched it, and it's fairly comprehensive - it features visits to various homes with a mix of TVs (analog and digital) and connections (OTA, cable and satellite) and shows what (if anything) the residents needed to do in each case. All of this was only supposed to be seen if you were watching analog signals over-the-air. From the cable watcher's perspective, I can report that things seem to have worked as planned. I set recordings for the various tests on the analog stations and either received "your set has passed" messages or no test at all (of course, the feed had no knowledge of my TV, just that I was watching the feed intended for cable watchers). Although numbers were still being tabulated at press time, this Broadcasting & Cable article reports a "huge" number of calls.

Please note; the B&C link above also contains details of a 29-state test scheduled for Dec. 17th. As of this writing, I haven't seen any follow up reports on this. If you have experience of any of the tests mentioned above, please leave a comment!

Get Ready for DTV, is not the only educational film out there. Dec 2nd saw the airing of DTV: Are You Ready? on five Lexington, KY stations. And this was not the only new educational effort, either. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (who introduced the previously-mentioned "nightlight" bill), pledges to work on a more comprehensive plan (which carries some weight, seeing as how he will be the new chair of the Senate Commerce Committee). It's been noted that minority and poor communities may be disproportionally affected by the transition, which is presumably why the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF) will be opening seven DTV Assistance Centers in especially "at risk" areas, thanks to a $1.65 million grant they received from the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA). One interesting idea that I don't expect to reach fruition was put forward by a North Carolina college class (which had previously studied the Wilmington transition) - they are asking the FCC to interrupt the SuperBowl with a 30-second PSA. And the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is setting up a national hotline, which they predict will receive two million calls in the five days after Feb. 17th.

Two more things. The Neilsen people have been tracking HDTV household penetration regularly, and their end-of-November figures show that 23.3% of U.S. households now own HDTVs, up from 10% in July of 2007. Finally, I ran across this page which indicates that there is at least some interest out there in delaying the transition altogether (check the comments section for more reports of reception problems).

GOVERNMENT - I've been writing about the DTV-related efforts of the current administration and Congress since I started this blog, but it's important to remember that the transition will actually happen under the incoming administration. So it's good to know that the transition teams have been meeting with the involved parties (broadcast and cable representatives, plus the current administration) to try to insure a co-ordinated effort. Some have objected to this as it involves talking to lobbyists, but I think getting everyone on the same page is just too vital to worry overmuch about that.

The little-reported FCC DTV road trip continues it's 81-city tour of "at risk" areas. Here's a look at what happened in Chicago (with links to other reports on some previous tour stops).

I've mentioned the possibility before that money for the digital-to-analog converter box program could run dry just as demand spikes, and this possibility is why NTIA is now asking for more money. According to the program's statistics page, orders for coupons are accelerating - in the week preceding Dec. 17th, 228,008 coupons per day were requested, as opposed to an average 199,413 per day in the past month. Also, the percentage of expired coupons climbed again (to 32.4%), after seeming to level off last month.

With the "white spaces" issue having been decided last time, there's just a few other stories to talk about in this section. I've mentioned the problem of digital signals that don't reach as far as their old analog versions. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has a plan for this, involving a new DTV translator service to fill in the gaps. The FCC was scheduled to take up the proposal Dec 18, but some non-transition items on the agenda prompted Sen. Rockefeller (busy guy!) and Rep. Henry Waxman to ask that he stick to transition issues for the remainder of his term), after which the meeting was cancelled. Another solution for the reception problem has been introduced by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who would like to see those who have lost their broadcast signals because of this get reduced-cost cable service indefinitely, and has introduced legislation to this effect.

BROADCASTING - Most of the transition-related broadcast stories come under the rubric of testing, which you can read about in the PUBLIC section above. But as always, the most meaningful measures of public readiness should be the results of actual permanent transitions, which are also speeding up. Things seem to have gone smoothly for WZMY (a New Hampshire MyTV affiliate serving the Boston DMA) when they transitioned Dec 1st, although a number of posters in the AVS Forum Boston OTA thread claim not to be able to receive the weak digital signal. Speaking of signal problems, antenna troubles may force WFXT-TV (Boston Fox affiliate) to drop their analog signal early. Also transitioning on Dec 1st was KHAS in Hastings, Neb, followed by KCWE in Kansas City, on Dec 15th.

The most significant early transition announced so far is coming up on Jan 15th, as the entire state of Hawai'i goes a month early. From what I can see of the local press, nobody there seems to have made too big a deal over this since the original announcement. However, the FCC has started a Hawai'ian version of its DTV site, which will bear watching.

There is also the continuation of existing trends such as the conversion to HD of local newscasts, which can be tracked at this AVS thread. as well as this post in the Official AVS HDTV Programming Synopsis. In Boston, we have finally seen the long-promised conversion of WBZ (a CBS affiliate), leaving Fox as the only Big Four network affiliate in town without an HD newscast.

There's some other new HD programming as well. The big news here is that Fox is going all-HD across their entire spectrum of networks (broadcast and cable) starting in the first quarter of '09. The syndicated front is moving forward as well, with Regis & Kelly going in January and a new show starring Oprah vet Dr. Mehmet Oz debuting in HD next fall. And here's an example of something not normally seen in HD - an all-digital government access channel.

Last month I mentioned a new area for growth in digital broadcasting, mobile DTV broadcasting to cellphones and other handhelds, specifically the progress in developing related technical standards. That progress continues with ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) advancing its proposed standard to "candidate standard" status, with the hope to have it ratified in the next six months. Meanwhile the mobile equivalent to cable is already underway, with Qualcomm's MediaFLO service planning to expand into vacated spectrum (once the transition is complete) with its multichannel offerings.

The transition poses a number of challenges for broadcasters, including the likelihood that many formerly over-the-air watchers will skip the conversion hassle by signing up for cable or satellite. At least that's what Turner Networks research executive Jack Wakshlag is hoping.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - In the ongoing race among providers to provide the most HD channels to their customers, Verizon's FiOS dominated the last couple of months with their huge expansions (cracking the triple-digit mark previously reserved for satellite), but they've been relatively quiet recently (other than announcing that they have completed their elimination of analog channels), which gives other providers like Time Warner (24 adds in Southern California, 18 in North Texas,14 in Southwest Ohio and 10 in Kansas City), Cox (13 adds in Hampton Roads, VA and 11 in the Gulf coast region) Insight (25 adds in Columbus, OH) and Comcast (12 adds in San Francisco) a chance to catch up a bit.

But the recent event with the most impact on the future of this struggle was the preparations for Comcast's roll-out of the Digital Terminal Adapter (DTA), the device that will eliminate analog Expanded Basic tiers (I had originally thought they would be used to go all-digital, but that doesn't seem to be the plan) and put Comcast back in the HD arms race. This notice posted on AVS shows the eliminations (and later HD additions) scheduled in parts of Oregon for Feb. 11th (on or about), and the Seattle area is following suit around that time. Luckily, these were announced before Dec. 10th, since otherwise they would be covered under the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)'s just-announced digital migration freeze, which will halt almost all analog-to-digital channel migrations for January and February, allegedly to ease consumer confusion caused by the broadcast transition's taking place around the same time. This decision applies to all major U.S. cable operators, but appears to have been influenced by this FCC investigation into whether Comcast shortchanged analog viewers by the way in which they migrated channels from analog to digital.

HD NETWORKS - Things continue to be slow in this area; this month, we have just a few channel launches, some more info concerning recent announcements and a couple of notes about existing (and recently-existing) channels.

Comcast converted a few of their existing nets (E!, G4 and Style) to HD, and split their Versus/Golf shared HD channel into two full-time nets. Here's a little info on Golf HD's plans. In addition, the African American-targeted TV One launched in HD, with around 20% HD content, slated to expand to 40% by the end of 2010.

Last time I noted the upcoming conversion of three networks from ION Media. ION's Dave Glenn sat down with Multichannel News to talk about the process. And that unnamed Viacom premium channel (that's going to take Paramount, Lionsgate, UA and MGM content away from Showtime) now has a name - Epix, and is scheduled for a fall '09 launch.

Arrivals are especially welcome news when you need something to balance out departures, as the ranks of HD specialist channels are getting noticeably thinner. I didn't get to see the bitter end of MOJO since Comcast in Boston yanked the channel 12 hours before its scheduled sign-off, but up until then it had still made no explicit on-air announcement to its viewers as to what was about to happen (although as I noted last time they did clue in their website visitors). Anyone out there see the real sign off (at noon EST on Dec. 1st)? More shrinkage in the all-HD network ranks is in the works, as the VOOM suite of niche HD channels will be dropped in January by their owner Rainbow Media Holdings (owned by the suite's only carrier, Cablevision), although it appears that there will still be some sort of international operation going forward. Another HD specialist channel had some better news; HDNet showed up in the latest adds for the City of Boston/Brookline area, a harbinger for what may come once Comcast gets its analog reclamaion project farther along. Another departure is that of Discovery's Clint Stinchcomb, the man who got Discovery HD Theater (now just HD Theater) off the ground. HD Theater set a high standard for the emerging medium, and everyone who cares about the potential of true HD is in his debt.

Which is my cue to depart for this month. I'll have a special post sometime in the next couple of weeks detailing my plans for wrapping this blog up.

Three Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-11-28T21:54:00.015-05:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than three months until the "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 32nd of 34 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story (it used to be 35, but I will be doing more-frequent updates during the last month). Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). However, you'll notice that I have recently tightened the focus. For more on the reasons why, see my post regarding focus.

That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 10/18 and 11/17 (with the occasional exception of a later story that just can't wait until next time). Major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable, TV Newsday and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - With less than three months to go, what is the state of public awareness and preparation? There are two main ways to find out; surveys and tests. Let's start with the former. According to Neilsen, there has been a small amount of progress since the September figures that were reported last time; if you add the households that are completely unready (7.7%) to the 10.7% partially unready (meaning at least one secondary set in a multi-set household) you get 18.4%, down from September's 19.4%. That's only one percentage point of improvement, but at least it was concentrated in the "completely unready" category (last month that was at 8.4%). Considering that this was the most significant improvement in the last six months, we've still got a fair amount of territory to cover. But perhaps part of that is due to people who know what's about to happen but who don't care enough about TV to make the necessary changes to keep getting it. At least that seems to be the conclusion reached by ABI Research, who report that one-fifth of the 15% of over-the-air viewers (that's 3% of all viewers) will allow their TVs to go dark after the switchover. One place where more significant gains have been made is in minority awareness, with Hispanic awareness now at over 90%, and African-American awareness at 86%, according to a survey from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

But as I've said several times before, it's just as important to have the correct information, and there's still a lot of misinformation going around. One such piece that won't directly impact the ability to receive TV after The Day, but may affect viewers' understanding of what they're watching, is the belief that digital equals HD and that all broadcasting will be in HD after the switchover. That's what 29% of viewers think, at least if you go by what Magid Associates says.

There's another, more direct way to assess the state of public readiness, and that's to test it, and new tests are popping up constantly, perhaps faster than I'll be able to report them. The previously-mentioned series of tests spearheaded by ION, NBC Universal, Telemundo and the Association of Public Television Stations (but involving others as well) kicked off in New York City on Oct 28th (for two minutes). According to this Crave article (link courtesy of Engadget HD), things seemed to work as planned, with only the analog antenna feed going to a test message (in earlier tests, sometimes cable viewers would get a misleading message saying that they were unready when they actually were). Still, it was only two minutes. The really interesting tests in this series will be the two 30-minute tests in Hartford on Dec 3rd.

Other tests were held in Chicago, with one of the stations - WGN - using the Bozo the Clown character (which originated there but which the station no longer broadcasts) to deliver the bad news. That test generated more than 10,000 calls. Dayton, OH also had a co-ordinated test, but I haven't been able to find any followup stories with results. Locally, Boston will be doing a co-ordinated five-minute test on December 9th.

Of course, the most telling tests aren't actually tests at all, but rather an early switchover (like Wilmington, NC a couple months back). The Boston (actually southern New Hampshire, but part of the Boston DMA) MyTV affiliate will be switching early on December 1st. It's an interesting choice, given that their digital signal is a mere 480i, incapable of broadcasting HD. But the big news is Hawai'i, where the entire state goes digital-only on January 15th. The reason is fairly unique; going at the same time as everyone else would require dismantling old TV towers during the nesting season of the endangered Hawaiian petrel. So far, I haven't seen much local coverage after the initial buzz, or any sign yet of the kind of intensive handholding the FCC gave the Wilmington, NC area - but it's still early.

Meanwhile, educational efforts continue, from an expanding range of organizations. Some are governmental bodies, like the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), which is giving $2.7 million to agencies that will offer technical assistance to seniors. Some are coalitions of government and community groups, as is the case in Omaha, Nebraska. Some are broadcasters, as with the joint effort of Univision and Telemundo to spread awareness in the Spanish-speaking community, or PBS's 30-minute This Old House special. Some are industry groups, like the NAB, who recently announced the next phase of its saturation PSA campaign. And some are retailers, like Best Buy, who recently teamed up with the NAB to host in-store workshops in 25 cities.

One more note, a follow-up from last time. Remember the Digital Transition Ford, the FCC's official NASCAR auto which crashed? Well, it did that again, and what's more the sponsorship money earned FCC Chairman Kevin Martin the designation of "Porker of the Month" from Citizens Against Government Waste. But Martin thinks it's a good thing overall, reasoning that viewers pay more attention to cars that crash.

GOVERNMENT - Surprisingly, I haven't seen much new on the status of the converter box coupon program, which is odd considering the questions raised recently over the ability of the current funding to last through February. One interesting figure was revealed; the head of the NTIA says that 62% of antenna households have requested coupons. Of course, a bunch of those may have expired as the program's statistics page reveals that more than 11 million of the almost 36 million requested coupons have done just that. This works out to an expiration rate of 31.09% indicating that this rate has finally leveled off after growing steadily over the last few months. And there's a new option for box purchasers, as Dish Network’s DTVPal DVR (the first converter box with an included DVR, plus the ability to watch HD) was unveiled.

With less converter-box program news, the biggest government-related story concerns a different spectrum-related matter, the proposed use of the "white spaces" between frequency bands by a new generation of wireless broadband devices. As explained last time, the FCC, ignoring their own earlier tests (which showed that the new devices have the potential to cause interference to both broadcasts and wireless microphones), decided that the problem could be solved by having them communicate with an "avoid these frequencies" database. A vote was scheduled for November 4th, and it was an interesting few weeks in the run-up to that vote, Microsoft and its partners in the White Spaces Coalition (Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung) and the Wireless Innovation Alliance were strongly in favor of the new uses. They were opposed by broadcasters (concerned, naturally, with the possible effects on broadcast signals) and entertainers (more concerned with the wireless microphones used in concert, as evidenced by Dolly Parton's letter to the FCC), both arguing for a delayed vote and a period for public comment. They didn't get it, as the vote was taken as scheduled and the new uses were approved.

And there's one other governmental issue causing uncertainty in the TV community - what can we expect from the new administration?

BROADCASTING - I keep seeing stories about new HD newscasts, but instead of giving you the usual handful of examples, I'm going to start posting a link to this AVS thread that keeps much better track of this than I can. In addition, this post in the Official AVS HDTV Programming Synopsis is a comprehensive chart that is updated regularly. Those of you who are aggravated that there is a holdout or two in your city should check the lesser DMAs (starting around #100) to see how many markets still have no HD news.

In the previous section I mentioned how a new technology was about to encroach on the spectrum normally occupied by broadcasting. But this may just be precursor to another spectrum-related idea that's even more radical (and would, in a sense, make irrelevant broadcasters' concerns about white space interference) - stop broadcasting altogether, and have TV reside entirely on a combination of cable, satellite and online platforms. While certainly visionary, it's hard to see how this could be politically feasible in the short-to-medium term without some kind of mandatory free lifeline service from cable and satellite companies for the millions of people who just don't want to pay a monthly fee to watch TV (perhaps they'd have to apply for this, as they did for their converter-box coupons). It's certainly getting some attention from defenders of over-the-air broadcasting.

One way for broadcasters to fight back is to expand into new areas, and the area making news recently is mobile DTV broadcasting to cellphones and other handhelds. Development of the necessary technical standards is proceeding quickly and broadcasters are pleased with tests. But there's one thing that could throw up a serious obstacle to progress, and that's if the deepening recession puts a serious crimp in discretionary spending.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - As has been the rule for roughly a year now (just look at the focus of their advertisements), Job #1 for program providers is to add as much HD to their channel lineups as possible. The last couple of months Verizon has been making the big news here, with HD channel lineups in many locations at or approaching triple digits. But now Time Warner Cableis making some serious moves of its own. Not that they're hitting triple digits but getting up to 83 is pretty good for non-satellite. In addition, AT&T's U-Verse service is up to 75. Where does that leave Comcast, the number one terrestrial provider? Well, they're competitive with that in one area - Boston (just the city proper and neighboring Brookline), with Chicago slightly behind (at 60+) That's two places where analog has been drastically scaled back, with Detroit shrinking analog to limited basic by year's end. This AVS post shows the list for the Boston area, with the ones in bold being the ones that can be seen outside of Boston/Brookline. That's 84 total, with 43 of those available in Greater Boston (we just got our first adds in months - FX and Fox News). All of which whets the appetite for those Digital Terminal Adapters (DTAs) that Comcast will be using to eliminate analog nationwide over the next couple of years. They plan to start in Oregon (Portland/Salem area) any day now. Some smaller operators (like Massilon Cable, Bend Broadband, Mediacom Communications and Bresnan Communications) have already cut the analog cord completely.

HD NETWORKS - Given all the efforts to expand HD channel capacity I've been detailing (in the previous section) over the prior months, I continue to be surprised at the slow pace of new channels and announcements lately. This time we have no launches and two announcements. Ion Media Networks's three channels (Ion Television, qubo, and Ion Life) will be going HD in 2009 (with the flagship Ion Television scheduled for the first quarter). Also, MSNBC will go HD in the second quarter of next year.

On the minus side of the ledger, MOJO is about to disappear (other than on Comcast VOD, their own website, hulu.com and iTunes) - the last MOJO show is an episode of Pressure Cook airing at 11:30 AM on December 1st. But you wouldn't know that from the station promos - it's Friday, November 28th as I write this, and I have yet to see an announcement of what is to come in less than three days, although there has been a shift towards ads for their DVD line (what, no Blu-ray?) and if you read between the lines you might be able to make something of the fact that during this last week the ads for regular weekly episodes of various series are being phased out. At least the website is reflecting the new reality. Speaking of which, the site will host the one remaining piece of upcoming new MOJO content I'm aware of - a Three Sheets New Year's Eve special. No word yet on new homes for any of their series, alas.

MOJO's demise leaves an open slot in many bandwidth-strapped cable lineups, what will fill it? One example of a network getting some advantage out of this situation is MGM HD's pickup by Time Warner Cable in Raleigh, NC (MGM has also recently signed agreements with providers that were not carrying MOJO, like U-verse).

That's all I have for now!

Four Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-10-31T22:50:00.003-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than four months until the "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 31st of 34 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story (it used to be 35, but I will be doing more-frequent updates during the last month). Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). However, you'll notice that I have tightened the focus (starting last time). For more on the reasons why, see my post regarding focus.

That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 9/18 and 10/17 (with the occasional exception of a later story that just can't wait until next time). Major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable, TV Newsday and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - With less than four months to go, what is the state of public awareness and preparation? According to Neilsen, if you add in secondary TVs in homes where the primary set is covered (digital set, cable/satellite, converter), one in five homes have sets that are not ready for the changeover. But if you ask Leichtman Research, that number is more like one in three (34% to be specific). One of the ways to deal with that situation is to buy a digital TV, which makes the looming recession a particularly bad piece of timing (at present, opinions are mixed concerning the ability of HDTV sales to hold up in the face of economic woes). Good news for lower-end SDTVs, I guess.

None of this stops the clock from ticking. One market (Wilmington, NC) has converted already (as well as these two stations in Maine), and now we hear about an entire state (Hawai'i) that will be transitioning a month early. In addition, one station (WZMY, the "Boston" - actually southern New Hampshire - affiliate of the MyTV network) will be going on Dec 1st. There was also a "soft test" in New York City on October 28th (more on that next time). We'll see if some of the lessons of Wilmington (including the need for people to get their converters set up and tested before the actual transition, and the willingness to upgrade their antennas if necessary) have been learned, or if some new lessons are in store.

Actually, Wilmington's experience seems to be the inspiration for a new piece of proposed legislation, which is being referred to as a "nightlight bill". You see, in Wilmington the analog transmitters didn't actually shut off on September 8th; they remained on for several weeks with a message letting viewers know what they would have to do to get DTV. These bills would allow analog stations to remain on the air to broadcast DTV and emergency info until March 3rd, and have the support of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). They are, however, considered something of a longshot to pass (the National Telecommunications and Information Administration opposes the legislation, fearing that changes now would only confuse people).

As you might guess, various parties are continuing their public-education efforts. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has produced this video, although I have no idea how they intend to get it in front of the public. Something that hasn't been done previously was to use a NASCAR driver to promote the transition - David Gilliand has been paid $350,000 by the FCC to promote the transition via messages on his racing gear and the hood of his #38 car. Unfortunately, the Digital Transition Ford crashed the first time out, which I'm sure makes the FCC glad that it's continuing in a more traditional vein by purchasing $1M worth of advertising space in AARP publications. Unfortunately, the transition is also giving broadcasters and cable operators an opportunity to engage in a disappointing slap-fight over who is doing their part in educating (or miseducating) the public. There's also the FCC's ongoing roadshow through various "at risk" areas, which gave rise recently to a conversation between FCC commissioners to discuss what they've learned from their visits (as well as the lessons of Wilmington).

One special situation that members of Congress have drawn attention to with calls for greater educational efforts is reception near the Mexican border, where viewers can get both US and Mexican programming. An earlier attempt to pass legislation allowing stations 50 miles from the US/Mexican border to continue broadcasting in analog for five more years failed when the House failed to take up the idea (which the Senate had passed). Hmmm, this makes me wonder what will happen on our northern border. Reception in general has also attracted the notice of Congress, with Reps. Dingell and Markey (who have a track record when it comes to taking a leading role in expressing concerns on DTV issues) and a number of their fellow members of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Internet warning broadcasters and officials about the need to add antenna info to the existing educational campaigns. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has also weighed in on the matter. So even though The Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) is still debating this issue with the authors of the Centris reception study that I've noted here a couple of times, Chairman Martin has gone on record to say that up to 15% of stations may end up with a smaller digital coverage area than their old analog one, and placed an item on the November 4th FCC open meeting agenda that would allow broadcasters to use additional low-power transmitters to extend coverage to match or exceed the prior analog footprint.

GOVERNMENT - As a species, we human beings tend towards procrastination. Which could cause a few complications if, as FCC Chairman Kevin Martin fears, the coupon program runs out of money (seems that the number of requests from the Wilmington area was far more than the Neilsen estimates on which the program organizers have based their national demand projections) soon before The Day. Add to this the fact that the head of that agency (the aforementioned National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA) has ruled out the reissuance of expired coupons. Instead, they will move some of the expired-coupon money to administrative costs, freeing up more of their budget for additional coupons (but only for new requests). I recently saw a local news report that reported with appropriate levels of shock and outrage the fact that your coupons could actually expire! Don't ask me what they thought the date on each coupon meant. Nevertheless, expired coupons are now up to more than 9.8 million (as of 10/22), about 32.8% of the slightly more than 30 million issued to date, according to the program's statistics page. That compares to 31.5% on 9/18 and 30.3% on 8/20.

What happens if they do run out of coupons just as a huge wave of procrastinators finally gets around to asking for them? Well, NTIA head Meredith Attwell Baker has an idea - broadcasters should stock up on the boxes and give them away. Something like that might just prove to be necessary in the end, but I'd love to hear what someone who just paid full price for a box because their coupons expired has to say if that particular solution is adopted.

One positive development - battery-powered converter boxes (for all those portable sets out there) are finally coming to market, and here's a review of one from Winegard (link via Engadget HD).

Something I missed when it originally happened - apparently a block of analog TV bandwidth did not get auctioned off (bids weren't high enough) in the spectrum auction held earlier this year, and now they have to try again. Speaking of spectrum, we still have the controversy over devices designed to use the "white spaces" between frequency bands (namely, will they interfere with intended uses of the spectrum?). Despite earlier FCC tests in which devices of this type (designed for wireless broadband) demonstrated the potential to cause interference to both broadcasts and wireless microphones, the FCC is now considering allowing them to operate as long as they can communicate with a database that will list broadcast frequencies they must avoid, much to the chagrin of broadcast advocates such as The Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) (who believe that this will cause massive interference. This will be decided on November 4th. If it goes forward, expect to see a host of new devices within a year.

Finally, one other matter attracted the attention of government recently. One is the carriage status of low-power stations, which are not covered by the transition mandate, and which will not be receivable by those without an analog tuner. Chairman Martin's plan to force cable companies to include them under "must-carry" rules had to be shelved due to lack of support from his fellow commissioners. An amended proposal was passed that opened an inquiry into the issue, and established a hard date of 2012 for LP stations to switch to digital.

BROADCASTING - In general, the main trends of the last few months are continuing. I did notice however, that there were a few less stories dealing with new local HD newscasts (and here again is a sample) at a time when I would expect these to be accelerating. You wonder if the economy might have something to do with this. The subject was discussed at the recent HD World conference, and a number of panelists definitely seem to be contemplating a go-slower approach. New local HD is not the only thing affected; the credit crunch poses challenges for broadcast operations in general.

The spread of HD programming in other areas continued as well; examples included the daytime edition of The Price Is Right and every LA Lakers game of the 2008-2009 season. A bit more info on conversions of the recent past can be found here (concerning Survivor) and here (concerning Entertainment Tonight).

Just a couple of other notes here. A lot of people were relieved to hear that NBC's bit-stealing Weather Plus subchannel was going away. The joy, alas, was premature, as another digital-but-not-HD subchannel (this one for sports) is taking its place. Lastly, you might be interested in this interview with John McClosky, PBS's chief technology officer, discussing PBS's transition experience and plans.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - This is another section that has a ring of familiarity about it. Once again, Verizon FiOS has been the big player in HD channel additions, adding over 50 new channels in places like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, PA, as well as other locations in Texas, Florida, California and Indiana. Compared to that, everything else is an afterthought, although there were also double-digit additions by Time Warner Cable(NY, Ohio), Comcast (Indiana), Insight (Kentucky), RCN (Illinois) and a number of others, plus the usual scattering of smaller additions by various systems.

As always, various companies were doing various things to make room for these channels. One of those things has been Switched Digital Video (which sends you only what you're watching down the wire, not the entire system). This has caused problems for TiVo and CableCARD users, but both got some good news recently. First, the FCC is proposing to enforce their requirement to support third-party CableCARD devices by levying fines (in this case, on Time Warner Cable and Cox). Good news for TiVo users in particular comes in the form of letters that Comcast has been sending to let them know that the oft-discussed Tuning Adapter (which, naturally, will adapt TiVo tuners so as to be able see channels delivered via SDV) is now available. TWC will provide these by years' end. Others cut analog, like RCN, which is adding the D.C. area to its "Project Analog Crush", which has been or is in the process of eliminating analog in Boston, New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia. Others, like AT&T, bank on improved compression technologies such as MPEG-4. Of course, nothing says you can't do a bit of this and a bit of that, as this interview with Charter CTO Marwan Fawaz shows.

While providing more HD is key to staying competitive, that's not the only way providers are trying to accomplish that goal. Comcast, for instance, has a ready-made solution for all the analog TV owners who may decide that sticking with over-the-air reception is too much of a hassle, what with converter boxes, coupons and the possible need to upgrade their antenna - they've introduced an offer for $10-a-month basic cable, or free if combined with phone or internet, good for a year. "Basic Cable" will be defined as 20-30 channels, depending on location. Meanwhile, AT&T is focusing on its Total Home DVR service (which gives you the ability to record and watch multiple streams simultaneously on up to seven connected TVs), expanding in late September to four new cities, and then in early October to Connecticut.

HD NETWORKS - As was the case two months ago, the only HD channel launches I found mentions of were overseas versions of domestic networks. So, who is spreading their influence overseas? On October 1st, National Geographic continues their worldwide rollout by debuting in Russia, while History comes to Japan.

But the future is looking better, as we do have a few domestic announcements of forthcoming channels. Dec 8th will be a big day for Comcast, as five of the networks they own (E!, Style, G4, The Golf Channel and Versus) get their own HD channels (Golf and Versus have been sharing one HD channel up until now). And despite the experience of HD niche channels such the various VOOM offerings, there are still a few companies willing to explore that territory, companies like Entertainment Studios, which sometime later this year will debut Cars.TV, Pets.TV, Comedy.TV, MyDestination.TV, ES.TV and Recipe.TV. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, except ES.TV, which is an entertainment network. They'll all be debuting on FiOS. Another shopping network (Jewelry TV) is also going HD sometime soon.

New networks is especially good news considering that we are about to lose one of the pioneers. After a lot of speculation, iN DEMAND confirmed that MOJO (formerly INHD) is going away sometime around Dec 1st (which happens to be the day that our local Comcast system is dropping it), though they seem to have plans to keep some of the library up on VOD. There is some hope for fans of the programming; in response to a query from Engadget HD, iN DEMAND states that some of the shows are looking for new homes. Hmmm, maybe London Live would make a good fit for Palladia, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested in seeing how the new economic environment has affected the Wall Street Warriors.

Questions were also raised about the previously-announced, yet-unnamed new premium channel from Viacom, the one that's supposed to start off with the three studios (Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate) that recently decided to ditch Showtime. One of the questions is whether they will actually be a premium channel, or just go the digital cable route. With tight budgets all around, that might be a good idea (but not if it means commercials in the middle of my movies). That's assuming this channel debuts at all, which the article casts some doubt on.

That's all I have for now!

Five Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-09-28T18:31:00.004-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than five months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 30th of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). However, you'll notice that I have tightened the focus (starting last time). For more on the reasons why, see my post regarding focus.

That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 8/18 and 9/17 (with the occasional exception of a later story that just can't wait until next time). As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - The first major test of the public's reaction to the end of analog broadcasting has now come and gone - the Wilmington, NC transition is in the books as of September 8th. While it was an overall success, there were some problems. Most of these were experienced by people who couldn't figure out how to operate their converter boxes, but there were reception problems as well. There were enough of these calls to suggest some necessary changes to the existing message we get from all those PSAs we've been seeing since April.

I've been covering the Wilmington story all month, and if you'd like to see how things looked beforehand, you can check my posts from August 18th, August 25th, September 1st and the morning of September 8th. Post-transition reports (including information on the various reported problems) are available from later on September 8th, September 9th and September 11th. I also did a special post on September 21st concerning the lessons of Wilmington. To briefly summarize the most important of those lessons, I think it's important for the message getting out to the public to emphasize that digital broadcasting is already here (if I wasn't paying attention to this stuff, I'm not sure I'd understand that from the spots I've seen), and that it's important for people who need them to get and test their boxes right now so that they will be ready for Feb 17th when it arrives in less than five months.

I think it's just as important to let people know that they may have to upgrade their antennas (especially since we're talking about a lot of low-income people who may need time to set aside the extra money). This part of the message is already starting to get out - here in Boston, one of our local stations ran a news story about the lousy reception some are getting from their boxes, which included an interview with the author of the Centris reception study I reported on back in February (according to the study, Boston is one of the areas most likely to be affected by this). It's true that there are materials available at the FCC's dtv.gov site that deal with both of these points, but the best of these materials are much longer than a typical PSA, so I don't know if they'll be seen by the larger public.

One of the conclusions I took from the Wilmington experience concerns the uselessness of very short tests - Wilmington stations ran both one-minute and five-minute tests, neither of which gave any indication of the volume of calls (1200 to the FCC alone in the first two days) that the real thing would generate. Now I'm thinking that this may be a result of the extraordinary level of saturation coverage in Wilmington, since a one-minute test by a dozen Milwaukee stations (that either shut off their signals or ran crawls and graphics) received 3000 calls. So perhaps the one-minute test that 40 stations in 10 different Pennsylvania cities have scheduled for November 17th, plus the wider test (I don't know how long these will be for) planned for mid-late October in six cities (New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Hartford) might actually tell us something useful.

As far as overall transition awareness goes, it continues to grow (in the most basic sense of knowing that there is one coming) with a new Consumer Electronics Association study reporting that awareness has grown 12 percent (to 86 percent) since the beginning of this year. The study also reports that 37 percent of antenna-using households intend to apply for a coupon in the next year (32 percent have already ordered), and that 21 percent aren't going to order (new digital set, or new customers for cable/satellite?). Retail seems to be picking up the pace of consumer education, with Best Buy and Circuit City initiating new programs. Speaking of consumer education, one of the main concerns that has been expressed in this area has been regarding the challenges involved in getting the message out to non-English speakers. This Multichannel News article deals with efforts to spread the word in San Francisco's Chinatown.

In the related area of HDTV adoption, a recent Fact Check study claims that HDTVs are now in 46 percent of US households.

GOVERNMENT - Now that their extensive handholding of the Wilmington area is over, there are two main government initiatives related to the transition, the ongoing converter box program, and the FCC's roadshow of appearances in 81 "at risk" TV markets (which will include Boston sometime next year) that I mentioned last time. According to this schedule, a fair number of these events have already taken place, like the one in Fairbanks, Alaska which, according to its local newspaper, leads the nation in homes relying on analog TV. As focused as the FCC has been on the transition, some feel they could do better, as key senators are urging FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to spend more time on that and less on his battles with the cable industry over matters such as a la carte.

Regarding the converter box program, the latest look at the statistics page tracking the progress of the digital converter box program reports that as of 9/18 about 8.2 million of the almost 26 million issued coupons have expired, about 31.5% of the total. Last time, the 8/20 figures had an expired rate of 30.3%, but that bump up is much smaller than the one that preceded it (about 10%). Still, that's a lot of expired coupons, and they're not all because people changed their minds). I've been looking for developments relating to the possible re-issuance of coupons (or extension of their expiration dates) for some time now and all I have so far is the fact that two Iowa senators want to see this happen for their constituents that were affected by recent severe weather. But I'm not sure how far they're going to get with this - according to this Broadcasting & Cable article, existing program funds may only go through the end of January, not good news for people who like to wait. And that's not counting any kind of reissuance. Better news for the cash-strapped comes from Dish, who are finally selling that $40 (effectively free with coupon) box we've been hearing about for quite some time now. Just don't wait until January!

Here's something I didn't know before - this whole converter box thing has happened before, back in the 50s when it was necessary to adapt VHF-only TVs to receive all those newfangled UHF channels. Anybody out there old enough to have had one of those in their house? (I have a very dim memory of one old set that might have needed one, but I was too young to know if the box on top of the TV was just an antenna or something else).

One more item before we move on to the next section. If your provider was covered under the recent FCC order exempting small, independent providers from the dual analog/digital must carry requirements, you may be relieved that PBS and the APTS (Association of Public Television Stations) have signed a carriage deal with the American Cable Association (which happens to represent small, independent providers) for all their digital programmming.

BROADCASTING - The last piece in the nightly network news puzzle fell into place on August 25th, as ABC debuted World News Tonight and Nightline in HD (although at least my local station seems to be showing it in SD on the weekend). On the local level, while I didn't see quite as many stories about new local HD newscasts as I did last time (10 now, 15 then), that's still well ahead of the pace I reported on in June and July - as always, here's a few examples. I expect that pace to pick up even further soon - as more and more markets get their 1st or 2nd or even 3rd or fourth HD newscasts, the pressure on the laggards should increase substantially. Here in Boston the pressure is on the CBS and FOX affiliates, with CBS affiliate WBZ continuing its slow march to HD news (link via pnkflyd51 at AVS Forum). No word yet on what Fox affiliate WFXT has planned, but they may soon be the last non-HD newscast (other than indie WSBK/TV38, who have only a couple of syndicated shows in their HD lineup). On the other end of the local HD spectrum from TV38 is WHDO in Orlando, who broadcast locally-originated HD 24 hours a day.

There was other new HD as well. CBS converted 60 Minutes over just in time for their special candidate interview episode. The syndication scene is really starting to pick up now, with Oprah, Ellen, Dr. Phil, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider all debuting their HD versions on September 8th (the same day as Wilmington's transition). You can see a tour of the new ET set here. It wasn't so long ago that there was only a few syndicated HD shows, which is about where kids' programming is now. And while it's on a basic cable network (TBS), I should add that Seinfeld has been converted (it was shot on film, so it has the necessary resolution to benefit from the process) to HD. The downside of that is that they elected to go with cropped (not stretched, thankfully) widescreen, rather than the original 4:3 aspect ratio. But even with all of this new programming, there are still some holdouts, such as reality shows like The Amazing Race.

We'll close this section by taking a look at the future of broadcasting, the next step beyond HD, NHK's SuperVision, which was demonstrated recently.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - In the evolving "arms race" to expand HD channel lineups, the most notable player lately has been Verizon, which has been radically expanding its lineups, as when they added 55 channels in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, bringing the total up to 85 (they just eliminated analog in Texas, so expect similar moves there soon). The best any competitor was able to muster was Comcast, adding 15 channels to its Chicago market, which freed up space by eliminating most analog some time ago (these adds bring the total up to 54). Comcast has also split the Boston market into two distinct segments, with the City of Boston proper and neighboring Brookline eliminating analog for Extended Basic and adding about 20 channels over the last couple of months that are not available to the rest of us in Greater Boston. They also revealed that Detroit is next in line for analog reclamation, though I'm not sure whether they are using the upcoming DTAs for that purpose. Comcast and Verizon aren't the only ones cutting analog, so is RCN, which is extending its analog-reclamation project to NYC (which will enable it to offer 75 channels there) as well as Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Of course, there are other ways to save bandwidth; Time Warner continues to roll out Switched Digital Video (which sends you only the channel you are watching, not the whole lineup) and Dish is switching to MPEG-4 compression.

As important as HD capacity is, there are other areas in which providers continue to compete. For instance, Comcast and Time Warner will be using some of their recovered bandwidth to implement DOCSIS 3.0 internet service (you might remember that we mentioned Charter and Cablevision's DOCSIS plans last time). TiVo service is another way that some providers hope to differentiate themselves from their competitors (Comcast is expanding service and DirecTV is actually getting back together with TiVo to design a new HD DVR for launch in the second half of next year). AT&T's U-Verse service also has a DVR initiative - Total Home DVR, which claims the ability to record four channels (two in HD) and watch four others (three in HD) at the same time - (the second part obviously assumes more than one TV hooked up to the service). AT&T is also expanding its own HD VOD service. And one more thing Comcast has done that will please many long-suffering viewers - they've finally signed HDNet (rollout schedule unknown as yet).

HD NETWORKS - Despite all the expansion of existing HD channel space, the process of channel launches and announcements still is much slower than I would have expected. Last time, the only channel launches I could find were overseas! It's a little bit better this time, but not by that much, as we do have one domestic launch to report - the college sports channel ESPNU. You can see some interesting comments from ESPN's Bryan Burns on their overall experience with HD and their opinion on HD's future (both in general and regarding their own plans) here. Otherwise, the action continues to be overseas, with MTV Networks International launching MTVNHD, which appears to be a hybrid of the Palladia live-performance library, some original programming and a weekend-morning kids' block (??) from Viacom stablemate Nickelodeon. Meanwhile, France's Numericable is adding five networks (including a concert channel and a Dutch cultural network).

It's a similar situation in the area of announcements for forthcoming channels; domestically, we have the MLB Network launching January 1st, and internationally we have announcements for Norway's first domestically-produced HD channel, plus seven new British channels from Sky TV, including the reality-themed Real Lives. I've covered previous announcements concerning Viacom's forthcoming channel that will feature programming from Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate - that channel now seems to be morphing from a traditional premium channel to a digital-basic channel with a hefty licensing fee. We'll have to see if the providers bite on that one.

I have a few items concerning channels that have launched in recent months. After all their carriage struggles with Comcast, it looks like things are getting much easier for Big 10 Network, which has reached agreement with Mediacom, Cox and Time Warner. And while I've heard little about how they're faring as an HD channel, I thought those relative few of you who have IFC HD might be interested in this interview with IFC's Jennifer Caserta concerning their general programming direction (frustratingly, she doesn't talk about HD at all).

Channels that have been around awhile are making news too. Cinemax (which was one of the very early channels carried on my system) finally became an all-HD service. On the other end of the adoption curve, Bravo just launched their second HD series, Top Design, which joins Shear Genius in their miniscule HD lineup.

One last item, which isn't really about a channel as such, more a block of VOD programming. SiTV is filling an important gap with the first Hispanic-targeted HD VOD programs. They hope to offer an HD feed of their SD channel (which stands out from other Hispanic-audience programming due to its being in English) as early as next year.

That's all I have for now!

What Have We Learned From Wilmington?

2008-09-21T12:26:00.004-04:00

Things seem to have settled down in Wilmington, and the area's transition to digital-only reception (again, with the exception of the PBS affiliate and one of the two area low-power stations) is being deemed a success by both Multichannel News and TV Week. And it does look as though most of the problems I've been reporting on have been solved, since I'm not seeing anything in the local Wilmington media about people getting together to complain. People who were having problems operating their converters have probably figured them out by now, and the smaller number (estimated by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin at five percent nationwide) who had reception problems are likely looking into better antennas, switching to cable/satellite or doing without a station or two.

But before we breath a sign of relief and go on as though everything is completely on track for the national transition come February, it would be useful to consider again the fact that Wilmington was something of a special case (both in the amount of government/industry handholding provided and in the good-for-reception flatness of the area), and to realize that those problems that did arise there could well be worse in many areas nationwide.

That said, here are four things I think we should remember going forward.

1) If you saturate a market long enough and intensely enough, people do get the message. Very few of the calls that poured into hotlines in Wilmington were from people who hadn't heard about the transition, instead they were from people who had taken the recommended actions but did not get the results they had expected.

2) One-minute tests are useless, and five-minute tests aren't much better. Wilmington's one-minute shutoff on August 19th resulted in zero hotline calls, and the five-minute followup on September 2nd got about 10. The real thing resulted in 1200 calls (over a two-day period) to the FCC alone, and jammed local call centers and TV station switchboards as well. Advance tests are a good idea, but they need to be much longer.

3) People should know that digital is here today. I've seen a number of spots that are worded in such a way that you would think that digital broadcasting would begin on transition day. Spots should point out the benefits of obtaining converters now.

4) This is the hard part - people have to be told that they will need to do more than just plug the new boxes in. Most of the calls that came in were because of things that might seem very simple and obvious to tech-savvy types (such as scanning to locate signals) but were not so obvious to the tech-averse. And as noted before, that's not the only thing people might have to do - many will have to do some fiddling with their existing antennas (shades of the 50s!) and some will actually need to replace said antennas with more advanced (or rooftop) models. Given that many people who depend on over-the-air reception do so for budgetary reasons, this is an unfortunate fact that they need to be made aware of well in advance.

I know that PSAs need to be simple and concise in order to get through to people, but this information has to be in there in some fashion. Perhaps the networks should get together and schedule a national prime-time DTV infomercial a couple of months ahead of time (I'm picking this time because of the approximately six weeks that coupons have been taking to arrive - people will need to know at that point that time is running out).

One more little bit of news to close this story out. One of the on-site bloggers that I had referenced on September 8th DeeNice at the Digital Dynamo site was interviewed on that day by Wilmington ABC affiliate WWAY - here's the video.

I will be keeping my ears open for awhile, just in case some of those who have continuing problems with their reception decide to do something more than simply adapt to the inevitable, though that doesn't seem that likely at the moment. But now it's past the 17th again, so it's time to start work on my next monthly national update, "Five Months and Counting". I'm late starting, but I still expect to get it out by the end of the month. Look for it!

What's Up In Wilmington? Where Things Stand

2008-09-11T10:21:00.007-04:00

Nothing too dramatic has happened in the last couple of days, but we do have more information about the problems people were calling up about. First, this article from Broadcasting & Cable reveals that were many more calls than previously mentioned, almost 800 to the FCC hotline alone the first day. Local hotlines were also busy, as this Multichannel News story shows. But (as was also mentioned previously) the vast majority of these people had not been blindsided by unexpected change. They had gone ahead and done what the avalanche of information that they had been seeing everywhere told them to do, and it wasn't working According to the Multichannel News piece, a lot of calls to the local hotlines were due to users failing to program their new converter boxes by scanning for channels.

These were for the most part solvable problems, which is probably why the local media don't seem to be reporting any growing public outrage or calls to turn back the clock (but I'll keep checking on that for a while yet). The local Wilmington government is doing what it can, including using firefighters to help residents install their boxes correctly (linked article includes video). Part of the problem can be traced to the public education campaigns themselves -as Jim Heartney commented (in the comments section of my previous post),:

... many consumers didn't realize that digital was already available, so they waited until the last minute to try out their converters.. [this] was caused by many of the awareness spots saying things along the lines of "digital is coming" rather than the more accurate and helpful "digital is here right now." Many of the spots I've seen had this problem. One that didn't was one I saw on PBS (featuring the "This Old House" guys) that correctly presented all the most important information and didn't just punt to a website, unlike some of the other spots that ran on commercial TV stations.

But one problem showed up that was not as easily solvable - bad reception. The Broadcasting & Cable piece I referenced at the beginning of this post showed that the FCC hotline was only able to resolve a small number of reception-related problems, leaving a lot of people on the losing end of this transition. Another thing the article mentioned was that the digital signal from WECT (ironically, the station that had led the way in local coverage of the transition) does not seem to go as far as the old analog signal. Jim Heartney again:

 The reception problems have always struck me as being a more difficult area to address than the converter box issue. Reception will vary by location, and plenty of locations (my house, for example) get mediocre digital reception off rabbit ears. Further, some rabbit ears work better than others (I had widely varying results with two different rabbit ear setups I tried here). Dealing with that takes time, as consumers will need to try different things to pull in good signal. If more of the affected people were aware that they can try out their converters right now and get their issues dealt with in advance of the deadline, we'd have much less hassle than if large numbers think they have to wait till February to try digital out.

The conclusion I reach from reading these two articles is that a fair number of residents are going to have to invest in better antennas, an additional cost that none of the information being widely disseminated even hints at. Given that over-the-air viewing is the only way many low-income people can afford the most affordable form of entertainment that's available to them, that's not particularly good news. Neither is the fact that the Wilmington area is geographically flat, which means that reception problems are likely to be more severe in many other areas.

One more note to wrap this up. While there hasn't been a huge amount of mass-media coverage of this story in this country (other than that NBC Nightly News story, one group of people do seem to be paying attention - the Japanese, who have their own transition coming up in a few years and who had crews in town to film the switchoff ceremony, as reported here and here (this also has video). Let's hope they stuck around long to take note of some of these problems.

I will do at least one more post on this topic between now and my next monthly update, which will contain any additional developments as well my thoughts on what has been learned from Wilmington's experience.

What's Up In Wilmington? More Reports

2008-09-09T00:04:00.001-04:00

The reports are starting to come in now, and at least one national TV news outlet recognized the importance of this story (unlike the cable news networks I was watching earlier today) - here's the clip from NBC Nightly News. That clip finished by telling the audience that things had gone smoothly, which was more or less true.

The "less" part was the greater than expected number of phone calls that came in to various call centers. The general impression I get from the stories I saw here and here and here (the comments section specifically) was that of converter box problems (mostly reception) much more than unawareness of the change, which was something I alluded to in my first post today.

We should know more about the extent of that situation (and what is needed to fix it) in the next couple of days, so I'll see you then.

What's Up In Wilmington? First Post-Switchover Reports

2008-09-08T14:24:00.005-04:00

Well, the switch has been flipped. According to Broadcasting & Cable, it was pulled by both FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Wilmington mayor Bill Saffo. The switch looked like a giant light switch, and was symbolic (although it would have been pretty cool if it had actually been hooked up to something). A picture of the switch can be seen in this story just filed by the local paper, StarNews.

Looking at other local media, so far WILM has posted a story (using the news services of sister station WRAL in Raleigh). As far as national TV news is concerned, this appears to be a non-story. Considering how important the overall transition story is, I actually am a little surprised by that. Perhaps they're waiting to see if something dramatic happens.

There's also another blogger (Carol Ingley, representing Multichannel News) on the scene. So far neither her or DeeNice at Digital Dynamo have posted today, so I look forward to their first-person accounts.

The real story is in the number of people affected by the change, and I don't expect to see much on that for at least a few hours, if then. I'll be back at least once more later today.

UPDATE 2:33 PM - Just about a minute after posting the above, I saw a Wilmington-related crawl at the bottom of the screen on CNN. No idea whether an actual story will follow.

Press Conference Now!!

2008-09-08T11:58:00.005-04:00

This may only be useful for a few minutes,but here's live video coverage of the ceremony:

video

Well, now it's just people wandering around. Sorry, I found out about the Wilmington government access channel at literally the last minute. Perhaps they'll have some follow-up coverage.

UPDATE 1:08 PM: Kevin Martin is talking about converter boxes at the moment.

What's Up In Wilmington? Today's The Day!

2008-09-08T10:19:00.004-04:00

Well, it's finally September 8th, which means that at noontime today FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin will throw a switch in Wilmington, NC, at which point the five counties which comprise the Wilmington market transition to digital-only broadcast TV (other than the PBS affiliate and one of the two area low-power stations), five months ahead of the rest of the U.S.A.

While the last few days saw this event draw attention as far away as Australia, there was also some speculation that Tropical Storm Hanna might cause a delay in the proceedings. However, Hanna turned out to have a relatively minor effect on the area, and the FCC gave the final go-ahead on Sunday morning.

So now it's just a matter of waiting to see what happens. As mentioned last time, there was another, longer "soft test" of the switchoff last Tuesday, and according to Broadcast Engineering magazine, the info line for affected analog viewers logged "about 10" calls (up from zero for the earlier one-minute test). Local station WECT also ran a piece on the receptionist who will be dealing with any upset watchers when the switchoff happens in a couple of hours. One problem noted - today's piece on the TV Predictions site mentions that there have been complaints that the converter boxes don't pick up all the local stations. Given that the Wilmington area is flatter than most and should be expected to have better reception, this could be significant for the country as a whole (a lot of new antennas may need to be factored into peoples' budgets).

I'll be monitoring various news sources (industry and otherwise) throughout the day today, and expect to put up at least a couple more posts. So far this morning, this doesn't look like it's going to be a big mass media story. My morning Boston Globe doesn't have anything, and I don't see any new stories on the New York Times or CNN websites. The Los Angeles Times did run two stories this week, and both the Washington Post and Fox News sites ran this Associated Press story from last Friday (there was also a blog entry last Wednesday at U.S. News & World Report). I've also been flipping around the various news shows this morning, and nothing so far.

I'll keep watching!

P.S. There is one first-hand source you might want to check out - DeeNice at the Digital Dynamo blog is on-site, and I'll be checking that source as well.

P.P.S. BTW, this is my 100th post, for what it's worth.

What's Up In Wilmington? It's Now Just ONE WEEK to the Transition Test.

2008-09-01T12:52:00.007-04:00

Today is September 1st, which means that there are seven days remaining until the Wilmington, N.C. area becomes the first TV market in the country to transition to digital-only broadcast TV (other than the PBS affiliate and one low-power station), five months ahead of the rest of the U.S.A.

I led off last time by with a report of the "soft test" that took place on Tuesday the 19th, in which four of the five participating stations shut off their analog signals for 60 seconds, and how it seemed to have gone off without a hitch. However, as the person who left a comment on my two-weeks-out report pointed out, one-minute tests can be missed quite easily. So it's not too surprising that they are trying this again tomorrow (September 2nd), this time for five minutes. I still wonder whether this is enough time, but at least the people who do see this one will have time to write down the number of the info line (which received no calls last time).

Another story from last time concerned station WECT's Digital Television Expo, which was held this last Thursday. This story from WECT's web site contains a video clip taken at the show. One product unveiled at the expo was a battery-powered converter box, which could make things a bit easier for owners of portable TVs.

Questions about the length of the soft test aside, it still seems that everyone involved is doing everything they can to make sure that things go smoothly. And as I've mentioned before, that may lead to some complacency in other areas that won't be getting that kind of hand-holding. In addition, it's been pointed out that Wilmington has a low percentage of over-the-air viewers. This Broadcasting & Cable piece goes into these concerns in more detail. One interesting piece of information in the article - Wilmington was picked because it was the only area to volunteer out of the small number of markets deemed transition-ready by the FCC.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there's no chance of problems. The WECT story mentioned above listed some new poll numbers, and while 97% of area viewers are aware of the transition, the percentage who knew the actual date (with two weeks to go) was 77%. Broadcasting & Cable (who really seem to have taken the lead in coverage here) points out that if you apply that percentage to the estimated 14,000 over-the-air viewers (slightly higher than earlier estimates), you get about 3,200 households that could be taken by surprise. Hopefully they were among those who obtained the approximately 20,000 coupons that have been mailed to area residents.

One other thing that could (but probably won't) throw a temporary monkey wrench in the works - the FCC has told broadcasters that they can delay the switch if a hurricane threatens. From what I'm seeing, the area could see some effects from Tropical Storm Hanna Friday and Saturday, but that should be past by Monday at noon.

I'm planning to take September 8th off work, so I'll be checking various news sources to see what they report during the day (I'll do another recap early on to cover the news between now and then). See you then!

Six Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-08-26T13:35:00.020-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than six months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is scheduled to cease. This is the 29th of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). However, you'll notice that I have tightened the focus this time (and going forward), including dropping a whole section (MANUFACTURERS). For more on the reasons why, see my post regarding focus. I hope this results in updates that are easier to fit into your reading time.

That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 7/18 and 8/17 (with the occasional exception of a later story that just can't wait until next time). As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - It's now less than two weeks until noon on September 8th, when the first TV market (the Wilmington, N.C. area) transitions to digital-only broadcast TV (other than the PBS affiliate and one low-power station), five months ahead of everyone else. So what is the state of public awareness in Wilmington? Pretty good, it seems. As I pointed out in my August 8th Wilmington recap, Wilmington has (not surprisingly) been getting a lot of special attention from the FCC and others as well. More details on the accelerating FCC involvement can be found in this Multichannel News article. An example of the involvement of other parties is this converter-box giveaway sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association to help nursing home residents (who don't qualify for coupons, as nursing homes are not "households" under the rules of the converter-box program). It looks like everything is being done to make sure there are no problems (which raises some questions as to Wilmington's value as a predictor of what will happen in all the places where everything possible isn't being done). One thing they are doing which actually is a great idea - instead of completely turning off their analog transmitters, they will instead (for several weeks) be running an information slide to explain what has happened and how viewers can get DTV. Having that everywhere, even for a shorter time, could considerably lower the potential for confusion on The Day. Participating stations also took part in a one-minute test on August 19th, whiich appears to have gone off without a hitch.

When evaluating the results, they might want to take into account a similar test recently conducted by KING in Seattle (link via Engadget HD). In addition to the people who could be expected to get a screenful of snow (analog TV owners with over-the-air reception), viewers with cable or satellite hooked up to their analog sets also were affected. The latter will be provided a downconverted digital signal by their provider after the switchover, so the interruption was misleading. A follow-up test on sister station KONG (not a joke, honest) has been put off for now.

As to the overall transition, a new survey from the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) shows that while the percentage of OTA (over-the-air) viewers intending to buy a new TV or converter has climbed dramatically in the last couple of years (62 percent versus 28 percent in November '06), most have not done so. Let's hope they factor in the six weeks or so it takes for the coupons to arrive!

On the Public Service Announcement front, game-show legend Bob Barker has been enlisted for two spots, including a special one for the Wilmington area.

One thing the transition seems to be doing is helping TV sales weather the recession.

GOVERNMENT - In the last section, we mentioned the FCC's significant presence in the Wilmington area in prepartion for their early switchover. Of course, not everyone is going to get the kind of intense attention Wilmington has been getting lately. However, FCC Commissioners will be holding public events (one per market, I'm thinking) in 81 markets deemed to "most at risk" (the linked article has the schedule for the first 23 events). Not sure what, if anything, will be done for the other 100-some markets.

This time last month, the statistics page tracking the progress of the digital converter box program reported that as of 7/23 about 4.1 million of the roughly 19.9 million coupons issued so far (or just over 20%) had expired (compared to the almost 6.7 million that had actually been used). Updated figures for 8/20 show almost 7.0 million expired (30.3%) and 8.7 million redeemed (38.0%) out of 22.9 million issued. I've already speculated that the expiration figures might have something to do with retailers preferring to sell new TVs rather than the boxes the customer might have come in looking for, but this TWICE article points to another possible explanation - retailers report that they can't keep up with the "increasingly frantic" demand.

Still no new developments on the issue of reissuing coupons or extending expiration dates, as far as I know.

Meanwhile, the FCC is proposing something designed to help low-powered stations get the cash they need to go digital (voluntarily - they're not covered by the transition, which is why an analog pass-through feature is desirable in converter boxes), namely adding them to the "must-carry" requirements for cable companies. Given bandwidth constraints, you won't be surprised to hear that the cable industry doesn't care for this at all, and is challenging the FCC's authority in the matter. On the other hand, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to make carriage requirements easier for small systems by exempting them from the "dual must carry" requirements (dual meaning analog and digital).

BROADCASTING - This last month saw a major acceleration in the number of local TV newscasts going HD. I count about 15, too many to list here, so these examples will have to do. I have seen different numbers posted in different places, but all sources now seem to agree that the number of local HD newscasts in HD has reached triple digits. But this is still a small fraction of the total local newscasts - given the tendency of HD newscasts to cluster (we just got a second one in Boston and are expecting a third soon), it's safe to say the majority of the 200-plus TV markets in this country still have none.

The national front saw action too, as CBS debuted a newscast whose first broadcast was marred by audio problems, and ABC (now the last nightly news holdout) announced a September 8 debut for World News with Charles Gibson in HD (but then jumped the gun - the broadcast actually debuted on August 25th).

HD has now been around enough to have covered several Olympics, and every time the coverage becomes more comprehensive. This time out, NBC went beyond the maximum use of their stable of channels (NBC, CNBC, USA and Universal HD) to add two extra channels for soccer and basketball.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - The "arms race" to offer more HD channels continues apace. Like last month, there are a number of providers have added 10 or more channels. There was also a triple-digit add as Verizon FiOS debuted in New York City with exactly 100 channels (you can see the list here). DirecTV added 31 not too long after (bringing them up to 130), but when you consider how many of these adds were regional sports networks and PPV slots, the NYC FiOS lineup is still pretty competitive. It was certainly more than competitive with NYC incumbent provider Cablevision, which added 15 channels to bring them up to 60 (still very good for cable just about anywhere else). Verizon also continued to rollout double-digit adds elsewhere, and others who did likewise include Comcast, Charter and Time Warner Cable (TWC).

Dish, meanwhile, has upped the ante by promising 150 national channels by the end of '08, plus 1080p VOD titles and money-saving (if you don't want any SD channels) HD-only packages. Dish CEO Charlie Ergen's thoughts on their HD plans can be seen here. One thing they don't seem to be planning on is a merger with DirectTV, at least if you go by what DirecTV says. Another provider talking up their HD plans is AT&T.

Of course, there are other uses for increased bandwidth, such as faster internet. Charter and Cablevision are preparing for DOCSIS 3.0.

Keeping up with satellite and FiOS is hard enough for large operators, what about the small independents? This topic was explored at the Independent Show (sponsored jointly by the National Cable Television Cooperative and the American Cable Association). One speaker pointed out the importance of letting the audience know that despite the difference in raw channel count their most-wanted shows were in the lineup. Another session dealt with the challenges of co-ordinating with local broadcasters in preparation for the switchover.

HD NETWORKS - While the lineup expansions noted above are adding new eyeballs to many recently-launched channels (channels which had only been seen on satellite until now are finally finding homes on cable and telco lineups), I'm still surprised that there aren't more announcements of new entrants trying to get in on the action. In fact, the few new channel announcements I could find this time out are all overseas! These include an all-classical-music channel launching in Germany, a channel displaying art (from Shaw Cable in Canada) and the first HD channel for the United Arab Emirates. Interestingly enough, these are also entirely new channels. Have all the existing cable channels that want to go HD converted by now? I for one would love to see Turner Classic Movies (which is committed to showing its films in Original Aspect Ratio) in HD, as I feel it would be a perfect fit for the format. Unfortunately, their FAQ states that they have no timetable (as of 3/12/08) for achieving this goal (although they are exploring the possibility).

Let's move on to existing channels. Despite having an actual MTV HD channel (although it's just a placeholder with little or no HD content as yet), I've noticed in discussion threads that many posters still assume that MHD is the HD version of MTV (and have no interest in it for that reason). Perhaps this is why this particular all-music channel is renaming itself to Palladia on September 1st. They'll also be adding a new concert every Saturday and will also show rock movies every Thursday (both at 9 PM) - good news, considering the rerun-heavy nature of their current schedule. Speaking of rerun-heavy channels, Smithsonian (whose library makes MHD/Palladia's look vast in comparison) will also be adding a fair amount of new stuff.

That's all I have for now!

What's Up In Wilmington? It's Now Just TWO WEEKS to the Transition Test.

2008-08-25T17:51:00.004-04:00

Today is August 25th, which means that there are only two weeks remaining until the Wilmington, N.C. area becomes the first TV market in the country to transition to digital-only broadcast TV (other than the PBS affiliate and one low-power station), five months ahead of the rest of the U.S.A.

The big story of the last week is the "soft test" that took place on Tuesday the 19th, in which four of the five participating stations shut off their analog signals for 60 seconds (although from previous reports it's more likely that they actually put up a "you need to get DTV" message). According to Broadcasting & Cable magazine, it went off without a hitch (I've expressed my reservations about 60-second tests in the past, but it's notable that there were no viewer calls). What's interesting is that I had to use a national source to find out how it went, since none of the sites for local media (print or broadcast) reported on it - I'm not there, so I obviously don't see all of what's printed or broadcast, but it's still interesting that that news did not have a higher priority.

I do have two stories that were reported by station WECT (including one I missed from last time). The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is sending their "DTV Trekker" truck into town for a series of public-education events over the next week (linked article includes video). And WECT is sponsoring their own Digital Television Expo on Thursday the 28th, with local vendors showcasing their DTV wares.

I'll be back next Monday with the one-week-out report.

FOCUS!

2008-08-20T18:34:00.006-04:00

With less than six months to go before the completion of the U.S.A's digital transition, it's time to make some more adjustments to this blog's range of coverage. I've always included stuff (such as the progress of HD) that was not directly related to the transition, but which I thought would be of interest to transition-watchers. The result has been extremely long (by todays A.D.D. standards) monthly updates, and the fact is that some of this (such as just about everything hardware-related) is done much better by others.

I am currently at work on the 29th monthly update since I started the series with "34 Months and Counting". For more than two years, this blog has taken up the bulk of my free time, and I've been putting too many other things on hold for way too long. So, I'm hoping to get a little of that time back starting with the current update, and also make said updates a bit less of a slog to get through at the same time (and hopefully a bit more current as well). There's no way of knowing until I've done one whether I'll actually save a significant amount of time and space, but it's worth trying.

As for specifics, here's what's on the chopping block, and what's being kept, by section.

PUBLIC - No real change here. The public's awareness of and reaction to the transition is the heart of this story.

GOVERNMENT - Much of the non-transition related news in this section is going away. This includes issues such as net neutrality and congressional investigations of Kevin Martin's overall job performance. Transition-related matters such as the converter-box program will still be covered, as well as the "must carry" issue (which affects providers' bandwidth management).

BROADCASTERS - Retransmission-consent issues will no longer be covered. For the time being, I'll still be looking at the spread of HD programming (including local newscasts).

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - The struggles of various providers to manage their bandwidth to bring the ever-growing number of HD channels to their customers will still have a place here, but perhaps with a bit less detail as to who added what channel this month (actually, I've been moving in that direction the last couple of months). The endless lawsuits between provider A and provider B will get a lot less coverage, perhaps none at all (depends on the underlying issue). I'll be doing less on the statewide-franchising beat. And while digital technology has opened some interesting non-traditional options for getting our programming, you won't be seeing as much coverage of that either. In general, I'll be more picky.

HD NETWORKS - The general concept won't change much, but here's another area where I might be somewhat more choosy.

MANUFACTURERS - Here's the big change. I am dropping this section altogether. I am essentially not a hardware guy, which has made this section the hardest and longest to write. My main interests in writing this blog have been the sociopolitical aspects of the transition and the evolution of HD programming, not the technical details of the equipment that delivers said programming. With the conclusion of the Format War, I've come to realize that I'm just not all that interested in the fortunes of all the competing display technologies, and while the struggle of Blu-ray vs. DVD still has my attention, here's another area that is covered much better by others.

So, expect the next update to be somewhat shorter. I'm not sure whether this one I'm working on now will get out sooner than usual (with the whole Wilmington thing and its associated posts going on at the same time), but starting next month I expect to come out at least a couple of days closer to the 17th, at least until things start to get really hot (which I think would be around the end of the year).

What's Up In Wilmington? It's Now Just THREE WEEKS to the Transition Test.

2008-08-18T17:14:00.003-04:00

Today is August 18th, which means that there are only three weeks remaining until the Wilmington, N.C. area becomes the first TV market in the country to transition to digital-only broadcast TV (other than the PBS affiliate and one low-power station), five months ahead of the rest of the U.S.A.

Since my last update was only ten days ago, I only have a couple of new items, but they're worth mentioning. Since the last update, the FCC's involvement has reached the saturation level, as this Multichannel News article demonstrates. With their increasing involvement in many facets of area daily life (such as information booths in farmers' markets in all five affected counties), it's clear the FCC is going all out to insure that nothing goes wrong. It's interesting that the linked article concludes with a quote from an engineer at the local at the local PBS affiliate mentioning something that's occurred to me as well (and which I dealt with last time) - there's no way this level of special attention can be lavished on the other 200-plus TV markets in the run up to Feb '09.

The other piece of news is that four of the participating stations will be participating in a "soft test" on August 19th (i.e. tomorrow), where they will replace their usual analog signal for one minute with a screen letting people know that they need to take action soon in order to continue getting their reception. However, if I read the linked article correctly, they could end up with the situation that occurred when KING in Seattle ran the same test - analog viewers hooked up to cable or satellite got the message when in fact they will be taken care of by their provider, at least for awhile after the transition (link via Engadget HD).

Well, we'll know more about what actually happened with that when we return next week with the two-weeks-out update.

What's Up In Wilmington? It's Now Just ONE Month to the Transition Test.

2008-08-08T23:27:00.003-04:00

Today is August 8th, which means that there is only one month remaining until Wilmington, N.C. becomes the first TV market in the country to run a full test (other than the PBS affiliate and one low-power station) of the digital transition. It's also been three months since that was announced, and covered just about everywhere. So what's happened in the last month?

The theme for the last month has been one of increasing involvement of both government and other organizations such as the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the National Broadcasters Association (NAB) in order to make sure that things work. The clear leader in local media coverage of this story has been NBC affiliate WECT, which has been churning out "Big Switch Minute" videos every couple of days (covering various local events, answering viewer questions and providing tutorials) - you can check out a whole page of them here.

For text coverage of what's been going on, station WWAY has a number of stories on their website, reporting that the FCC will be visiting various Pender County locations (libraries and farmer's markets) throughout most of August, and recently held DTV Coupon Days at various Wilmington locations in July. They also report that local African American churches dispensed information to their congregations during DTV Sunday (July 27th), and that some of the companies that make converter boxes donated some boxes to the Wilmington senior center to assist the center's efforts to help transition elderly residents in long-term care facilities (this story was also covered by TWICE). In their most-recent switch-related piece, it was revealed that over 50,000 converter box coupons have been distributed in the Wilmington market (we'll assume that at least some of the extra is accounted forby multi-set homes and cable/satellite customers with an additional analog set).

Just from looking at their websites, you'd have to conclude that the TV stations actually have given more coverage to this story than The Star News, the area's leading newspaper, although they did supplement their earlier coverage with this July 17th update (which revealed that unprepared viewers will see an informational message instead of snow for about a month after the switch), and a personal testimony from a staffer who recently acquired his own converter boxes.

And there are some interesting facts that don't seem to have made the local media at all - as this TV Newsday piece reports, representatives of all the participating stations have a conference call every Tuesday morning at 8:30 with FCC and NAB officials, a 30-minute special on the transition has aired twice on all participating stations, the NAB will be bringing an information truck to various events beginning Aug 25th (such as a DTV Expo in downtown Wilmington on Aug 28th) and the FCC has plastered the town with billboards. Also, Bob Barker (who has been signed to do some DTV PSAs) is doing a special one just for Wilmington.

So all in all, it looks like Wilmington's over-the-air audience is probably pretty well informed at this point. While all of this special attention is certainly good news for those people, it raises some questions as to Wilmington's value as a predictor of what will happen with the general transition come February. While your town and mine will get the ads (and I've already seen one FCC billboard), how many places can government and industry officials go to on a regular basis, how many stations can get them on the phone weekly? And while it's a great idea that I hope will see wider use, I've yet to hear of any other places where analog viewers on The Day will see a message telling them what just happened and what they can do about it, as opposed to a screenful of snow. So let's not assume that things will go as smoothly everywhere else as they seem likely to here.

And that's how things look one month out. If there's enough new info to justify it, I might inaugurate a weekly countdown on the 18th (three weeks out). I certainly will write something at some point before 9/8. See you then!

Seven Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-07-28T23:45:00.003-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than seven months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 28th of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 6/18 and 7/17. As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - It's now less than two months until noon on September 8th, when the first market (the Wilmington, N.C. area) to conduct a full test of the digital transition (well, five out of seven stations, anyway) drops analog broadcasting, five months ahead of everyone else. There was a brief flurry of news when this was first announced in May, but since then, not a whole lot has happened, other than a couple of FCC visits (including an appearance by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin). Right now the local media doesn't seem to be paying a whole lot of attention. Meanwhile, a more modest test (though involving more stations) has already taken place, with 12 stations in Orlando conducting a co-ordinated 60-second test (including ten seconds of dead air for those watching an analog signal). Those conducting the test seem pleased at the low number (as a percentage of the total viewership) of people calling the 800 number they were given to call if they encountered dead air, but I have to wonder if the results would be the same with something a bit more noticeable (in other words, longer than a minute).

Another way to try to get a feeling for public opinion is surveys, and more evidence of continuing public confusion comes from this one from Best Buy (one little tidbit - 31% of TV owners don't know whether their set is analog or digital). Consumer confusion is cited by The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in their call for more government action. Now I'm not sure that this is what they had in mind, but I should note here that FCC officials (like Chairman Martin) will soon be appearing in a new series of transition PSAs that will supplement all those commercials produced by stations and networks that most of you are probably pretty familiar with by now. Just in the last week, I also noticed the first billboard I've seen on the subject. Of course, some people are against the change and will just resist taking action as long as possible, creating a possible last-minute rush that could result in box shortages (among other things).

GOVERNMENT Last time, I mentioned this page that gives updated stats on the biggest government transition-related effort, the digital converter box program. As of 07/23, about 4.1 million of the roughly 19.9 million coupons issued as of that date (or just over 20%) have expired (compared to the almost 6.7 million that have actually been used). So why do people go to the effort of getting coupons, only to let them expire? Just speculating here, but perhaps there's a bit of upselling going on at retail. If you want to know retailers' feelings about the converter boxes, consider the fact that there has been no mention of the boxes in the last few week's Sunday circulars from Best Buy and Circuit City just had the first mention of one in the same period. This seems like rather unusual treatment for a product that millions and millions of people are going to need. Guess they're not a high-margin item.

So perhaps people should have a specific idea of what they want before heading out on that shopping trip. Recent comparative reviews from Sound and Vision and Consumer Reports may be useful in that regard. This Boston Globe piece by Hiawatha Bray also looks at a few boxes, and goes into something that some analog TV owners will find out about DTV once they plug that box in- their snowy analog reception will either be replaced with rock-solid digital or nothing at all, thanks to DTV's less-forgiving ways when faced with a weak signal.

On the subject of individual boxes, Dish's $59.99 DTVPal (available via Web, phone or Sears) is finally out, but please note (as a commenter points out in the linked post) that this is not the $40 (therefore free with coupon) box that they have been promising (that should be out later in the summer).

No new developments on the issue of reissuing coupons or extending expiration dates, as far as I know.

In other government news, there are new developments in the struggle over "dual must-carry" (the FCC requirement that cable systems carry both digital and analog versions of must-carry broadcast stations for three years after the transition, unless the provider eliminates analog completely). As you might guess, many cable networks aren't too fond of the rule, believing that the extra bandwidth required will make it that much harder to get carriage for their HD channels. This is why a group of networks sued the FCC back in February. Now the broadcasters (who, of course, are all in favor of the requirements), have submitted a brief in favor of the FCC position, asserting that the networks have no basis to claim that their 1st Amendment rights are being restricted by not getting carriage, and the whole thing is moot since the cable systems were volunteering to do this anyway, requirement or no requirement. The FCC agrees, stating that the cable networks have no legal standing in the matter since the rule applies to providers, not networks. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will make the call. One FCC position that I agree with is their stand in favor of net neutrality (the philosophy of equal and open access to networks, regardless of how big a user you are and what you're using the access for), and their willingness to take big providers like Comcast to task over it.

Another follow-up; the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel (Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis.) is backing the position taken recently by the National Association of Independent Networks against the practice by cable networks of channel bundling (demanding providers carry their less-popular channels in order to get their must-haves). As I mentioned last time, this seems like an argument in favor of "a la carte" channel offerings, which I'm not convinced would really be to the benefit of new TV brands struggling to generate consumer demand.

BROADCASTING - We have something of a lull in this area this time. There are a few more local newsrooms converting to HD, and two scheduled to go in San Diego over the next couple of months. On the national front, seems the late June/early July timeframe I gave for the CBS Evening News was a bit optimistic - July 28 was the actual date. On the subject of new HD, I've been telling you recently about various operations moving to an all-HD schedule - this seems to be causing some strain on the production end. And one of the rare holdouts among scripted network shows is going HD - Scrubs will make the change when it switches to its new network ABC this September.

I wasn't sure exactly where to put this next item, since it could apply equally to over-the-air and cable, but I thought it would be good to remind people that digital broadcasting gives networks abilities that we hope they don't use on a regular basis, such as denying us the ability to time-shift our viewing by triggering what's referred to as "the broadcast flag". It seems that this was recently triggered inadvertently during an ABC Family broadcast of The Middleman, but caused problems only when recording to Media Center PCs, not cableco DVRs (see the comments section for this link). So apparently Microsoft software is more responsive to the flag than regular DVRs - interesting!

One small followup on the retransmission-consent front - LIN TV has followed up earlier agreements with Charter and several other companies by signing a retransmission agreement with Comcast.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - Last time I reported that the pace of channel additions had moderated a bit (only one addition of more than 10 channels). Well, things are back in full swing this time. In last month's HD NETWORKS section, I mentioned the many, many HD feeds that HBO has for its family of channels, but only a couple of which are carried by any provider. However, Dish is about to change that, as five additional HBO channels (as well as two West Coast feeds) will be part of the 17 channels Dish will be launching August 1st, a feat which they claim will bring them up to their "100 channel by year's end" goal five months early. Providers with double-digit additions between 6/18 and 7/17 include Time Warner, Cablevision, Cox, RCN, Hargray, Surewest and Verizon (there were also too many smaller additions to list here, most of which would have been big news only a few months ago). Certainly not the least of the double-digit crowd is Verizon, who are not only spreading large numbers of new channels throughout their footprint, but are also proclaiming their intention to carry 150 HD channels by the end of this year (will there be that many by then?). That number may turn out to be a bit softer than originally planned, however, at least it seems that way from reading this interview with Verizon's Terry Denson.

Denson does say that fiber's capabilities mean that capacity is not as much of an issue for them as it is for satellite or cable. But capacity certainly is an issue everywhere else, especially as cable tries to stay competitive with satellite in the wake of the successful launch of Dish's Echostar XI and additional testing leading up the activation of the DirecTV 11 satellite in September. After the last several months, the strategies of some of the big players are becoming clear. We know that Time Warner (TWC) is leaning heavily on Switched Digital Video (SDV), which only sends channels that are actually in use, causing third-party devices like TiVo to depend on add-on adapters (two of which were just certified by CableLabs) in order to continue tuning those channels. Comcast's long-term plans appear to be focussing on analog elimination via the Digital Terminal Adapter (DTA), a small box (hopefully small and simple enough to overcome the resistance of the anti-box set) that will provide a low-priced digital simulation of the analog cable experience (in other words, no VOD or other "digital cable" features). They are ordering six million devices this year (planned to cover 20% of their footprint) and another 12 million next year (which would seem to work out to an additional 40%, for a total of 60% by the end of '09). In the covered systems, this will give them another 250Mz of capacity to play with, which means enough room for 82 to 125 more HD channels (depending on whether they assign two or three channels to each 6Mz stream). They will be using three manufacturing partners. And check Comcast CEO Steve Burke's comments at the end of the linked article - seems to me like he's acknowledging that their focus on "choices" over channels wasn't such a great strategy after all. Perhaps he saw the latest Gartner survey showing that less than one-quarter of respondents purchased PPV or VOD content in the last year.

There are other ways to do it, of course. Last time I mentioned the advanced compression system MPEG-4, but cautioned that a lot of equipment would have to be replaced for it to be implemented. Now Evolution Digital has a packaged solution aimed at small providers that they claim can get 400 HD channels out of as little as 550Mz of spectrum. Ironically, this could put small, bandwidth-strapped operators ahead of the big guns in terms of HD capacity.

As far as legal matters go, only one story to update this time - the dispute between Comcast and the NFL over carriage of the Big Ten Network is headed to mediation.

With all the streamlining of franchise regulations these days, it was inevitable that there would be some pushback from local governments and incumbent franchise holders. That's not going so well, though - an appeals court has ruled in favor of FCC regulations requiring swift action from local governments on competitive (in practice, mostly telco) franchise requests. While I'm not shedding too many tears for the incumbents, some of the concerns local governments have had appear to have some basis in fact - according to a new survey, states with statewide franchising have seen basic cable rates actually go up, and support for public access has gone down. In other franchising news, Verizon has won final approval for a city-wide franchise in New York City - FiOS service should begin within weeks.

Let's turn to some stories affecting individual providers. DirecTV has officially introduced its VOD service, although not everyone will be able to get it. Time Warner is introducing its "Start Over" service designed to let you see the beginning of a show whose beginning you missed. Dish Network will be offering a service much desired by HD purists by introducing HD-only channel packages starting August 1st. And if you've ever been curious about how Comcast readies its products for systemwide deployment, this article on their Downington, PA test facility might be of interest.

Let's not forget that digital technology has allowed the definition of provider to expand as different kinds of businesses can now compete for the opportunity to provide us with our video entertainment. Among them is Sony, who just launched a video-download service for the PS3 (although HD downloads will be rental-only). This is designed to compete with Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace (which does allow HD purchases). Xbox Live will be widening its offerings in the late fall with the addition of 10,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix. Given that the existing Xbox Live service supports HD, it'll be interesting to see if Netflix selections also include HD, and if so whether that will spur Netflix's existing partner Roku to add HD support as well. Speaking of Roku, this article looks at Roku's pros (ease of use and setup) and cons (limited selection, lack of HD, and the possibility that the kind of downloading this might inspire may in turn inspire providers to go toward metered-use pricing). Another service that currently lacks HD (but has a very wide selection range) is Amazon's currently-in-beta VOD Store (the planned replacement for their Unbox service). This is mostly a computer service for now, unless you have a Sony device that will stream content to Bravia TVs (good to have, since over 90% of viewers still prefer watching video on their TVs). Note that the new service will, unlike Unbox, be Mac-friendly, which is good news in my book.There's even a download/hardware service for the high-end customer; VideoGiants distributes files several times the size of those found on Blu-ray discs, for people whose 100-inch screens might show the limitations of Blu-ray.

One more note on Internet-based providers - the U.S. Copyright Office doesn't think they should be allowed to have the same rights to stream local TV signals that cable and satellite providers enjoy.

HD NETWORKS - Two months ago I speculated that the new DirecTV satellite might inspire another wave of channel launches (as they and now Verizon begin to speak of 150-channel capacity). With that satellite going active in September, it looks like a fair amount of that capacity might lie unused for awhile. There were no new channel launches in the period of 6/18 and 7/17, and only one announcement - Comcast will create three new HD channels in December by replacing its combined Versus/Golf channel with separate full-time channels, and also launch E! Entertainment Television in HD (the latter was also mentioned last time). While many recent additions to HD lineups have been established brands that have not done all that much to capitalize on HD's potential, perhaps the need to fill up that spare capacity will create opportunity for new channels that do, as seemed to happen when the World Fishing Network was added to Dish recently.

That said, most of the news in this area concerns existing HD channels. The big event coming up is the Olympics, and this one will have more HD coverage than ever before, spread over seven of NBC Universal's networks. In addition, Mojo has already started airing a 10-part series of athlete profiles. The big events after that are the Democratic and Republican conventions, and HDNet has plans to differentiate itself from the broadcast competition by replacing its past gavel-to-gavel coverage with themed editions of Dan Rather Reports. Two networks that have been faulted for skimpy HD content are making moves to rectify that - Bravo just launched its first HD original series, and Biography Channel (which doesn't air a huge number of biographies these days) is adding four (plus converting an existing series). They've also made a pledge to shoot all new content in HD. Two months ago I noted that Showtime would be losing access to content from several major studios in two years' time (its going to an as-yet-unnamed new premium network). They've now begun to replace that content by striking a seven-year deal with The Weinstein Co. Two domestic networks have upped their international exposure - Discovery HD can now be seen in Australia, and National Geographic HD will now be available to operators across the Asia Pacific region as well the Middle East and Africa. Representatives of two other networks recently spoke with Multichannel News to discuss their present and future HD plans - here's what HBO's Bob Zitter and Smithsonian's David Royal and Tom Hayden have to say.

MANUFACTURERS - With the furor of the HDM (High-def Media) Format War fading in the distance, this is mostly a time of waiting in the new struggle between Blu-ray and standard DVD. What exactly is it I'm waiting for? I'm waiting for a meaningful drop in Blu-ray player prices from current levels, rather than just better players for that same price. I'm waiting for a large-scale expansion in the number of available titles, (although it's true that July is the biggest Blu month to date - still much to do). I'm waiting to see a large, sustainable increase in Blu-ray market share (the latest Neilsen figure of 12% is also the best yet, but the article suggests that it's mostly due to Batman Begins). I'm waiting to see if Toshiba's to-be-demoed-in-August super-duper upconverter has anything in it that can slow Blu-ray's momentum. And I'm waiting for the upcoming holiday season so we can put some hard numbers to all this speculation.

Moving on to other hardware news, there are lots of developments in the display area. It looks like everyone wants in on the OLED game. First we have a Japanese cooperative (Sony, Toshiba and Matsushita) being formed with the backing of the Japanese government, for the purpose of developing "mass-producible large-sized OLED panels". We also have Panasonic working on a 37-inch OLED TV scheduled to be launched within three years, and LG increasing capital spending in that area (no specific product or timetable given). Perhaps this is why DisplaySearch is predicting huge year-over-year growth in the sector straight through to 2015 (by which time it might even be affordable). Another technology that will probably start off on the high-priced side (but partly because there won't be any small sets) is Mitsubishi's LaserVue, with 65 and 75-inch (10 inches thick) sets due this fall. Still another technology making some progress is FED (Field Emission Display), from Sony spin-off Field Emission Technologies, now negotiating with Pioneer over mass production of 60-inch displays (again, no date given). Still in its crib is the highly-interesting concept of wireless HDTV, with various technologies competing and an estimated date of 2012 for the first million installations.

And just think, all these new technologies are designed merely to get a bit more oomph out of the HD picture we already know. According to DisplaySearch, maintaining growth in the HD sector past 2011 will require the adoption of all kinds of new broadband and interactive capabilities. Compared to all that, these new LG sets with built-in DVRs seem old-hat already.

Speaking of old-hat, one of the better ways to maintain interest in current technology is to price it more attractively. Seemingly unaffected for now by allegations (covered last month) that they haven't been paying their technology licensing fees, Vizio continues their price-lowering ways, now working in the realm of 1080P sets with 120Hz frame rate (42 inches for $1499, 47 inches for $1899), plus a 50-inch plasma with 30,000:1 contrast ratio for $1699. And smaller versions of that plasma are also quite attractively-priced (32 inches for $599, 42 inches for $799). But not everyone wins at that game - Syntax/Brillian (makers of the bargain brand Olevia) are filing Chapter 11 (although it does seem that the brand will live on).

A couple of non-display hardware notes, and we're done. One of the ways people have been thinking about repurposing the old analog TV spectrum is to use existing "white space" in the spectrum to deliver high-speed broadband, a concept touted by the members (Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Phillips, Earthlink and Samsung Electro-Mechanics) of the White Spaces Coalition. Well, it's back to the drawing board for that one, as FCC testing shows that "white space" devices cause unacceptable levels of interference with DTV transmissions. Finally, it looks like Apple TV will have a new competitor in September, as that's the month Kodak plans to bring out the Kodak Theatre HD player.

That's all for now!

What's Up In Wilmington? It's Just TWO Months to the Transition Test.

2008-07-08T23:02:00.005-04:00

Today is July 8th, which means that there are only two months remaining until Wilmington, N.C. becomes the first TV market in the country to run a full test (other than two stations, see below) of the digital transition. It's also been two months since that was announced, and covered just about everywhere. So what's happened since?

Actually, it doesn't seem like all that much has happened. After a brief flurry of articles, in May, (one of which noted that National Telecommunications and Information Administration offical Anthony G. Wilhelm had already paid the city a visit) the local "paper of record" (The Star-News) has not covered the story since, other than this piece from the New York Times technology feed (which deals with the overall national transition, and doesn't mention Wilmington).

Yet to cover the story (at least in the online edition) is the local African-American newspaper The Wilmington Journal, but with the concerns that have been expressed regarding the transition's effect on minority communities, I expect to see some coverage of this before too long.

In researching this story, I also tried to find out something about the local stations, both those that are participating in the transition and the two that are not. ABC affiliate WWAY has this (text) story on an FCC visit to a local senior center on June 25 (to help people apply for coupons and give lessons on how to hook up the converter box). NBC affiliate WECT has a whole page devoted to the switch, which also points to this other page containing videos of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's late May appearance at a public meeting. A big question there was what happens to the battery-operated portables used by so many during hurricane season, which is kind of a big deal in North Carolina - does Cape Hatteras ring a bell?. Fox affiliate WSFX links to a similar page which uses much of the same info. Low-power CBS affiliate WILM also has their own info page. The other participating low-power station (TBN affiliate W51CW) does not appear to have a web presence. Other than the WWAY video mentioned above, I'm not sure if any of this info is later than May.

As I've mentioned before, PBS affiliate WUNJ (which lacks its own website, but is part of the UNC-TV network) is sitting the transition out (the UNC-TV site has references to the national 2/17/09 date, but not the Wilmington date). A blog related to the UNC-TV site (Kip's DTV Tips, maintained by Kip Campbell, UNC-TV's Director of New Technologies) contains an official statement as to why. In addition to public safety concerns (i.e. the need to have at least one station those battery-operated sets can receive when a hurricane hits), there's also the fact that they also broadcast the same analog feed statewide, and lack the technical ability to replace the "Feb 17th" info alerts with customized ones for the Wilmington area. They also seem to have some doubts as to whether the community is being given enough time to acquire coupons and boxes.

One other station is passing on the transition, low-power MyTV affiliate W47CK (announces itself as WMYW on air). Low-power stations are not required to transition on 2/17/09 (although WILM and W51CW are participating voluntarily).

The links above represent the information sources I'll be using to check in on developments as we get closer to the test. I hope there's more to report on next time!

Eight Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-06-29T11:55:00.007-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than eight months until the "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 27th of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players in this story. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 5/18 and 6/17. As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - In a bit less than three months (noon on Sept 8th, to be precise) we will see the most concrete sign yet of how the public is going to react to the end of analog broadcasting when the first (and currently only) test market (Wilmington, N.C.) drops analog (except for a public station that will remain on in case emergency information is required during hurricane season). That's true even though opinions differ (even within the FCC itself) as to exactly how representative this experience will be, with FCC officials giving Wilmington special attention. But until that time the best indicator we have is the ongoing stream of surveys trying to figure out what the public knows and what it plans to do about what it knows. And despite the barrage of transition commercials we've been subjected to since the beginning of April, the latest news from Neilsen is that up to 25 million households have at least one TV that will go dark on The Day, and that roughly 10 million stand to lose all their reception. I'm not sure if these work out to be the same amounts as in this Leichtman Research survey (since the latter are measured in percentages - in this case 34% of households with at least one at-risk TV). But given that barrage of commercials, how could anyone not be taking action? Some other figures from the Leichtman survey suggest reasons why. As I've said before, quality of information is at least as important as quantity, so while 84% of adults have heard of the transition, that may not mean as much as you think since 30% of broadcast-only viewers don't think any of this applies to them, and 41% of cable/satellite customers think that even their secondary TVs that are not hooked up to the service are somehow immune as well. Now some of this simply reflects increased sales of digital TVs in the last couple of years, but I'm guessing that still leaves a lot of seriously misinformed folks.

The antidote to misinformation is better information. I've covered the announcement of numerous educational campaigns over the course of the last couple of years, and that announcement is usually the last thing I hear about them. Let's hope for a bigger impact from this Pennsylvania grassroots effort that pairs citizens groups (The League of United Latin American Citizens and the Pennsylvania chapter of the NAACP) with industry players like Comcast and the National Cable Television Association (NCTA).

GOVERNMENT - As I said above, it's not just what you know, it's what you plan to do about what you know. And plenty of people have planned to do something about getting their old TVs upgraded for modern times by way of a digital converter box, but there are signs that a large number of them are encountering some bumps along the way. Last time I noted the gap between the number of coupons that had been mailed out at the time (six million) and the number that had been cashed in (one million), and pointed out that a lot of them must be close to their 90-day expiration date. Turns out I was right, as this Engadget HD article reveals that half of the first 840,000 coupons mailed out expired before they could be used. There are lots of reasons why, from simple procrastination to problems finding a box (or an acceptable box) on sale, as you can see if you check out the comments section of the article I linked in the last sentence. There have been a lot of coupons issued since (you can see the current stats here - as this is being written the stats for June 18th are being shown), and although the expiration percentage has gone down quite a bit, the ratio between issued and used coupons hasn't changed all that much, so it'll be interesting to see how many active coupons end up actually being cashed in. One thing we know from retailers - people are interested in the product.

So if coupons expire, can they be reissued? Since the money stays in the government account until coupons are cashed, you would think the answer would be yes. But apparently the additional funds necessary to (I'm not kidding, honest) mail them out again may break the budget, and there are currently no plans to increase said budget. I just don't know what to say about that, I really don't. It makes you wonder whether the Japanese solution of just giving converters out (to the poor) might be a better way to go.

For those who've waited and can find a good selection of boxes in stock, here are two reviews of boxes with a feature that addresses a shortcoming in many early boxes, an "analog pass-through" feature that will allow you to keep watching low-power stations (which are not obligated to go digital). One shortcoming that has not been addressed so far is the lack of compact, portable boxes that can act as a companion to the large supply of battery-powered portable TV sets that are out there (that will cost about $200 to replace with a digital equivalent).

The FCC's "dual carriage" mandates (digital and analog) continue to arouse objections, this time from DirecTV. Also objecting to FCC decisions are two of the retailers who were recently fined for not providing proper warning labels on their remaining stocks of analog TVs (they're basically challenging the FCC's jurisdiction over the retail sector). As I've mentioned before, objections to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's oversight of the agency have led to a congressional investigation, but the ranking Repubican on the committee doing the investigating doesn't think it will amount to much (not too shocking, considering).

Another area of lingering controversy is the idea of offering channels on an "a la carte" (i.e.) individual basis, as opposed to offering them as part of large programming tiers. One of the most persuasive counter-arguments to this notion is that it would make it much harder for new and innovative channels to get off the launch pad (the market rarely demands what it hasn't imagined yet). At least some independent channels feel otherwise, though, as they are complaining (under the umbrella of National Association of Independent Networks) to the FCC about the practice of large media companies demanding carriage for their less-popular channels in order to get their must-haves, a complaint that least implicitly seems to be in favor of a la carte. More good news for a la carte advocates comes from the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where it appears that the judge presiding over a lawsuit in favor of a la carte appears inclined to let the suit go forward. One question I'd like to see everyone ponder a bit more; how many of today's top cable nets arose out of overwhelming public demand, and how many were first discovered by the public because they had been added to a tier?

BROADCASTING - This was another month in which the big news in broadcasting was the news itself. While there were fewer new local HD newscasts than last time, the national scene was also active, with the CBS Evening News preparing to go HD in late June or early July, followed by their newsmagazine 60 Minutes in September (still no plans for Face The Nation that I'm aware of). This leaves ABC World News as the lone holdout in national primetime newscasts, but with Nightline rumored to be going HD in September, can the big newscast be far behind?

Last time I mentioned the problems HD newscasts have in getting HD location footage to complement their studio shots. This Broadcasting & Cable article goes further into efforts to improve the situation (some interesting Weather Channel info included). Wrapping up the news-related news is this piece on HD and election coverage.

Other areas than news are also converting to HD, with the syndication market getting a boost when Dr. Phil goes HD on September 8th. And CBS (an early leader in HD football) will finally have all NFL games available in HD for the 2008-2009 season (compare this to France, which won't even get Olympic HD coverage).

One area (retransmission rights) that has been quiet lately is generating some new stories. LIN Broadcasting came very close to pulling their stations from Charter, but settled in the end (they also reached agreement with DirecTV). And CBS's Les Moonves (who has that very popular NFL programing mentioned above available as a bargaining chip if need be) has been talking about the subject recently.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - The pace of channel adds seemed to moderate a bit in the last month, with only one double-digit add I know of, Cox's addition of 11 channels in the Topeka, Kansas area. Cox was also busy elsewhere, with adds in Virginia, Florida, Louisiana and Rhode Island (with Lifetime and Bravo being the additions less likely to be seen in competing lineups). Comcast in Houston also added something not seen everywhere - a MyNetworkTV affiliate (something that will probably become more common when Smackdown debuts on the network this fall. Meanwhile, Dish continued to expand its local coverage with a clutch of stations owned by Tribune Broadcasting.

Of course, to add channels you have to have the capacity to do so, and that goal continues to be the focus of providers everywhere. Dish has a new satellite thought to be going up sometime this summer, and DirecTV's new bird (which should expand their national HD channel capacity to 150) is in orbit and being tested (and should be operational sometime in September). These moves leave cable playing a perpetual game of catch-up. How best to play that game? One strategy growing in popularity is to cut back the space devoted to analog. You can do this a few channels at a time (as Comcast has just done in the D.C. area, and will be doing it again in Greater Boston on 7/15 and Pittsburgh some time in July), or you can go all out (as RCN is doing in Boston) and eliminate analog altogether. This approach risks alienating "legacy" subscribers, but the gradualist approach has its problems as well. For instance, you may have to make up for fewer HD channels by basing a marketing campaign around the idea that people care more about VOD choices than linear channels. Does anyone outside Comcast's marketing department take this at all seriously? Perhaps they don't even buy it themselves, as they have their own plans to replace analog (starting with 20% of their footprint in the fourth quarter) and give customers who don't want the whole "digital cable" package a small digital adaptor box (similar in concept to the adaptor boxes over-the-air viewers are attaching to their analog sets). It will be interesting to see how many channels are offered with that. Verizon eliminated analog recently, and that probably had something to do with their recent announcement of 60 new channels (25 in HD) rolling out over the next few months.

Another way to do it is through Switched Digital Video (a technology which sends a channel only when you need it, instead of cramming everything in the system into the pipe going to your house) - Time Warner has been known to use it, which may underly their recent claim to have 63 HD channels (not everywhere 'tho; they only have 16 in Los Angeles, one of the media capitals of the country). But that has its problems too - TiVo and CableCARD customers can't see the channels you've assigned to SDV. But at least for TiVo customers there is now a "tuning adaptor" to allow them to see those channels. Cox will be providing them at no cost to their TiVo customers. You can see it in action here. Longer term, there's the more-efficient compression codec MPEG-4 catching on, but there will have to be a whole lot of equipment switched out before that effects the practical capacity of your local system.

No updates on the legal matters I reported last time (involving Comcast with both AT&T in Chicago, IL and the municipal utility in Chattanooga, TN), but we have some new developments in the ongoing struggle between Dish and TiVo over the latter's DVR patents. Dish has filed a new lawsuit asking a Delaware court to rule that they are no longer infringing on TiVo's patents and do not have to disable all their current DVRs. However, a prominent analyst (Sanford Bernstein's Craig Moffat) thinks that Dish is potentially risking billions by continuing the struggle. Sounds like they can't get their new Sling-enabled DVRs out there soon enough. Also getting into it with Dish is the recently-dumped VOOM Networks, claiming breach of contract and more than $1 billion in damages.

There was no franchising news last month, but we now have some updates on situations we reported on two months ago. At that time, Louisiana and Tennessee were both considering statewide franchising. Since then, the Louisiana bill (which exempts certain municipalities with home-rule provisions, such as New Orleans) is headed to the governor's desk, and the Tennessee bill has actually been signed into law. Also at that time, Verizon was seeking a city-wide franchise in New York City, and has since won the approval of the Franchise and Concession Review Committee (not the end of the process, 'tho).

While not otherwise occupied expanding their lineups, suing or being sued and trying to remove municipal oversight over their operations, the big providers actually get around to doing other things once in awhile. Sometimes they can even co-operate, as when the "Big 6" cablecos (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House Networks) recently made an agreement with Sony to implement tru2way as a joint standard for two-way interactive products used with digital cable and TVs (sure to be popular with the "I don't want a box" crowd). This was followed not long after with the same agreement being adopted with five other consumer-electronics companies (ADB, Digeo, Intel, Panasonic and Samsung). Comcast later submitted a copy of this agreement (which details matters such as rules for navigation screens, opt-out provisions and other matters) to the FCC.

Individual providers were busy as well. Comcast will be giving more focus to its top markets by dropping more than 40 smaller ones. Time Warner, meanwhile, is dropping its cable unit altogether (although apparently it will still be called Time Warner Cable). AT&T addressed a shortcoming of its U-Verse service by introducing the ability to record one HD channel while watching another (in certain areas), and is currently involved in a dispute with the state of Connecticut over the rules for installing its large V-RAD cabinets on public rights of way.

Non-traditional providers also made some news. TiVo's Comcast rollout is expanding (I'm still waiting for better news from posters who have it currently), they will be offering 24-hours rentals of Disney movies (some in HD), and are bundling their TiVo HD DVR with Mitsubishi TVs on Amazon. The VUDU service keeps on plugging away, and has now secured some retail space at Best Buy. And now Netflix has gotten into the act, with a $99 box from Roku, giving you access (through your Internet connection) to 10,000 movie/TV titles. And that's a one-time charge - after that, the content is free to Netflix customers without affecting the number of DVDs they can get. Alas, no HD available at launch, although the head of Roku says the device is capable of delivering it. Finally, a reminder that not all new ideas are successful ideas - Virtual Digital Cable, formed to deliver a full cable television service to your computer monitor, has shut down.

HD NETWORKS - Last time I speculated that the slight uptick of new channel launches and announcements (three launches and four announcements) might have something to do with the impending September activation of a new DirecTV satellite (and the fifty-some new HD slots it's supposed to bring). There was a bit less activity this time, so maybe I spoke too soon. There was just one launch - Planet Green, whose SD side simply replaced Discovery Home in channel lineups but whose new HD companion only has Time Warner (New York and San Antonio markets) and Cablevision on board at the present time. There are also only three announcements (although one of these is for multiple channels).
The big one (at least in terms of numbers) was the addition of eight of Showtime's channels in August, followed by another 10 in the first quarter of '09. But it's probably not that big in terms of immediate impact - HBO now has 26 HD feeds, but how many have been seen outside of the control room? Even DirecTV only runs the East and West feeds of the main HBO channel (Starz has had more success in getting DirecTV slots for its expanded HD lineup). Eventually SD cable will wither away and the HD feeds will become the default offering, but I wouldn't expect to see too many of these in your living room in the near future. Much more likely to show up there is E! Entertainment HD, which debuts in December. Given that it's owned by Comcast, distribution shouldn't be too much of a problem. The other announcement concerns TV One (a channel geared toward African Americans), which will debut its HD simulcast in the fourth quarter.

Some recently-launched channels made headway. MGM HD now has agreements with Dish, Comcast and Time Warner, and QVC HD has just signed its first agreements (with larger carriers expected by year-end). And while it's natural to focus on what's new or forthcoming, let's not completely forget about the established channels. One that's just hanging on to that status is the VOOM family, who only have one major domestic carrier left (Cablevision), and that contract expires soon. While the programming may be too "niche" for many I personally would like to see VOOM stick around in some form to help represent the concept of all-HD specialist programming. Perhaps they could manage that by shrinking down to one or two channels, as they do for overseas distribution, where they just picked up a new customer (Canal Digitaal in the Netherlands) and added an HD VOD service. Two others expanded their HD hours, as The Weather Channel finally began broadcasting from their new HD studio, and Fox Sports Net (representing 16 regional sports channels) announced that they will broadcast their entire lineup in the format by Q1 of 2009. Finally, I just want to recognize one particular program, and congratulate Discovery Channel on the great job they've done on When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions. While some of the historical film shows its age, I have never seen the spacewalk and lunar rover footage look anywhere near as good as I did when watching this.

MANUFACTURERS - The primaries are over, and Blu-ray is the nominee of the HDM (high-def media) party. But the HDM vs. DVD general election campaign could go on for years and years. DVD certainly has a massive lead in the polls so far. But things are beginning to look up - Blu-ray's weekly share of disc sales recently cracked double digits for the first time (at 10%) before dropping back down (it was 7% for the most recent week, but that's still ahead of where things were a month before). Other indications of better days ahead for the format - expanded retail presence at Wal-Mart, Borders and Target, addition of Blu-ray discs to rental-kiosk machines (at no additional charge, I might add), the return of previously deleted Paramount titles, unexpectedly high sales for some PBS discs (which feature footage you might remember from the old "demo loop" days of the PBS HD Channel) and a decision by Warner Brothers to focus less on theatrical releases and more on building acceptance for Blu-ray and VOD. And the format is even pulling ahead in a key demographic (following link via Engadget HD) - high-end retailers (such as Crutchfield) expect Blu-ray decks to outsell DVD machines as early as August (please note I said "high-end retailers"; no one is expecting this to happen at Best Buy anytime soon). OK, I've extended that particular metaphor about as far as I care to.

Besides the Paramount titles listed above, there was some other disc news of note. One of the often-seen complaints about the format concerns the high prices of the discs themselves, so Blu-Ray Only's plan to release classic films for $12 a pop should offer some welcome relief to the real film buffs out there, and hopefully point the way to more reasonably-priced releases in the future. Also adding to the variety of available titles is Blue Underground's slate of horror films with cult appeal (two of their first six releases are directed by Dario Argento). And while TV shows on Blu-ray are no longer news, I hope we can agree that the eye-popping color palette of Pushing Daisies will make this an especially-appropriate release come September.

Speaking as we did above of reasonable prices, Best Buy house-brand Insignia dipped below the $400 recent standard price with its $349 player, which is sold with a $100 coupon book of disc savings. Depending on how much use you get out of those coupons, that may or may not be a better deal than the $298 Funai/Magnavox/Sylvania deck discussed last month. Looking ahead, it'll be interesting to see just how much effect a new integrated circuit from Matushita (that replaces four current ones) will have in reducing prices.

But there are still challenges and caution signs ahead. One of the things that is slowing adoption of Blu-ray among HDTV owners is the existence of affordable upconverting players, and now Toshiba is looking to get back some of their lost mojo with a new DVD player that they claim will provide a picture close to that of high-def. This should happen within six months, and we'll be looking to see just how close they're talking about (link via Engadget HD). And even further ahead is a challenge to all physical media, that of digital downloads. But just how far ahead? It's true that Blockbuster is taking a significant step in that direction by installing download kiosks in their stores, but their chief rival Netflix feels that DVD and Blu-ray will stick around for the next 20 years, although they may peak sometime in the next ten.

And here I thought I'd be writing a lot less about this once the format war was over!

So let's wrap this up by getting to the other hardware news. In the PROVIDERS section I mentioned an agreement that would spread the adoption of the tru2way standard, and looking around it certainly seems that there's a lot more product around lately. Two of the parties to that agreement were showing off equipment at the recent Cable Show; Samsung had a tru2way DVR, STBs and an LCD TV, and ADB showed off their STB (aimed at providers rather direct to the public). However, the tru2way products of another of the signees (Panasonic) are apparently not ready for prime time. Another technology sure to change TV is net-connectivity; Sharp has a product in Japan that will eventually make it to the U.S., and Yahoo! Japan has just provided it with a web portal formatted for 1920 x 1080.

Display technologies continued to rise and fall. Sony's OLED is still getting a lot of attention, with Sony recently showing off a small panel that is only 0.33 millimeter thick, and aiming to move up to medium/large panels in their 2009 fiscal year (which runs from April 2009 to March 2010). Anyone know which fiscal year will see this technology in sets that the average person can afford? More detail on Sony's thinking is available from this CNET transcript of a conversation between Sony CEO Howard Stringer and technology journalist Walt Mossberger. Meanwhile, Phillips is looking to get out of the plasma business - could it be because LCD outsold plasma 8-1 worldwide in the first quarter of this year?

Here's an interesting idea I really wish someone else had come up with. This unusual 46-inch HDTV will double as a display of digital art (complete with picture frame) when it's introduced later this year. The downside - all the art is by the relentlessly quaint Thomas Kinkaid. One more note on current displays - you may have noticed that Vizio always seems able to undercut makers of similar sets by $100-200. Could part of this possibly be attributed to their failure to play licensing fees to the patent holders of video compression technology, as five larger set makers allege in a recent lawsuit?

A good way to end is by looking ahead, and this month brings some more news on HDTV's eventual successor, NHK's Super Hi-Vision system. NHK (Japan's public television network) recently showed off a new 33MP image sensor that will do the work of four previous ones, but the big news is that NHK will be teaming up with the BBC for an actual transmission test this September at the IBC technology show taking place in Amsterdam (thanks again to Engadget HD for the link). This technology is still years away from deployment, so no need to start budgeting for it yet.

That's all I have for now!

What's Up In Wilmington? It's Now Just THREE Months to the Transition Test.

2008-06-08T19:32:00.011-04:00

Today is June 8th, which means that there are only three months remaining until Wilmington, N.C. becomes the first TV market in the country to run a full test (other than two stations, see below) of the digital transition. It's also been one month since that was announced (and covered just about everywhere). So what's happened since?

It doesn't appear that all that much has happened yet. However, it was learned early on that FCC representatives will meet with government and community groups in the areas affected to help smooth the path. The linked article also implies that there may be other small tests sites announced later. An official of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (Anthony G. Wilhelm, their director of consumer education and public information) has already visited.

The online edition of The Star-News, Wilmington's daily newspaper, has also set up a page summarizing the situation as of May 30th. One of the matters dealt with there is the concern over the fact that this is happening during hurricane season (and the possibility that the FCC might postpone this if there was imminent danger at the time). This concern is why public station WUNJ-TV (part of the UNC-TV network) is sitting the test out (they're the official source for emergency info). The linked article in the second paragraph above also mentions the concern that an important past source of emergency info (battery-operated sets) will no longer function (although it occurs to me that they should still be able to get WUNJ).

According to Wilmington's Wikipedia entry, low-power station W47CK will also not participate (they're not required to, as LP stations are exempt from the transition) although their fellow LP stations WILM-LP and W51CW will be taking part.

That's all the solid news I have on this story for now. I expect to have more to report at this time next month.

UPDATE - I inadvertently left out what will become a crucial source of locally-generated info - wilmingtondtv.com

Nine Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-05-31T21:58:00.003-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than nine months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 26th of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players (laid out in my first few posts) in this story. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 4/18 and 5/17. Major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE, Broadcasting & Cable and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - Since I've been doing these monthly updates, this section has relied on a multitude of surveys to try to get a bead on the public's knowledge and readiness for the changes to come. But soon we're going to get information of a more direct nature, as Wilmington, N.C. becomes the nation's first transition test market, with all major stations (except for public station UNC-TV) turning off their analog signals on September 8, less than four months from now. Being neither a large urban area or rural and isolated (and with a smaller-than-average percentage of over-the-air viewers), this small city should have an easier go of it than many other areas (even given that they'll have less time to prepare). So smooth sailing here should not be cause for too much complacency, while any significant problems ought to be taken as a major wake-up call. As I mentioned in my May 8th post, I'd like to see at least one large city do a test like this, and now that I think of it a test in a rural area further from the transmission towers might be useful as well. We'll keep checking back on this one.

Smaller, more modest tests were also announced. Eleven Florida stations are planning a joint series of three several-second blackouts (only seen on the analog channels) accompanied by information on how to avoid a permanent blackout. They were beaten to the punch by one Las Vegas station, which has already done something similar (link via Engadget HD).

While most stations aren't conducting tests, they seem to be flooding the airwaves with "Are You Ready for DTV?"-type ads (remember, these will become even more frequent starting in October). But there are still other things that could be done to get the word out, and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) thinks that its high time that the President himself got involved.

GOVERNMENT - As we've been doing lately, we'll start off with news of the most visible transition-related government initiative, the converter-box program. Last time I mentioned that the new head of the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) had stated that they had mailed out about 6 million of the 33.5 million coupons the current program calls for. Now we have news from the Commerce Department that over one million of these have been used. Given that these coupons expire in 90 days, it would seem that a lot of coupons need to be cashed in posthaste. So what happens to those who procrastinate? Can they reapply? Right now, the NTIA refuses to say whether or not they can.

There was news concerning other government mandates as well. Last July, cable companies had to start using CableCARD-enabled set-top boxes (in order to separate security functions from the rest of the hardware in the box, thus allowing third parties to offer alternative boxes that could work with cable service). This coming July, it's the telcos' (e.g. Verizon, AT&T) turn. Meanwhile, an appeal by Comcast to exempt certain of their boxes from the existing mandate was rejected by a federal appeals court. Also having business before an appeals court were six cable programming companies urging the court to overturn the FCC mandate requiring cable operators to provide both the analog and digital signals of must-carry stations (unless the provider has switched to all-digital) after the transition (currently for three years, with extensions possible). This, of course, because additional bandwidth given over to analog signals reduces the bandwidth available to their own channels.

In other government news, the ongoing dispute between FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and both Congress and the cable industry continued on. A Senate committee rebuked the FCC over recent rules allowing concentration of media ownership in the same market (i.e. the extent to which broadcasters and newspapers can own each other in said market), and Rep. John Dingell's (D-Mich) investigation of Martin's management practices could be headed to a hearing in June. Meanwhile, Chairman Martin stands firm on one of the most contentious issues between him and the larger cable companies, that of a la carte, and has a new idea (based on the rates that cable networks charge per customer) that could shrink the size of expanded basic tiers. (I specifically mention larger cable companies as being in opposition because smaller companies with less bandwidth are more receptive to gaining the ability to cherry-pick just the most popular channels from distributors that currently offer them in bundles with less-desired ones.)

One more group with business before the FCC was the film industry, who are petitioning the FCC to lift the ban preventing cable and satellite companies from disabling customers' analog outputs when playing their protected content, offering earlier VOD release dates as an incentive.

BROADCASTING - While the conversion of local newscasts to HD had slowed to an inexplicable crawl last time, it was a very different story in the last month, with nine new additions by my count, bringing the total up to about 90. Others are prepping for the change later this year. But it's one thing to have your studio broadcasting your snazzy new set in beautiful HD, it's another to get your location crews set up to actually send you HD from the field. The slowness of this conversion-within-a-conversion is partly related to the need for new microwave equipment, as explained here. Field cameras are also an area that has been slow to change, but the pace is accelerating. There were also developments on the national Sunday morning news front, with ABC's This Week going HD and Fox News Sunday expected to follow suit in August (it's currently shot in widescreen SD, though some have mistaken it for HD). NBC's Meet The Press will be going next year, but no plans have been announced for CBS's Face The Nation.

News is not the only area of broadcasting where programming is converting to HD - the syndication market got a big boost with announcements regarding Entertainment Tonight and its sister show The Insiders (going in September) and The Ellen DeGeneres Show (starting Monday, September 8th).

The most recent edition of National Association of Broadcasters' NAB Show was the last of the analog era (assuming the current dates remain in place), and while trying to snap up any remaining equipment they need to finish their transition implementation plans, many attendees were already looking past the transition to new areas of interest such as mobile DTV. For the sake of comparison, note that analog isn't going anywhere soon in Taiwan, where HD is still getting off the ground.

Back in November, I posted info about HD transmissions from the moon (via Japan's KAYUGA satellite), even though thats not quite "broadcasting" in the sense we use here. Anyway, I thought you might want to see the latest batch, which are even cooler.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - More continuity than change this month, as various providers continue to bring their lagging markets the channels previously seen in high-bandwidth areas, resulting in double-digit additions in places like the Oregon/SW Washington area, Panama City, Florida and Northwest Arkansas, among others. For those Comcast markets that were already up to date, the most common additions were the trio of Disney, ABC Family and Science Channel (the latter being the only one that I have high HD-experience expectations for in the near term). However, this good news doesn't apply to everyone - there are still towns out there with no HD at all.

But these expanded lineups pale before those currently available on satellite, with DirecTV currently having the lead. Competitor Dish Networks briefly attained parity (95) in national channels by adding 22, a fact which they announced with a press release. And it was actually true for the few hours between the time they added the new channels and the time they removed first 10 and then all 15 of the VOOM channels (after earlier moving VOOM to a less-popular tier) . Oddly enough, the fact that they now only had 80 HD channels was apparently not considered to be worth a press release of its own.

I guess that's the sort of thing that can happen when you're under the gun to increase capacity (Dish is on record as attributing slow subscriber growth to their less-robust HD offering). With another DirecTV satellite supposed to be operational around September, the pressure is just going to get worse, even though Dish has more satellites going up this year and others scheduled as far out as 2010. Cable and telco providers have even more severe problems in that area, as they can't just add capacity at will via new satellites. Yet the need to expand both linear channel and HD VOD capacity is undeniable, as providers trumpet their success in signing up more and more HD customers. This Multichannel News article takes an extended look at the tools (SDV, analog reclamation, MPEG-4, etc.) many providers are using or planning to use in the near future. As an example of one of those methods, Cablevision is doing some analog reclamation in May and June (Comcast will be doing some here in New England in mid-July). In addition, Verizon continues to eliminate analog altogether (as was mentioned last time), doing so in Massachusetts on May 12.

That was not that hard for Verizon, which has been primarily a digital provider from the beginning. Eliminating analog for companies with a large base of change-resistant "legacy" customers will be a different matter entirely. Years and years of relentless marketing have finally put digital cable customers in the majority, but many millions are still holding on to their good old it-aint-broke service. How to get those folks to come over without alienating them forever (once you have to have an STB, you might just start to think about whose STB you'd rather have)? One way is to make the transition as invisible as possible. A few months ago I mentioned that Comcast was interested in a cheap DTA (Digital Terminal Adapter) that would not require a box. Plans seem to changed a bit in the meantime, as they (among others) seem to have settled on a DTA that will come in the form of a bare-bones box similar to the converter boxes for over-the-air viewers (but with a cable tuner instead on ATSC tuner). It's still a box, but is designed to come as close to the analog experience as possible. We'll see how that one goes over.

We always have some legal matters to report between various providers. Comcast and AT&T have been getting into it in the Chicago area, with AT&T alleging false advertising (implying that many more U-Verse customers would have to put with large utility boxes on their property than is actually the case) and Comcast countersuing over alleged network interference due to faulty U-Verse installs. Comcast is also suing the municipal utility in Chattanooga over their competitive fiber-to-the-home product, alleging unfair advantage and a proposal that does not accurately state costs that would have to be subsidized by the ratepayers.

One thing digital technology has done has been to open the market for video services to companies other than the traditional providers. Apple, for instance, who recently announced the ability to buy movies on iTunes on the same date as their DVD release, as well the ability to buy movies directly on Apple TV (previously, you could only rent, with purchased movies having to be synced from ITunes). iTunes is also adding other content, such as shows from BBC America. Another non-traditional player is Amazon, whose Unbox service will be able to deliver HD content to broadband-connected TiVos "in the not too distant future". Even the PS3 is getting into the act, with a video download service that could start this summer. Finally, a new startup called Sezmi is planning to offer a service cobbled together from over-the-air, IPTV and Web video content, which it plans to offer through smaller telcos who currently lack the ability to offer services to compete with Verizon and AT&T. Sounds, um, complicated.

HD NETWORKS - Things have been pretty quiet in the area of new channel launches and announcements lately, but I'm seeing some acceleration this month, and I have an idea as to why. If you think back to last September, the launch of a new DirecTV satellite caused an explosion of new HD channels (although many have had little actual HD to offer), and thus it's no surprise that the supply of new channels began to dry up when that new satellite began to fill up. With another 50 or so slots opening up at DirecTV this September, we may be about to see a new wave of activity. So we saw three launches this month - two domestic (QVC, which "launched" without any carriage agreements, and Fox News, which launched on Time Warner) and one foreign (HBO Ole, which launched in Argentina), as well as four new-channel announcements.

The biggest attention-getter was the yet-unnamed premium channel backed by Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate, which intends to launch next year. This is a direct shot at Showtime, which currently gets most of its movies from the three studios involved, and who will be losing that content in two years. But Showtime's Stu Zakim claims not to be worried, and the real upshot of all this may be to force Showtime to concentrate even more on the original series that provide most of its hits these days. Another new channel launching next year is the Black Television News Channel. Two other channel groups expanded their portfolios, with A&E (A&E, Biography, History) adding Crime and Investigaton HD in the fourth quarter, and Starz Entertainment reviving Encore HD (which it started and then had to drop several years ago due to lack of provider interest) in July.

Existing channels were also doing a bit of expanding (of their HD content), with MHD (which has sought to combine the music-related programming from MTV, VH1 and CMT) now adding music programming (in the form of a Scissor Sisters concert) from the gay-themed Logo channel, while the Weather Channel debuts its new HD studio set. And some other channels are expanding their reach, with National Geograpic HD launching in Austria and Switzerland as well as Germany (where MHD is also bound). Meanwhile, a couple of recent entrants expanded their audiences, as Cox agreed to carry Lifetime HD and Lifetime Movie Network HD and Comcast signed an agreement for MGM HD.

MANUFACTURERS - Not much mopping up left to do from the recent HDM (high-def media) format war - according to this site there are just four more HD DVD titles left to be released. Yet more information on the effect HD DVD has had on Toshiba's bottom line has come to light - first-quarter profits are down 95% on a year-over-year basis.

The ongoing struggle is that between HDM (represented by Blu-ray) and DVD, and these figures show that we are still in the very early innings of this one. Two recent reports (one focusing on price, the other on consumers' basic satisfaction with current DVDs and upconverting players) from ABI Research suggest that Blu-ray will be slow to win consumers over - people just don't think the difference (especially with an upconverting player) is worth the current price. More evidence - a poll from Harris Interactive says that only nine percent of consumers plan to buy a Blu-ray player in the next year. Even Blu-ray backer Disney (who will be adding a bunch of interactive features to its re-release of Sleeping Beauty) recognizes the need to lower prices. On that front, we're just starting to see a move to lower hardware prices, like this $298 Funai deck (marketed under the Magnavox, and Sylvania names) available at Wal-Mart. However, retailers are reluctant to do so for discs, at least until demand picks up (hey retailers - I can think of something that will boost that demand). And Netflix isn't exactly helping with their plan to raise subscription fees for Blu-ray customers. Still, you can't deny that there's been substantial progress - first-quarter disc sales are up 351% year-over-year.

Another thing that should contribute to more demand is an increase the in range of releases available, and we're seeing some signs of that. Paramount (an ex-HD DVD exclusive studio) has finally gotten their release program underway. One of the things that helped HD DVD disc sales remain as competitive as they did during the war was catalog titles, which makes the Blu-ray debut of the Criterion Collection of film classics very welcome news (not to mention the same-as-SD pricing!). Musician Neil Young has a novel use for the format - he's going to release his entire music archive on it. And the indie studios are starting to be heard as well. So perhaps the Bernstein Research prediction that sees Blu-ray in 25% of American homes within three years isn't all that far off.

Turning to other hardware news, everyone's talking about the OLED display technology, even though it's currently only known for very small screens at very large prices. But the quality is such that every twist and turn on the road to larger displays at reasonable prices will continue to get attention. Already, last month's prediction that it will take four years to get to that point is being challenged by Samsung (2009-2010), Sumitomo (the same) and LG Displays (2011). But we also heard the first discouraging word, in the form of a DisplaySearch report that said that the set it tested began to lose it's brightness after only 1,000 hours (and a full 50% of said brightness after 17,000 hours). This rave review (link via Engadget HD) from Consumer Reports doesn't mention the problem, but also doesn't mention if they tested for it.

Near the other end of the mass-adoption curve are HDTVs overall - according to Magid Associates, 5.5 million U.S. households bought one for the first time over the holiday/Superbowl period. Somewhere between the two in terms of adoption is the HD camcorder, which seems to be really taking off right about now.

One last note, with the public only becoming aware of DTV in the last few years, you wouldn't think that people have been laying the groundwork for all of this for 25 years, but it's true. The ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) recently gathered to celebrate this anniversary, reminisce about the early years of doubt and struggle and look ahead to new advances such as mobile DTV.

That's all I have for now!

In Wilmington, NC, It's Just FOUR Months and Counting!

2008-05-08T16:16:00.002-04:00

This cannot wait for the next monthly update.

It may be nine months and nine days until the digital TV transition hits nationwide, but the residents of Wilmington, NC will be waking up in that future more than five months ahead of schedule, as the city has signed up to be the first transition test market with a "go" date of September 8, 2008, just four months from now. While results there may not be totally representative of what you might expect to happen in a large urban area (as a market, Wilmington ranks 135th of 210 nationwide, and the 7.4% of viewers that rely on over-the-air TV is well below the national average), we should get a lot of important data as to what kind of problems various demographic groups experience, as well as some insight into the extent of potential reception glitches.

Once the data is in and any necessary adjustments to the overall plan have been made, I hope that at least one large city can get up and running a couple of months before 2/17/09. In the meantime, we'll be watching Wilmington.

10 Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-05-01T21:49:00.002-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than 10 months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 25th of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players (laid out in my first few posts) in this story, meaning that we have gone just over two-thirds of the distance that remained when I started this blog in March of 2006. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 3/18 and 4/17.).As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - Last time, I was disparaging current public education campaigns, pointing out that I hadn't even seen repeats of those DTV Answers spots lately. Well, at least that much has changed. As I mentioned last time, April 1st was the scheduled date for a notable increase in the number of transition-related ads, as well as the introduction of screen crawls. And despite the flexibility the FCC has given local broadcasters in scheduling these in less-valuable (and less-watched) timeslots, I have definitely seen a lot more ads (and a few screen crawls) in the last few weeks. In fact, even HD broadcast channels (whose viewers are likely to be set for the changeover) have had screen crawls. Personally, I find the scrawls very hard to ignore (I suspect those of us who already know this info are going to get very tired of them, even more so starting in October, when the frequency is scheduled to increase). However, opinions are divided over the effectiveness of current spots (and the need to do more), as shown by comments made at the recent Washington Forum sponsored by the Consumer Electronic Association (CEA), as well as at the National Association of Broadcasters' annual NAB Show. I'd say it's better to air on the side of caution - I'd rather be a bit annoyed than have additional millions caught by surprise. So it's good (despite what seemed like rather complacent comments last time from CEA head Gary Shapiro) that the organization is making other efforts to spread the word, such as the information session they hosted along with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and RadioShack, or their senior-targeted "Convert Your Mom" campaign. For a look at some others trying to spread awareness, check out the webcasts accessible from this list of FCC DTV Consumer Education Workshops (thanks to Cymon for the tip).

As far as current public awareness goes, a new Magid Associates study shows that roughly 6 in 10 Americans are aware of the transition, up from 34 percent last September. However, as pointed out a couple of months ago, quality of information is at least as important as quantity, so I'd be curious to see a bit more detail concerning what those 6 in 10 actually know. And knowledge does not automatically give one the ability to take action. Last month's update contained a notable comment concerning the impact of these changes on elderly people with limited resources. Then there are over-the-air viewers who live in "challenging" reception areas, people who might be used to so-so analog reception but who will fall on the "nothing" side of DTV's all-or-nothing reception equation. How many people might we be looking at there? This study says up to 9.2 million (and I couldn't help noticing that Boston is considered to be one of the more vulnerable areas).

GOVERNMENT - Right now, the main transition-related government initiative is the converter-box program administered by the NTIA. The new head of the NTIA says the converter-box program is working just fine (they appear to have mailed out about 6 million of the 33.5 million coupons the current program calls for). But this is another area where it's important that people be given correct info, as is demonstrated by this Engadget HD shopping trip (the short version; the local Best Buy and RadioShack came out ahead when it came to checking to see if the customer actually needed the box in the first place). It also helps if the boxes actually work well, (unlike this GE model) so check out the comments section of this Engadget HD post for some user reviews of boxes.

The other big story is the auction of the old analog-TV spectrum, results of which (after 261 rounds!) were finally released. This article from Multichannel News runs down the winners. Google was one of the bidders, but confirmed what many suspected - they were only bidding on a particular slice of spectrum (known as the C block) in order to push the bidding beyond the $4.6 billion mark necessary to activate open access rules for that spectrum (you see, Google has its own mobile platform in the works...). Someplace else Google would like to see utilized for mobile use after the transition is the "white space" between TV stations, but broadcasters are not thrilled with this idea.

Government was also busy in the area of carriage requirements. The FCC cut satellite providers and small cable operators a significant amount of slack, with satcasters being allowed to roll out their carriage of HD locals over a four-year period after the transition, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is now proposing that small cable operators be exempted from the requirement to carry both digital and analog versions of must-carry stations (they can just downconvert to analog and carry only that). As for the latter, it may help smaller systems manage their bandwidth, but not having HD after February of next year will surely make a provider look "small time" in more ways than one, especially when satcasters offer service everywhere, as this article points out.

Waivers were granted to small operators in another area as well, as two companies were allowed to bypass the CableCARD mandate and deploy old-style set-top boxes with integrated security features instead. They may not be the last! (At the same time, CableCARD-enabled set-tops passed the four-million-deployed mark.) The FCC was a bit less forgiving as regards another mandate, the one requiring consumer warning labels on any analog TVs that still remain on the shelves, slapping millions of dollars in fines on retailers such as Sears, K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Circuit City. Surprisingly, Best Buy also got hit - when I was researching my series on the tuner mandate last year, my local Best Buy was the first store I saw with no analog TVs at all. BTW, those tuner mandates just got tougher, with labeling now required on tuner-less monitors and other devices such as DVD recorders.

There was also news in other, less transition-related areas. Mostly these concerned the FCC's struggles with Congress and cable companies, over issues like media concentration (the FCC is trying to loosen the ownership rules), a la carte (Chairman Martin wants it, over the objections of broadcasters, providers and a number of lawmakers), net neutrality (one area where I do agree with the FCC) and signal carriage (the NFL Network is complaining over their treatment by Comcast).

With all of this, it's important to remember that it's not just analog TV that's going away next year, so is this administration (and presumably its political appointees). So cable, at least, is looking forward to better times ahead, and is determined to ride out the remainder of Chairman Martin's term.

BROADCASTING - The conversion of local news operations to HD continued at a crawl - I actually only have one example to offer this time out (however, it's looking like things will be considerably different next time). So instead of more examples, I thought you might enjoy this interview with Sterling Davis of Cox Television, whose company has already converted seven of their local stations. On the national level, ABC's This Week became the first Sunday morning news show (Fox's Sunday morning show is in widescreen SD) to announce its intention to go HD - their first HD broadcast was a couple of days after our close.

Outside of news, a fair number of shows announced forthcoming HD conversions. One of the biggest SD holdouts is the reality genre, so it's notable that Survivor (the most popular show in that genre) is now onboard for a fall HD debut (shooting this summer). Other shows on the way include Sesame Street, Cops (currently in Fox Widescreen) and Oprah.

I wrote last month about the dismal experience of watching my local PBS station drop the PBS HD Channel for a simulcast with very little HD (although that did mean I finally got to see The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in HD). Thankfully, I can now report that with the end of the latest pledge period a few days a week now have a decent amount of HD in primetime. Also upping their amount of HD programming - regional sports networks (AKA RSNs) and the forthcoming Summer Olympics.

With The Day drawing so close, local stations and the broadcast groups representing them had a lot to do at the recent NAB Show - here's a look at how six major groups are preparing.

One of the downsides of all this to viewers sticking with analog TVs after the transition is that they will be seeing a lot of downconverted digital programming, which may mean a lot more letterboxed shows than some people want to see. This may explain why ABC's 10 owned-and-operated stations will continue to offer an analog feed to cable companies, for at least a year after 2/17/09.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - The big story in this section (everyone else's attempts to stay competitive with DirecTV's HD offerings) continues to be the big story (and will probably be so for some time to come). As we saw last time, channels are now being added in great big chunks. Most of these are designed to bring lagging areas up to the standard previously seen in high-bandwidth regions, but there are also a few channels that are new to cable (such as Disney, Toon Disney and ABC Family), or U-Verse's introduction of HBO2 HD, HBO Comedy HD and HBO Family HD.

Of course, you can only go so far in this direction without doing something to add capacity.Dish's attempts to add capacity via a new satellite have run into some problems, as that satellite (AMC-14) was declared a total loss. Despite this, Dish is saying that their HD rollout plans are on track, and in fact they have been adding a few national channels as well as expanding their coverage of local broadcast channels. The only way I can make sense of this is to assume that the HD plans they're referring to involve what they can do with the remaining capacity on their existing satellites, and that they will have to wait for the next two satellites to take a real run at DirecTV. The problem there is that DirecTV's recent satellite launch was a success, and they now have plans to expand capacity to 150 national channels by September. So good luck to everyone else!

Cable doesn't have the option of adding capacity via something like a satellite, and providers have been trying various methods to compensate. The links I gave above for channel adds don't say, but I suspect that technologies like Switched Digital Video (SDV) are coming into play with at least some of them. One other way Comcast has been doing it is to squeeze three channels (rather than the usual two) into a 6Mz channel, and this study shows that the resulting bitrates are noticeably lower than those of Verizon. People must be noticing, or Verizon would not be exploiting the situation with these recent commercials. Given the recent survey that finds operators citing video quality as one of the top causes of viewer complaints, this doesn't seem to be a very wise course of action on Comcast's part. I mentioned SDV above, and that method carries its own problems. For instance, Cablevision customers using a CableCARD connection can no longer see the Voom channels, which are going SDV. Even worse, many CableCARD-enabled TVs (unless they use TiVo with the upcoming "tuning resolver") may never support SDV.

Another way to get more HD bandwidth is to reclaim space from analog, which Verizon is doing. I have to confess that I didn't realize Verizon had any analog to get rid of in the first place, but apparently it's designed for additional TVs in the household - or was. And then there's IPTV (the IP standing for Internet Protocol), whose worldwide subscriber base is expected to increase 52% a year through 2012. One thing that will speed that along is this prepackaged content/equipment solution for providers, from the partnership of Avail Media and Motorola.

Last time I mentioned Cox's goal of 80 channels by year's end, and here's a bit more on that. Another expansive forecast is Time Warner's 100 channels prediction for New York and New Jersey by year's end (they have 50 now, pretty good for cable). However providers get the job done, they'll need all that capacity and more if we start to see 1080P channels in a few years time.

There continued to be legal matters between the various providers. Dish Network's appeal for a rehearing of TiVo's patent-infringement lawsuit was denied by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, but they seem to be prepared to take this one to the Supreme Court. Also denied was Verizon, who were seeking a temporary restraining order to block two Time Warner Cable TV ads that they feel contain false statements about FiOS service.

There was more news on the franchising front, with lawmakers in Louisiana and Tennessee considering state franchising (the Tennessee bill seems to have been put together with AT&T's U-Verse in mind). Meanwhile, Verizon is asking for a city-wide franchise in New York City.

In the area of non-traditional providers, there's some interesting news concerning Blockbuster's plans to compete against Apple TV with its own set-top box. And Eric Feng from Hulu.com comments on the future of HD on the Web here.

HD NETWORKS - It's still fairly quiet on this front, but do have a bit more than last time. As mentioned last-time, ESPNews HD launched, and is currently available on DirecTV (supposedly Dish, Comcast and Time Warner are next). Two other networks launched as well, both aimed directly at the mainstream audience. Hallmark Movie Channel HD's held its launch party in Peoria, Ill. The other launch was Lifetime Television HD, carried by U-Verse and FiOS (Lifetime Movie Network has been in HD for awhile now). There was also a channel announcement, although this one was more of a rebranding, as Discovery Home becomes Planet Green (with an HD simulcast added).

But it not just the number of channels out there that I'm interested in, it's also the amount of actual HD, and in that area, we have taken a step back, as the previously-mentioned simulcasts of Food Network and HGTV have - as feared - resulted in a marked decline in true HD content relative to their all-HD predecessors. And this leads me to wonder about the future of HD
"showcase" channels as the expanding HD viewership becomes more mainstream (and more inclined towards HD versions of the TV brands they already know) every month.

But at least someone still believes in the showcase concept - Clint Stinchcomb of HD Theater, who is profiled here. And the VOOM networks haven't given up, with the Equator HD channel adding new series. And the simulcast problem will eventually grow less severe (as early viewers of ESPN HD can attest) - even widely-derided TBS has begun to add a bit of real HD.

MANUFACTURERS - Mopping-up operations from the recent HDM (high-def media) format war continued, as Toshiba forecast a $665.5 million loss for HD DVD operations in fiscal year 2007. Various retailers tried to make it up to those who bought HD DVD players from them, as Best Buy offered $50 gift cards and Amazon offered $50 in credit, while Wal-Mart went them one better by offering full refunds on players bought after Nov 1st. Other signs of the times including HD DVD discs vanishing from Best Buy, and the departure of Ken Graffeo (former HD DVD Promotional Group head) from his HD marketing position at Universal, though he will still be at the studio (which has now announced its Blu-ray release plans - thanks to Engadget HD for pointing us to this) in some position or other. Still, there is one more piece of hardware to be introduced, a Plextor combo drive (for computers) as well as an update to the Xbox's HD DVD drive.

So how has the resolution of this conflict benefited the winner? So far, Blu-ray disc sales appear to be rising, Sony is pumping new money into disc production, Blockbuster is expanding Blu-ray availability from 1,700 to almost 5,000 stores and analysts forecast that the format will be in 29 million homes worldwide by the end of this year. But as this chart shows, the new struggle against standard DVDs is still in the extremely early stages, with Blu-ray having just four percent market share (it also shows that those vanishing HD DVD discs are still selling better than in any time in recent memory). The other struggle will eventually be with downloads, but that's for the future, according to studios (for one thing, only 5.7M homes have the necessary connections). But there's another possibility - flash memory cards. According to THX's chief scientist, this medium will have enough storage capacity to compete with Blu-ray by the time that format gets to the mass-market level (hmmm... let's ask the studios what they think of this one). In the meantime, look for players to get cheaper and gain new capabilities. Of course, Blu-ray isn't strictly an American phenomenon, so every so often we need to take a look at how things are going worldwide.

Moving on to other hardware news, LCD continued to gain as a display technology as Circuit City reported weak sales for projection and plasma, and Canon joined the list of those who have dropped the rear-projection line completely. We've been covering the first faltering steps of the OLED display technology, and this article points out it will be awhile before reasonably-sized (such as 32 inchers) sets are produced in quantity - think four years. Going in the other direction in terms of size, here's a piece on DTV for mobile devices (not portables, we're talking handheld devices here). Finally, a retired professor is suing a huge number of companies for patent infringement concerning LEDs and laser diodes. This could be interesting!

That's all for now!

11 Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-03-30T17:24:00.006-04:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than 11 months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is currently scheduled to cease. This is the 24rd of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players (laid out in my first few posts) in this story, meaning that we have gone just over two-thirds of the distance that remained when I started this blog in March of 2006. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 2/18 and 3/17. As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICEand TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - Up until a month ago, I was thinking that the one-year mark would probably be the signal for the media to kick things into high gear in regards to public-education campaigns. I seem to have been a bit premature there. As I mentioned last time, I only saw one story in my local paper on Feb 17th, and nothing since, and nothing on the news shows I've been watching (and I haven't seen any more of those DTV Answers spots lately). Under the existing FCC plan, escalating alerts are supposed to kick in April 1st (two spots and two text crawls on the screen every six hours) and October 1st (three spots and three crawls). However, the FCC has now given stations more flexibility in allocating those spots, allowing them to put them in less-valuable and therefore less-watched timeslots, and skip altogether the most popular programs (where there would be the best chance of the message getting through). Brilliant! Meanwhile, there are new Neilsen findings that place the number of U.S. homes that are not ready for the switch at 13 million (with another six million homes having a secondary TV set that will be affected).

Not everyone is worried about the overall situation, 'tho. One person not particularly concerned is Gary Shapiro of the CEA, who is expecting those who are cut off on The Day to calmly go about doing whatever they have to do to get their service back. Well, we can hope. Is this a case of dangerous complacency that seriously underestimates the potential for chaos, or a rare example of common sense?

Just because I'm not seeing them doesn't mean that there aren't efforts underway, of course. PBS's PSAs hit the air in March, using two of the "This Old House" team to help explain things. I just saw one for the first time on Sunday, March 23rd, possiby because I'm watching less PBS these days, and I'll go further into the reasons why in the BROADCASTING section below.

As far as HD awareness goes, here's something to think about. I've written a number of times about the fact that only about half of HDTV owners are watching actual HD programming. Well, it could be worse, as a new report reveals that only 5% of European HDTV owners are watching (two German HD channels recently shut down for lack of interest).

GOVERNMENT - A couple of months ago I mentioned the idea of testing out the transition in certain areas before the overall switchover, but that it had not gotten the support of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. It seems from this article that he's coming around on it, but the plan as described here seems to rely on having individual households volunteer to take part. Somehow it just doesn't seem to me that such households are where the potential problems lie.

Meanwhile, the main transition-related government effort (the converter-box coupon program) continued to roll along. Coupons are being issued and you can see what they look like here. The coupons must be redeemed within 90 days, which is bad news for those who've received them and were planning to use them to buy EchoStar's $39.99 (free after applying the coupon) box, as that box has been delayed until June or July. As to how things are going for the program in general, it may be worth noting (you decide how much to read into this, if anything) that the official in charge is leaving for the second time since November..

Last time I wrote about the objections cable channels have to the FCC mandate for post-transition dual carriage (mandating that cable companies ease the transition for analog cable customers by continuing to carry an analog version of must-carry broadcast stations unless the provider goes all-digital and eliminates analog cable service completely). The main objection is in regards to the bandwidth limitations this would cause, especially with smaller operators. Now we are hearing from those smaller operators, as the organization that represents them (the American Cable Association) is asking for a blanket exemption for systems that serve no more than 5,000 customers, or who have less than 522 MHz of capacity. Interestingly, they are asking to transmit those stations in analog-only, rather than digital-only (which would seem more efficient), although admittedly that does address the needs of their analog customers. As mentioned before, the major carriers (as represented by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association) are strongly in support of their smaller siblings. For more on the challenges facing smaller providers, see the PROGRAM PROVIDERS section below.

In less directly transition-related news, Chairman Martin continued to be embroiled in various disputes, including those over the a la carte issue, ownership caps, satellite carriage of local stations and other matters. All this and a congressional probe, too!

Tune in next time for some results from the ongoing auction of the old broadcast analog spectrum.

BROADCASTING -Another fairly slow news month in this area. There was the usual handful of new local HD newscasts, bringing the total up to around 80 - here's an example. I keep expecting this trickle to turn into a flood at some point, but there are still some impediments to rapid conversion, such as cost. The WWE HD story took a twist, as their Friday night Smackdown show will be moving to MyNetworkTV - fans should hope that the HD signals can be seen (the Boston MNTV affiliate does not have its HD station in the Comcast HD lineup, and its OTA signal is said to be weak).

There will be some new HD coming in the area of sports . There'll be no more "Fox Widescreen" in baseball, their 2008 MLB games will be all-HD. And the last two teams not to have any of their local games broadcast in HD have joined the club.

But not everything is going in that direction. I mentioned last time that the PBS HD Channel would be going away sometime in the fall. Here in Boston, we're not waiting that long and the HD signal for WGBH has now changed to a simulcast of their regular analog schedule. The upside is that Bostonians are finally able to see the HD version of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (which has not yet been added to the PBS HD Channel schedule). The downside is that is that I didn't see one single other show in HD for several weeks (until a couple of days ago, when an HD Antiques Roadshow came on). Part of this may be because of pledge month (something I've been spared the last few years as a PBS HD Channel viewer) and part because of the station supposedly lacks the ability to record HD for later playback. Supposedly this will be very different by the fall, but for the moment it's a huge loss in the amount of quality HD programming available. For what it's worth, the NewsHour is way ahead of the NBC Nightly News in the amount of non-studio HD footage. Another item of concern to HD fans - a recent survey revealed that 55 percent of local broadcasters have plans to multicast.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - As it has been since DirecTV put up that satellite last fall, the big story here continues to be everyone else's attempts to stay competitive with DirecTV's HD offerings. Various providers continued to add large chunks of channels (where adding two or three would have been big news not long ago) to various areas - here's a few examples. But beyond today's channel adds (which generally seem to be raising the channel counts from the 20s to the 30s) lies the struggle to revamp systems for the day when many more channels than that will be required to stay competitive.

How to go about it? If you're another satellite company (like Dish), you can follow DirecTV's playbook and put up a new bird. That is in fact what they did, but things didn't go so well and this is expected to cause delays in the implementation of their "100 Channels, 100 Markets" strategy. For cable, there are a number of options short of an expensive system rebuild. One way is to adopt SDV (that's short for Switched Digital Video, a technology that sends only requested channels down the wire, instead of the current standard, which is to send you every channel, even if you can only watch one and record a couple of others), as Mediacom is doing, but there's a catch - CableCARD users can't currently see these channels (as this post concerning Time Warner's conversion of three channels to SDV points out). Or you can go the "all (or almost all) digital" route and pare analog channels down to the minimum required by the FCC after the transition. This may be what Comcast has in mind when they say they have the capacity for 150 channels, at least if you give credence to this "friend of an insider" post in the Comcast Boston thread over at AVS Forum. Another indicator of their intention to go in that direction is their reported interest in a cheap DTA (Digital Terminal Adapter) that will take the form of a small dongle rather than the set-top box that has often been cited as one of the reasons that analog cable customers resist going digital. Three other companies recently detailed their reasons for going all-digital during a panel on the subject at the National Cable Television Cooperative’s Winter Educational Conference. It's also possible to achieve more modest gains by using the improved bandwidth management of 256 QAM as well as the improved compression of MPEG4, as Bresnan Communications will be doing. Not modest at all is Cox's goal of 80 channels by year's end, but I haven't been able to find a source that tells me which of these methods they plan to use. No matter what people are doing, it's important to note that they're aiming at a moving target, as DirecTV put up a new satellite just after the 17th (so more on that next time).

Whichever method or methods is chosen, there's one group that needs all the help it can get - small cable operators. Between the regulatory demands described above and the need to compete in the marketplace for advanced services, many smaller systems find themselves without the necessary bandwidth or customer base (to spread out the cost of needed upgrades). A good Multichannel News overview of the struggles many of them face can be seen here. One hopeful sign - Comcast and Motorola are teaming up to develop and support a package that will enable small operators to go all-digital for less.

Usually when we cover two providers (such as Comcast and Dish) in connection with legal matters, we're talking about them suing each other, but this one's a little different. It seems that both Comcast and Dish have something in common this time, as NFL Network has added a suit against Dish to its long-running action against Comcast. Both actions stem from both companies' desire to place the network in a specialty extra-cost tier, while the network wants to be seen by as many people as possible. Also having tier troubles with Dish is the VOOM suite of channels. You'd think the fact that the VOOM satellite is now owned by EchoStar would mean that VOOM could catch a break, but business is business. Also giving EchoStar the business is TiVo, who are threatening them with a contempt action over their non-compliance with a court order regarding EchoStar's patent-infringing DVRs.

As usual, we'll end this section with a few miscellaneous notes. There are reports that Comcast may be gearing up to expand the rollout of its version of the TiVo service outside New England in the near future, while Cox will be launching its own TiVo service in New England. That should be good news for TiVo, whose stand-alone business has suffered at least in part from their failure to embrace HD earlier (if there'd been an HD TiVo available to DirecTV customers during the time the two companies were working together, they might still be working together). Another benefit of DirecTV's proactive approach to HD is reflected in the bottom line - subscribers are up (much more than Dish) and turnover is down. They also report that more than half their customers now subscribe to either HD and/or their DVR service (but will someone please break those two figures out?), and that their VOD service (which will require a broadband connection) will launch in the second quarter. This must make Liberty Media's John Malone pleased, as the FCC has just approved (after more than a year) Liberty's proposed takeover of DirecTV. Cablevision is also seeing HD subscriber growth, having just passed the million mark. Meanwhile, Verizon's latest FiOS promotion (the one with the free 19" Sharp HDTV) has been so successful that customers are experiencing serious delays in delivery of the sets, with delays also reported in delivery of HD set-top boxes. They've also set up an arrangement with Jordan's Furniture in Massachusetts, creating a "lifestyle alcove" in their stores (starting with Reading) where Jordan's customers can sample Verizon's wares and Jordan's furniture at the same time. There'll be many more potential customers in that area, as they plan to bring FiOS to 30 new Massachusetts communities as part of a $200 million investment. But while they are building a mighty ring around the Boston area, they seem to have little interest in going into Boston itself or its immediate surroundings (such as my own town of Watertown). Finally, in non-traditional provider news, Vudu has a new 1TB (that's 1024 GB) box, but its $999 price tag hardly helps its competitive posture against Apple TV. And hulu.com (featuring a huge video library including a few HD trailers, though you'll have to have either a Pentium 4.3GHz or Mac Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz processor or better to see the HD) is out of beta.

HD NETWORKS - Wow, I thought it was quiet last month. This time I have very little to report. Nothing launched in the 2/18-3/17 period. ESPNEWS HD supposedly launched on March 30th, but I've been unable to track down any carriage announcements as of that date (there were short simulcasts on ESPN and ESPN2 on launch date) - supposedly DirecTV will be carrying it at some point in April. You can see what it will look like here (thanks to Engadget HD for pointing me to this). It's beginning to look as though the original DirecTV expansion swept up nearly everyone who had any interest in going HD in the near future, and it may be awhile before the late adopters get on board en masse. What's left that you think would make a good HD channel? My own "most wanteds" would be Sundance Channel, IFC and Turner Classic Movies (who I believe would do business very differently from the other Turner HD channels).

Meanwhile, the main ESPN HD channel continued to expand HD by using it for MLB spring training games. Something else is imminent; HGTV and Food Network are following the PBS HD example and moving their HD channels from a separate all-HD schedule to a simulcast of their SD channels, starting March 31st. Lets hope they won't lose as much HD content (at least in the short run) as some of the PBS member stations have.

MANUFACTURERS - I predicted last time that this section would be getting a lot shorter now that the HDM (high-def media) format war is over, but there's a fair amount of mopping up to report on, at least this time. Various players continued to head for the exits, as Samsung killed their dual-format player, Universal announced that it would end HD DVD support with Atonement on March 18th (link via Format War Central), retailers quickly moved to limit or eliminate players and disks (thank to Engadget HD for the link) and Netflix started switching HD DVD titles to DVD in members' queues (as well as making it impossible to re-enable HD DVD in members' profiles once they disable it). Some retailers went so far as to offer trade-ins, although most of these were foreign. Of special note was Circuit City's very quiet willingness to offer credit for players up to 90 days old (alas, I made my own purchase too early to qualify).

One benefit of this (for those who planned to keep using their players, or even pick one up cheap) was the various fire sales going on. In late February, Amazon had Toshiba's HD-A3 for $82 (inexplicably, it's now back up to the list price of $149.95). In a parting gift to the format's fans, Microsoft lowered the price of its Xbox HD DVD add-on to $49.99. But most HD DVD fans already have their equipment, so the most relevant sales were that of disks, such as Best Buy's 30% off sale, or Discovery Channels' 70% discount on the box set of its acclaimed Planet Earth series. And it looks like people were buying, as HD DVD disc sales racked up several of the best weeks they've had in awhile. Something else of benefit to loyalists - in contrast to other producers, Joe Kane Productions continues to offer HD DVD diehards calibration help with a new format-neutral product (and buyers of an earlier HD DVD product will be able to upgrade to either the HD DVD or Blu-ray versions of the new one). And of course, Warner still has a few titles scheduled through May.

Naturally, Toshiba is among those moving on, but not without some damage, a billion dollars worth of damage, to be precise. An interesting fact is that they will not be jumping on the Blu-ray train in the immediate future, preferring to focus on improving their upconverting DVD players to the point where you supposedly won't be able to tell regular DVDs from HD DVDs (so why did they bother with HD DVD at all?). They also want to be a player in the movie download business.

While downloads may be a future problem, for the moment Blu-ray has the HDM market sewn up. Many of the Blu-ray titles Paramount pulled when they switched to HD DVD are back in stock on Amazon, retailers are ramping up their Blu-ray presense (here's an example) and so is NetFlix. It's even possible that Microsoft may be thinking of adding a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox, although this early report was later denied. One negative - lack of competition has done exactly what HD DVD diehards predicted it would and raised player prices.

But looking ahead, Blu-ray will have two major challenges. As mentioned above, downloads are a future problem - studio execs don't see this happening for a long time, and a recent study shows that only 5.7 million U.S. homes even have the broadband available to stream HD (which would indicate that those lacking that ability would find transfer times for later viewing unacceptable as well). So for the moment, Format War 2.0 is primarily a matter between Blu-ray and DVD. How's that one going? The people who've provided the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray figures that have been referenced here numerous times have just started compiling Blu-ray vs. DVD figures, and I'll be taking a look at those starting next time. In the meantime, we note than a new analyst reports predicts a tripling of Blu-ray sales in 2008, that Sony will release full 2.0-compliant players and over 100 titles this year and that those recently-raised hardware prices will be coming back down later this year. Also, the Digital Entertainment Group (whose membership encompasses both the hardware and software sides of the equation) will be stepping up its Blu-ray promo activities. All in all, Blu-ray appears to be getting ready for this new battle.

There are a few other pieces of hardware news to pass along. While Blu-ray (not to mention OLED) is on the march, another major Sony product line (Trinitron TVs and monitors) is finally dead, after having been killed in Japan and the U.S. previously (there were still limited amounts being made for other markets). That's just part of the declining sales picture for CRTs, and I have to say I was surprised to find out that they were just recently overtaken by LCDs on a worldwide basis - I assumed that was old news. Another technology losing ground to LCD (but not in nearly as much trouble) is plasma - Pioneer's acclaimed Kuro line will have both plasma and LCD models come fall (the linked article also references Pioneer's ending of in-house plasma production, but that's really just an outsourcing story, and I'm not reading too much into that at the moment). Still another product line that people have wondered about is TiVo's stand-alone DVR (we've gone into their current problems above), but this isn't stopping them from going ahead with plans to implement tru2way (formerly known as CableCARD 2.0 so as to better access providers' advanced interactive features. And I'm always interested to hear stories about HDTV's planned successor Super Hi-Vision (as Japanese broadcaster NHK is now referring to it) - the latest news concerns the BBC's plans to use it to broadcast parts of the 2012 Olympics on large screens (this is not a technology that makes a big impact on smaller screens) placed in public areas across Britain.

But it's important to remember that the advance of technology is always reliant on the ability and willingness of people to spend money. So the question is, will the current economic uncertainties slow things down, and by how much? I'll close with two possibly-relevant data points - flat-panel inventories rose markedly in January (on a year-to-year basis), and Japanese manufacturers are already planning to focus on smaller screen sizes as a result of slowing sales.

That's all for now!

12 Months and Counting: What's Changed?

2008-03-02T19:40:00.007-05:00

Once again, the 17th has come and gone, and it's now less than 12 months until the current "hard" date (2/17/09) on which analog broadcasting is supposed to cease. This is the 23rd of 35 planned monthly recaps of developments affecting the various players (laid out in my first few posts) in this story, meaning that we have gone just about two-thirds of the distance that remained when we started this blog in March of 2006. Despite the name of this blog I do cover some stories (like the growth of HD) that are not directly transition-related (but strike me as being of interest to transition-watchers). That said, here's some of what happened (or was commented on) between 1/18 and 2/17 (with one big exception - see the MANUFACTURERS section below).As is usual, major news sources for this update include Multichannel News, Engadget HD, TV Week, TWICE and TVPredictions.com.

THE PUBLIC - A new round of surveys came out regarding public awareness of the transition, and the results were mixed at best. Let's start with the good part; more people have heard about the transition. According to a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) survey, 79 percent of us have seen, read or heard something about it. Sounds pretty good, but there's a catch. As the old saying goes, "It's not what we don't know that's the problem, it's what we know that ain't so", and a lot of what people are taking away from what they're seeing, reading and hearing is, in fact, not exactly so. According to this new Consumer Reports study, over half of those who are aware of the transition believe that all TVs will need a converter box, and nearly half believe that only digital TVs will be able to function after the switch. Of course, it doesn't help matters that (according to this study from the public-interest group U.S. PIRG) most retailers aren't giving out correct information, particularly concerning the coupon program. If the right information doesn't get out there, millions may end up wasting money on converter boxes they don't need (because they have a cable or satellite subscription) or a new TV they don't need (yet). On the other side of the coin, it seems that many who think they are covered, aren't. So as the NAB prepares to broaden its efforts, let's hope it keeps in mind the fact that quality of information is at least as important as quantity. This would also be good advice for the Telemundo network as it launches its Alerta Digital campaign, especially in light of recent Nielsen survey findings that point to a much greater potential impact in the Hispanic community than in the overall population.

One thing I would have expected to happen, didn't. I was expecting to see a bit more media attention paid to all this on 2/17 - perhaps I just wasn't watching the right newscast. The Boston Globe did have a piece, but in the Business section, and mostly dealing with what stocks might benefit. I guess this still isn't real news yet.

GOVERNMENT - Given just how far we have to go (see above), it's no surprise that many in Congress want to see a more aggressive federal effort. People have been calling for more funding for awhile now, and the president's 2008 fiscal does propose an increase in the FCC's public-outreach budget, from a microscopic $2.5 million to $20 million - I guess they could always buy a few Super Bowl ads with that. No surprise that the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee isn't exactly bowled over. What Chairman Dingell (as well his Senate counterpart Daniel Inouye) would like is a transition task force to co-ordinate the government's response. Beyond that, this Multichannel News article suggests a willingness to consider legislation to correct shortcomings.

We mentioned last time that the converter box program was underway, and the process has been gathering momentum since then. People have been able to apply for coupons since Jan 1st, but the boxes haven't been available (or the coupons mailed) until just recently. That all changed when the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) announced that boxes would be available by February 18th, and in fact both Best Buy and Wal-Mart confirmed that they would have them by then (this articleon the program's official "kick-off" event also lists Radio Shack as a vendor). While Best Buy's house-brand Insignia box goes for $60 ($20 after applying the coupon), Wal-Mart is featuring a $49.87 Magnavox model (less than half the cost of the Insignia after applying the discount). I'm not sure who's going to end up selling those $40 (effectively free) Echostar boxes I mentioned last time. Thanks to Engadget HD for pointing me to afterdawn.com's complete list of eligible boxes. Astonishingly, one group of people who apparently won't be eligible for coupons is nursing home residents - elderly people whose old analog sets may be one of their only sources of companionship and affordable entertainment, but who are not included in the program's definition of "household". Thanks to stopsnow.rcrg.info for pointing me to this story (originally from newsobserver.com, but I can't find it on their site - here's an update).

Another effort under way is auction for the 60MZ of spectrum in the 700MZ band - the old analog TV frequencies. There's already been over 100 rounds of bidding, but we may not actually know the winners until summer. As of Feb 7th, bidding had already exceeded the $10-15 billion the government was expecting. The FCC maintains this page devoted to the auction, and the various links therein lead to far more data than any sane person would want to know (except for the most interesting part - who is bidding for what - which they don't tell you). Thanks to the Webb Alert video podcast for tipping me off to this, as well as to this Robert Cringely article which attempts to make this extremely complex process comprehensible to us mere mortals.

While certain things are progressing, one thing I thought had been checked off the to-do list may be in doubt. Previously the FCC had addressed the needs of analog cable viewers by mandating that cable systems continue carrying an analog version of local broadcast channels for three years after the transition (unless they had already bit the bullet and converted to an all-digital system), This, however, was hardly to the liking of national cable channels concerned about whether this would leave room for their signals (especially on smaller, bandwidth-strapped systems, who have found an ally in Sen. Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens of Alaska), and now they've filed a lawsuit to overturn that rule. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) will abide by the rule (regardless of the legal outcome), but intends to lobby for a broad exemption for those smaller systems mentioned above. Given cable's reaction to this rule, it would be interesting to see what the reaction would be if other initiatives by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin (such as multicast must-carry and now his new idea of low-power must-carry) became mandatory and further limited the available bandwidth (we already know that the NCTA considers the low-power initiative to be a very bad idea. (The reason we are hearing about regulatory relief for Class A low-power stations now is that they are not required to go digital in 2009, and their largely over-the-air audience will disappear as they install converter boxes that do not include analog tuners.) Speaking of the three-year analog mandate mentioned above, a recent attempt by Comcast to partially circumvent this by moving public/educational/government (PEG) channels to digital-only in Michigan was a public-relations disaster that in the end led Comcast to apologize to Congress.

One problem the FCC (or at least Chairman Martin) doesn't seem to be interested in addressing is one that may affect those over-the-air viewers who do know about the transition, have gotten themselves a digital receiver, but may be too far from the signal tower. These are the same people who may be used to snowy reception now, but with digital's all-or-nothing reception, they may well end up on the "nothing" end of the scale. A study by market research firm Centris finds this to be a serious problem, but so far Chairman Martin is siding with critics of the study's methodology. Who's right? This will bear watching.

Just a couple more items here. The FCC has published its December-approved rule forbidding any cable operator from reaching more than 30% of cable households, and Comcast (clearly the intended target) will (as predicted last time in this section) be taking legal action. I've mentioned before that Chairman Martin is pursuing cable on many fronts, and Rep Anna Eshoo (D-Calif) seems to have noticed this as well. I've also mentioned my belief that this stems from cable's resistance to a la carte pricing, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where fellow Commissioner Michael Copps stands on the issue (he appears to still be making up his mind).

BROADCASTING - For the most part, things continued as normal in this area. Another handful of local stations converted their newscasts to HD (the current total being somewhere around 70) - here's an example. There were other examples of new HD content as well, as WWE transitioned their entire schedule in the course of a week, from broadcast (Smackdown on The CW - though not for long) to cable (RAW on USA, ECW on SciFi) and pay-per-view, spending $20 million in the process. Telemundo has acquired rights to Brazil's first HD telenovela Dance, Dance, Dance. Even the slow-moving transition of syndicated programming had a bit of news, as Everybody Loves Raymond will be available (to those stations properly equipped) on March 17.

When I first started watching HD back in 2003, I would read about all the local stations that had yet to put a digital signal up, but I had sort of assumed that that situation was far in the past by now. Wrong! I know that a bunch of stations had been issued waivers years ago due to the expense, but I had no idea that there were still stations just coming online.

I've mentioned (both in the recap and in these two posts) the problems stations running the PBS HD Channel (the national DT2A feed of HD/WS-only programming that people have been using to show off their sets for years) have been having in carrying the new HD version of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, which is carried on a different feed. I was thinking of revisiting my research for this update to see which stations have made progress, but it's kind of irrelevant now, for two reasons. First, this comment from "jimbob" shows that PBS is in fact adding The NewsHour to the DT2A feed in May. Even more significantly, the PBS HD Channel itself is not long for this world. Thanks to Engadget HD for pointing me to this article from Current, which among other things reveals that PBS will be trading in the channel sometime this fall for the solution used by the other broadcast networks - a simulcast combining HD/WS programming where available with upconversion for the rest. So if you have some favorite PBS HD shows that aren't on the regular PBS schedule, you might want to consider saving them for posterity. I didn't, and just in the last few days WGBH in Boston dropped the PBS HD Channel and replaced it with a simulcast of their regular channel.

PROGRAM PROVIDERS - This is another where most of what happened represented a continuation of earlier trends. DirecTV's competitors continued to do what they could to add HD channels. For example, Comcast added two of their newest aquisitions (SciFi and Animal Planet) in Boston, and six in Seattle (those two plus Discovery Channel, TLC, HGTV and Food Network), and various adds all over the place. Their competitors (most notably Time Warner) did likewise.

But there's only so much of this they can do before they run out of room - unless they implement some new technology. In this Q&A, Cox's Steve Necessary discusses various plans (after first pointing out that selectivity can help offset mere tonnage). As mentioned last month, Comcast is hoping to deflect attention from all that tonnage by emphasizing their HD VOD selections, and they are now offering up some details. How well will this work? Personally, I think this kind of strategy will work better with the customers of the future (who will have grown up with VOD as a basic part of their viewing) than it will with the customers of today, who I suspect just want more channels. Which is probably why, even with all the talk of "choices", Comcast is planning to get up to the 50-60 channel mark in "typical" systems by years' end (by comparison with today, my local system has 34 HD channels, and we are probably a bit better than typical). I know they've made claims that haven't panned out before, but note that they are talking to their investors here - you have to be careful with what you tell those people, as they're apt to sue if they think they've invested under false pretenses.

One of the options we've mentioned in our ongoing discussion of bandwidth-maximization methods is to eliminate analog altogether, in contrast to the chipping-away method most providers use at the moment. The latest report of this comes from Chicago, where RCN has done just that. no surprise as to the location - Comcast has provided cover for them by doing the same thing back in July.

Another trend that just keeps on going is the expansion of the telco services. U-Verse reached 231,000 subs by the end of 2007, and now FiOS has reached the million mark. Success can bring problems, though - FiOS has run short of HD boxes!

HD NETWORKS - Another fairly quiet month. We did have one launch, as Speed debuted on Feb 7th. A couple of existing networks made plans to increase their HD content, as The Weather Channel prepared for a June 2nd launch of its HD studio and ESPN announced yet more games in HD. There was a channel announcement, as Hallmark Movie Channel set an April debut. And while they aren't launching a linear channel yet, IFC (one of my personal most-wanted) has launched an "HD" (so far it's WS upconverts) VOD channel to premiere its original series and anime.

Multichannel News recently ran a series of eight HD channel profiles, taking a look at their experiences and plans. Here is the intro, and the individual profiles for Mojo, ESPN, National Geographic Channel, Speed, Big Ten Network, Wealth TV, Discovery and The Weather Channel.

MANUFACTURERS - I began this section last time with the observation that "when it's time for something to happen, it can happen with head-spinning speed". That continued to be demonstrated in the last month, as the HDM (short for High Definition Media, what I've been calling NextGen DVD) format war reached its Appomattox two days after our close. So let's look back on that tumultuous time right now (since this is essentially the end of the story, I'm going to drop the usual date-range limitations altogether this once and bring the story up to where it stands now).

Things looked pretty dire back on Jan 17th, but some still believed that all hope was not lost, even after the Gartner Group study that called recent HD DVD price cuts "useless resistance", or the NDP Group figures that showed Blu-ray grabbing 93 percent of player sales the week after Warner announced its intention to go Blu-exclusive after May (and stand-alone players were HD DVD's greatest area of strength). Still, most observers on Jan 17th probably agreed with Crave's Ian Morris when he answered the question "Can Anything Save HD DVD"? by saying "it seems pretty unlikely", or with CNET's Charles Cooper, who wrote the next day that he didn't care who won, as long as it was over.

Still, Toshiba was not prepared to give up just yet. HD DVDs last campaign began with the above-mentioned price cuts, which with a further Amazon discount took the price of a Toshiba HD-A3 down to $129.95 on Jan 18th. And at first it seemed to be working, at least a little bit; player sales rebounded to 28% (measured in units) and disks came back as far as 26% (not far from their historical range). And at least one of the HD DVD-exclusive studios (Universal) was quick to point out that it wasn't going anywhere. As mentioned last time, the head of the HD DVD Promotional Group is Universal's Ken Graffeo, so no big surprise there. This BetaNews interview(thanks again to Engadget HD) gives a look at what Mr. Graffeo was thinking in late January.

But the centerpiece of the campaign was to be a Super Bowl ad, which was supposed to focus on the advantages of the format. Unfortunately, the ad as aired was a crushing disappointment. Rather than trying to make its case against Blu-ray, it simply pointed out that it was a good complement to your HDTV. The closest it came to making that case was the end, where it flashed the new HD-A3 price and some retailer logos for a couple of seconds. On top of that, it turned out to be a regional, not a national buy. Even worse, it aired in SD!

After that, all the news was bad. As another NDP Group study showed growing consumer interest in Blu-ray, various small studios began to go Blu-exclusive (as had National Geographic earlier), the gap in available titles grew wider and Warner made clear that only in special cases would they be willing to supply their existing HD DVD titles to retailers after May. And disc sales percentages fell back below 20%.

But much worse was to come. February 11th was a very bad day, as Netflix announced that they would phase out HD DVDs over the course of the year, and Best Buy announced that they would actively promote Blu-ray as the "right solution" in high-def media. Even the HD DVD Promotional Group had to struggle to find the tiny little bit of positive news in all this (that being that Best Buy would still stock some HD DVD products). However, an even worse day was near. On Feb 15th, Wal-Mart (the nation's largest retailer) announced it would go Blu-exclusive by June.

This was on a Friday, leaving the weekend open for speculation. Reports that Toshiba might be ready to pull the plug were circulating even the day before the Wal-Mart announcement, and understandably accelerated the day after, with reports quoting company sources (but not official spokespersons) that it really was all over. Monday the 18th was a holiday in the USA, but business as usual in Japan, where the decisions were going to be made. While Toshiba first stated that no decision had been made, the statement was definitely of the type we remember from just before Warner defected, and the Japanese stock market reacted accordingly, sending Toshiba shares soaring on anticipation of an imminent end to the bleeding. The market got what it was looking for the next day, with Toshiba's official announcement that they would abandon the format by the end of March (see an account of the press conference here. This was followed two days later by confirmation that Onkyo was doing likewise (haven't heard yet about Venturer - which like Onkyo bases their HD DVD hardware on Toshiba designs - or those cheap Chinese players that were supposedly coming). A few days after that, Microsoft stated their intention to cease manufacturing their HD DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360.

With the main hardware sources giving up, it didn't take long the remaining studio supporters to adjust to the new reality. Universal announced support for Blu-ray within hours of Toshiba's announcement, and Paramount followed suit the next day. It's taken a bit longer to get some clarity on the matter of how long HD DVDs would continue to be released. While Warner quickly reaffirmed their previously-stated intention to release HD DVDs until May 31st, it took Paramount/Dreamworks until Feb 28th to announce that its March 4th releases (Things We Lost in the Fire and Into the Wild) would be their last. This means no HD DVD versions of Bee Movie, Sweeney Todd or There Will Be Blood. And Universal's HD DVD plans are still undecided.

So that is what is left of HD DVD as of this writing. Some old hardware remaining to be sold (the HD-A3 that seemed such a bargain at $200 is going for $99 at Amazon with the description "Upconverting DVD player with HD DVD playback"), a few more disks to be released and one confirmed manufacturer going forward - LG, who for the moment will not be pulling their combo players. More on the mopping-up operations next time. Until then, those wanting to take one last look backward at the format war may enjoy Ben Drawbaugh's compact timeline covering the entire story.

Looking ahead, the story will be that of the struggle of HDM (represented by Blu-ray) to win over the masses from their DVDs (increasingly being played in upconverting players that may well be good enough for many, if not most). As I mentioned last time, it is not clear yet whether Blu-ray will be the real successor to DVD, or the new high-end format for videophiles (as was laserdisc in its day). So far, comparisons between the early days of HDM (both formats) and DVD are mixed, with HDM even-to-ahead when measured by player sales, but lagging behind on the discs themselves. Nevertheless, studio chiefs are looking to the recent HDM unification for the shot in the arm the business needs, given recent DVD sales erosion. And just in case you've forgotten, plucky little HD VMD is still out there (who would have thought they could outlast HD DVD?), but I have trouble believing they have ambitions beyond being a niche market player supported mostly by foreign software and appealing to those who are interested in same.

We'll finish up this month with a few pieces of other hardware news (I get the feeling this section is going to be a lot shorter in upcoming months). Toshiba and Panasonic have teamed up to solve a technical problem limiting the lifespan of OLED displays. For those interested in Panasonic's overall HD plans, this interview sheds some light on them. And there are reports that TiVo will be killing off the Series 3 in favor of the newer TiVo HD.

That's all for now!

One Year To Go (For Now, Anyway).

2008-02-17T22:18:00.004-05:00

Today (what's left of it) marks the one-year marker for the coming digital transition - unless something changes. Time to start on the latest monthly update. Hopefully the holiday will kickstart the process and you won't have to wait quite as long as last time. Lots more info on public awareness of what's coming, plus the government's response to the evolving situation (including the FCC's response to a study pointing to a potential problem that hasn't received much attention to date). In less directly transition-related news, we cover what appears to be the end of the nextgen-DVD format war. I'll try to make it worth the wait!