Why procrastinate on the DTV transition?

So I requested the coupons for two converter boxes, bought them and installed them. (And I've had a 720p digital TV set since September of last year). Now Congress is about to approve delaying the shut-off of full-power analog TV transmission from February 17 to June 12. The Senate has already voted in favor of the delay, according to the Washington Post, and the House is expected to rubber-stamp it; President Obama will almost certainly sign it because he asked Congress to consider the delay in the first place. I agree with almost everything else Obama has done so far: shut down Gitmo, ban torture, restore access to ex-presidential records, etc.

But delaying the DTV transition seems poorly justified. If after all those obnoxious advertisements reminding you to circle February 17 on your calendar, and the annoying DTV Tuesday tests urging you to run up and down your house in one minute to check every TV in your house, you still aren't ready for the transition, you're a procrastinator. It's true that many things about the converter coupons haven't been explained that well, like, for example, what is the cost of making them? They're plastic cards, not paper or cardboard.

I took a picture of one of them before using it. Look at it: it looks nicer than my Capital One credit card! (I've blurred the number and blacked out the bar code, but still). The coupons I bought were valid until practically April, and I got them just a couple of weeks ago. So, if I hadn't used my coupons when I got them, I would still have two full months in which to go down to Best Buy or CVS or Radio Shack or whatever and buy a converter box. It is a little suspicious that most places only carry one or at most two brands of converter boxes (the CVS I went to only had Craig, whereas Best Buy had Insignia and Apex). I'll say more about converter boxes in another post.

Let's not forget about new televisions. They have to have digital tuners anyway. If you can't afford 1080p, you can probably afford 720p, they put them on sale every once in a while. It probably is now time to replace a lot of TV sets in nursing homes, for example. And digital transmission has actually improved over the past few weeks. I actually had the antenna of my digital TV in one position for almost all week last week and I was able to tune in all the Detroit channels, even 7-1, 7-2 and 7-3 (but still no 50-1). Snowflakes still affect digital transmission, but now a simple movement of the antenna is all it takes to fix it, as opposed to the frustrating dance required last year. Like Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post, I don't need any outdoor antennae (maybe for 50-1, but I would only watch Simpsons reruns on that channel, and all the good episodes are now available on DVD – they ought to cancel that show, but that's another issue altogether), indoor antennae do just fine. Now that digital transmission is more reliable, the increased image quality of digital TV is well worthwhile. Watching Obama's inauguration, it almost felt like I could've counted the 1.8 million people crowding the area in front of the Capitol (2 million, by Nancy Pelosi's count) if I had wanted to. Mathematically I know that a 720p display does not have the resolution to distinctly show the tops of the heads of even a million people, but it's still a huge improvement over 480i.

What about content producers? Think about not just the big studios, but also local production companies. Having to produce both high-resolution digital content and downsampled analog content has got to be quite a hassle. We've left 1.44MB floppy disks far in the past. It's time to do the same for analog TV.

DTV has "clearer picture and better sound"... if you can get it to come in

So I've had a digital TV with ATSC tuner for about four months now. And yet, when Channel 7 broadcast their DTV education special yesterday, I watched almost the whole damn thing on analog. That's because here in Detroit, by the Ambassador Bridge, Channel 7's digital channels still have the second worst reception of all digital channels. Only Channel 50-1 is worse: I got it to show up in the channel scan, but its signal level remains stuck at 0 no matter what I do to the antenna. I suppose that, in a way, that's better than Channel 7. Sometimes you get lucky and 7-1 suddenly comes in. But then the wind blows a little, the image gets stuck and then it just goes to black. I've tried to wean myself off of using the analog reception as a guide for digital reception, because after February 17, it's not going to be available. Finding reception for some channels will be like trying to find water with a twig.

I mentioned last year that I had given up on RCA antennae and gone with a Philips antenna. Of that Philips, I broke off the left "ear" and twisted the right "ear." Channel 20-1 comes in almost no matter what I do to the antenna. Channels 4-1 and 62-1 have been fairly reliable with my specially broken antenna, requiring only minor antenna adjustments, as soon as I put the antenna in a position that's worked before, the channel comes in. Channel 2-1 has been OK, but besides Sunday "Animation Domination," is there anything on that channel? (Right, football, the art of the time-out). So Best Buy, forget it if you still want me to shell out $100 for an amplified unidirectional antenna that might not even work anyway. You'd have to pay me a $100 to give it a try. Nor will I shell out $70 each for converter boxes for the remaining analog TVs in my house (I'm still waiting on the rebate coupon, supposedly they mailed it January 2).

DTV does offer more channels than analog. It's actually useful to have a 24-hour weather channel, so I'm not happy about Channel 4 ditching their 24-hour weather channel and replacing it with a 7-2 knockoff (old movies and TV shows at 480i, which on a 1080i screen looks rather crappy and JPEG-artifacty). At least WXYZ still has a weather channel (at 7-3), but it's useless if you can't get it to come in, and when it finally does come in, it gives you the weather for Albuquerque and then drops out before swinging back to Michigan.

Channel 7-1 good... for an hour

On Monday night I started watching Boston Legal on Channel 7-0 (analog), unwilling to mess around with the antenna setup. I had the Philips SCP020 antenna almost exactly the way it came out the box, with its 'ears' folded and tucked in over the loop, but connected to the TV. During the opening credits, I decided to arrow up to 7-1 just to confirm it would just be a blank screen, but to my pleasant surprise, it was the show, in a crisp, clear digital presentation, without all the random dropouts that had plagued the channel last month. The antenna was in the same folded position with which I can watch Channels 4-1 and 4-2. So I watched the rest of Boston Legal on 7-1. But yesterday, Election Day, I couldn't get 7-1 to come in at all. For the most part I watched NBC's coverage on 4-1 and a little bit of CBS on 62-1. I was curious about ABC, so I very briefly tuned in to 7-0 a couple of times. But 7-1 would just not come in at all for me yesterday.

What channel did you watch the debates on?

Theoretically, the channels carrying the presidential and vice-presidential debates are, for the duration of the debate, airing exactly the same thing, with the only differences being minor graphical details, such as what font to use for lower thirds. John McCain will come across just as curmudgeonly and Sarah Palin just as clueless. The lead-in and lead-out is of course different, and the networks would hope that after you watched the debate, you would stay tuned to the same channel. Of the over-the-air networks, my first choice is ABC, then NBC, CBS, PBS, and my last choice is FOX. My and CW didn't carry the debates, so they don't figure into this.

However, I didn't watch the debates on ABC, because Channel 7 (WXYZ), the local ABC affiliate here in Detroit has very strange digital reception. It took one kind of antenna (a multidirectional lay-flat) to get 7-1 (and 7-2, but do you really want to watch old shows look blurry on a new LCD screen?) to even show up in the channel scan and another antenna (rabbit ears I custom-mangled) to actually watch that channel. But for a week now, my specially mangled antenna can't even get 7-1 anymore. To watch an episode of Ugly Betty, applying pressure to the base of the antenna actually helped. But later it was useless, and I've grown tired of having to mangle the antenna. I shouldn't have to destroy something in order for it to work. I know the analog Channel 7-0 is still around, but it doesn't look good on a digital TV, and besides, who knows what shape I'd have to bend the antenna to get that one to come in halfway decent. Maybe no RCA antennas can work for me, so I decided to give Philips a chance. I bought a Philips rabbit ears, SCP020, which right on the box claims "Outstanding reception." Understandably, I was extremely skeptical, but I'm willing to give it a chance. I took it out the box, removed a bit of onion paper it had between components, plugged it in, and without any other adjustments, and without me having to put it upside down, it gets 4-1 and 4-2. Reception on 20-1, 20-2 and 62-1 remains the same. No 7-1. And still no 50-1.

So I watched the final presidential debate on CBS. I could have watched it on FOX, but I didn't care to hear their so-called conservative spin wrap-up. Kudos though to FOX for not censoring last Sunday's Family Guy episode in which Stewie's Nazi uniform has a McCain-Palin button on it.

Digital Disappointment in Detroit

After trying a dozen different antennas with my Dynex digital TV, I am still only getting one digital channel to come in halfway decent, and even that one digital channel has its share of hiccups. Some of the other digital channels I've been able to get to come in do so rather randomly. And the surly Best Buy kings (a.k.a. customer service reps) have been no help whatsoever. One of those surly Kings told me, when I bought my Dynex TV, that any old antenna I already had for analog TV would work just fine for digital.

The antennas I have tried: every old rabbit ears I could get my hands on, a Terk amplified antenna with two rotating rectangular metal frames, a new RCA rabbit ears and an RCA lay-flat.

The Dynex TV has a signal measuring tool, with a scale that probably goes up to 100 (I've never been able to get higher than 79 on it for any channel. 33 and below is "weak," 33 to 66 is "normal" and above that is "good." Channels 20-1 and 20-2 (My TV) are the only ones that I can get consistently good reception, almost regardless of antenna position. Channel 62-1 (CBS) can come in high normal to good with careful antenna positioning. Channel 2-1 (FOX) might come in good after shaking the antenna a lot, setting it down and then going to sit down away from it. Channel 4-1 (NBC) comes in good ONLY if I set a rabbit ears upside down on the floor, with the tubes pushed in. Channel 7-1 (ABC) I didn't even get until yesterday, the damn channel finally showed up on the channel scan after plugging in an RCA lay-flat antenna. But even though the lay-flat antenna can get 7-1 to show up in the channel scan (the Dynex TV won't even go to a channel if it hasn't been detected on a channel scan) the damn antenna can't tune that channel! What the hell? So the RCA lay-flat gets unplugged and I put RCA rabbit ears in its place. Now I can get channel 7-1 but the reception randomly fluctuates from middle normal to no signal at all.

Yesterday at the Best Buy in Dearborn, surly King Cory asked where I live. A fair enough question. I live in Detroit near the Ambassador Bridge. The lay-flat antenna will do me no good because it is multi-directional, King Cory declared. So what the Best Buy circular for this week said, that that antenna "Eliminates the need for constant adjustment" is bull? King Cory didn't like the sound of that one bit. I reworded "bull" to "false." King Cory didn't want to contradict the store circular, so he instead said that the antenna only has a range of 15 miles in any direction. The reason I can't get 7-1 is because their Broadcast House is about 25 miles away from where I live. Okay, let's believe that for the time being. What I need, King Cory declared, is a Terk amplified single-directional antenna that costs $75. For each channel that I want to receive with that antenna, I'll have to reposition the antenna to point to the station, King Cory decreed. That decree would mean that I can't channel-surf. And can I even be sure that antenna will work? The other Terk antenna I bought failed so miserably (supposedly because it's a multi-directional, according to King Cory). Am I going to shell out $75 for something that might not even work? Go to hell.

I bought the lay-flat anyway. At least it enabled me to get Channel 7-1 in the channel scan, and I said, I can kind of get it with rabbit ears. According to Google Maps, the distance between my house and the WXYZ Broadcast House is 16.4 miles (driving, mostly on the Lodge Freeway, M-10). Let's give King Cory the benefit of the doubt and say that the Channel 7 airwaves also travel along the Lodge Freeway, and thus WXYZ is beyond the range of the RCA lay-flat by more than a mile. Then why the hell could the lay-flat recognize it in the channel scan? And why can the rabbit ears get 7-1 to come in and drop out at random intervals? And what of the fact that upside down rabbit ears can get 4-1 to come in good but the same rabbit ears right side up get no signal from 4-1 whatsoever?

Angry from all this DTV BS, I snapped. I broke a pair of rabbit ears with UHF loop. Guess what? The mangled rabbit ears get almost the same reception! 20-2 comes in slightly worse (but still high normal) and 7-1 comes in slightly better, with fewer drop-outs. It's an insult, really. A destroyed antenna can work about the same as an expensive new one. In all this, I still haven't gotten even a glimpse of 50-1 (CW).

And don't tell me to go to antennaweb.org. That website is useless. Besides some junk mail, all I've gotten from it is being told that I need a yellow UHF, a red UHF and a violet UHF. Each of these types of antennas is supposed to have a color-coded "mark" on them, so you can "look for this mark on your antenna box." But when you go to the store, none of the antennas have those marks!

After so much effort to get Digital TV to come in, you start to expect more quality from the content. It falls so short that it doesn't even begin to compensate for all the trouble that comes from trying to get it. Old Christine is barely passable and Gary Unmarried is just awful. My TV reruns some modern classics but its night newscast is laughable and it has no morning newscast. Etc.

Do the cable and satellite companies expect that people, tired of dealing with antennas, will sign up for their services? Maybe some will. Maybe others will just dump their TVs.