We thought we'd heard analog (NTSC) television's last gasp in February, 2009, when essentially all full power TV stations in the US were to cease sending signals they way they have since before Uncle Miltie and Howdy Doody. Then Congress stepped in with a couple puffs of legislative CPR (bailing out the unready, unaware, or clueless, as usual) and put off the inevitable for 60% of these stations until the end of the day, tomorrow, June 12, 2009. Starting June 13, full power TV stations in the USA will only send programming using the ATSC digital format.

If you aren't aware of this transition you're either busy reading (what? and miss "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here"?) or you're not paying attention. This new method of sending programming digitally means stations can send multiple programs at once (more revenue for the same transmitting cost, and more efficient use of limited radio spectrum) and it means that the quality of the signals will be essentially perfect. I watched the Inaugural Parade on KGTV-DT in January and it looked better than a DVD. The downside is that older TVs can't see this datastream without a converter which is either your cable or satellite connection or is a box you can get with a subisidy from The Government.

The Channel Dance
Part of the shakeup is a musical-channels game that's been going on for awhile. As of Saturday AM, many stations won't be where you expect them to be channel-wise. But, your new DTV-capable TV doesn't care and will handle the changes for you by scanning the TV spectrum and remembering what it sees. Even if you aleady have a DTV set (or a converter) with an off-air antenna you should RE-SCAN on Saturday so your TV learns about the last of the Channel Dance. This FCC-sponsored website has all the info.

A local professional organization has been following the process and says that one local station will continue emitting an analog signal until June 26. This so called "nightlight" service will be, simply, an alert to those who tune to it, reminding them of where everybody went and what to do about it.

Uncle Martin's Headgear is Back In Vogue
I have considered dropping my cable entirely. Mrs. Telecom and I generally only watch 3 channels - HGTV, The Food Channel, and The SciFi Channel. We might be able to get by with the local offair stations and save ourselves around $50 a month. If you elect (or are foced, due to lack of cable where you live) to just watch the local stations, you may need a decent antenna for your roof or attic. San Diego stations are located in two places - atop Mt San Miguel near Spring Valley, and atop Mt Soledad in La Jolla, which are 2 very different directions for most of us. If you are reasonably line-of-sight to both locations, you might get by with a set of rabbit-ears (yes, the things you threw away decades ago when cable came along). I got a nice, reasonably priced set at Radio Shack. If you find the signal isn't strong enough (you either get nothing on channels where you expect it or else you get something but it pixilates or freezes regularly (because DTV doesn't fade-to-snow like analog does) you may need to get a rotor, get two antennas, or aigh and pick one group of stations or the other. Two DTV receiving antennas that are highly recommended by Gary Stigall, Director of Engineering for XETV Fox6 and Editor of San Diego's SBE Chapter 36 Newsletter, are as follows: 

•   For UHF (CHs-14 to 51), Gary says he's a real evangelist  for the "Terrestrial Digital 91XG."  It has high gain AND  excellent front-to-back ratio (28 dB):
  http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=TD-91XG
•   For HI-BAND VHF (CHs-7 to 13), Gary recommends the  following Winegard:
  http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?prod=YA1713

History Being Made
When KGTV-TV Channel 10 turned off their analog transmitter for the last time in February, they had one of their very first engineers push the Plates Off button on the transmitter and they videotaped it for posterity. So what? Well, for us boomers at least, this is a technical milestone. We grew up in a world where digital-anything was SciFi while today it's expected. The first computer I ever programmed on was, literally, brought in on a forklift and we thought the IBM-370/155's 1.5 megabytes of (core) memory was simply wasteful. Now my cellphone (yes, it really is almost like a Federation Communicator, Spock) has more processing power. Even while computers grew up and The Internet went from Geek to boutique, TV remained analog. I remember when long distance phone calls started going digital in the early 1980's - the disappearance of the expected and accepted hiss from analog transmission was quite striking to me. I will not miss analog TV. Digital TV has so many more possibilities - have you seen KNSD-DT's 24/7 weather info on one of their secondary channels? - and it allows other spectrum to be reused for public service, wireless communications, Qualcomm's FloTV, etc., that it's about time.  Still, this is just about the last of the old technology and so you might want to watch Channel 39, 51, or 15 when they pull the plug on Friday night - even take a picture or set the VCR for 11:57-ish PM - so you can tell generations to come how you watched the end of an era.