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Complaints Start Over DTV Transition

Feb 18, 2009  •  Post A Comment

About 25% of the country’s television stations cut their analog broadcasts Tuesday night, with some stations reporting a stream of frustrated callers and questions, the Associated Press reports. Still, some stations, such as WINK-TV in Fort Myers, Fla., have already thrown the switch and heard little public outcry, with WINK saying it received only a half-dozen viewer calls within the first hour of digital-only broadcasting, Television Week reports.
—Aimee Picchi

3 Comments

  1. People amaze me. How many years have we known about the digital transition? People who are surprised when their local stations go dark on the analog side deserve to lose TV. How much hand-holding must we do???

  2. We also switched Tuesday. We had been using a low power DTV signal for several years. Our full power authorization had us going to a different frequency. Because of that, our primary problems were getting people to re-scan their converters or DTV sets. A couple of observations…Some people chose not to install their converter box until they “had too.” People who had Vizio DTV sets had a higher amount of problems figuring out how to re-scan, Seems to be due to a poor design of the physical remote and menu system in the set. Same thing with some converter boxes. A simple command to re-scan using the remote menu would not work. On at least one type, the user had to go into a “new” system set-up mode. For the elderly, with poor mobility, poor eyesight, and poor hearing, this transition was a little tough in trying to help them through the phone. It would have been tough at any conversion date. We ended up going to the internet many times to find .PDF files of the operating manuals for TV sets and converter boxes to try and help people. The “best case” scenario would be to have people actually able to go into the viewer homes to help folks through it.

  3. By now, reality is sinking into viewers who lost some of their analog signals that there is indeed a change in how television signals are transmitted, and that change is here now. Betcha those without cable who waited too long in those markets are crowding their Radio Shack and Walmart stores seeking out DTV converter boxes. June will come soon enough, and you’ll see even more of a scramble for those who waited too long to make the switch. I fully expect to see a lot of tv sets curbside by July from many who opted for a new HDTV-equipped set instead. For the northern state broadcasters, the delayed switch will allow those stations time to build new transmission towers and their antennas where needed. But, I really can’t feel sorry for those viewers who waited until the last minute and beyond, they had better than three years prior notice!
    – Andrew, MALL727.net –

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