Digital television transition in the United States
The digital television transition in the United States was the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. It was originally set for between December 31, 2006 and January 1, 2007, but was delayed several times due to multiple government acts being enforced on broadcasting companies. Full-power analog broadcasting ceased in most of the country on June 12, 2009, however, various aspects of analog television were continued up until 2022.
History
The initial plans for the transition in 2006 were stipulated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. However, this was put off by the Digital Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005, under which full-power broadcasting of analog television in the United States was set to have ceased after February 17, 2009. This was further delayed to June 12, 2009, after the passage of the DTV Delay Act on February 4, 2009. The delay to June 12 was to assist households on a waiting list for coupons for digital converter boxes, funding for which was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.While full-power broadcasting ceased on June 12, 2009, 120 full-power stations would maintain a "nightlight" service usually displaying a program about the DTV transition, ending no later than July 12, 2009. Low-power broadcasting would continue for some time. Initially scheduled to shut down on September 1, 2015, the conversion date was delayed to July 13, 2021, before finally being completed on January 10, 2022, due to several factors affecting Alaska's conversion to digital television. An attempt was made in 2007 to extend analog services by another five years in areas within 80 kilometers of the Mexican border, but it was unsuccessful.
In preparation for the end of analog services, all new television devices that receive signals over-the-air, including pocket-sized portable televisions, personal computer video capture card tuners, and DVD recorders, had been required to include digital ATSC tuners since March 1, 2007.
Following the analog switch-off, the FCC reallocated channels 52 through 69 for other communications traffic, completing the reallocation of broadcast channels 52–69 that began in the late 1990s. These channels were auctioned off in early 2008, with the winning bidders taking possession of them in June 2009. Four channels from this portion of the broadcast spectrum were held for reallocation to public safety communications. Some of the remaining freed up frequencies were used for advanced commercial wireless services for consumers, such as Qualcomm's planned use of former UHF channel 55 for its MediaFLO service.
According to David Rehr, then president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, this transition represented "the most significant advancement of television technology since color TV was introduced." The then-new FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said on June 30, 2009, that the transition had "succeeded far beyond expectations", but his predecessor Michael Copps said that the transition led to a "significant impact on consumers" and that it was "not a closed book".
Transition testing
Wilmington, North Carolina test market
As part of a test by the FCC to iron out transition and reception concerns before the nationwide shutoff, all of the major commercial network stations in the Wilmington, North Carolina market ceased transmission of their analog signals on September 8, 2008, making it the first market in the nation to go digital-only. Wilmington was chosen as the test city in part because the area's digital channel positions would remain unchanged after the transition. Wilmington was also appropriate because it had no hills to cause reception problems and all of the stations would have UHF channels.The low-power CBS affiliate WILM-LD signed on its new digital signal in time for the transition. The test excluded UNC-TV/PBS station WUNJ, which kept their analog signal on, as they were the official conduit of emergency information in the area.
Viewers were notified of the change by months of public service announcements, town hall meetings, and local news coverage. Only 7% of viewers were affected by the loss of analog broadcasts, the remainder subscribing to cable or satellite services, but this produced 1,800 calls to the FCC for assistance. Officials were concerned by the implications of this for larger markets or those where reliance on over-the-air broadcasts exceeds 30%.
While many calls from viewers were straightforward questions about the installation of antennas and converters, or the need to scan for channels before being able to watch digital television, hundreds more were from viewers who had installed converters and UHF antennas correctly but had still lost existing channels. Most affected were full-power broadcasters which had been on low-VHF channels. WECT, a signal which in its analog form reached the edge of Myrtle Beach, could no longer be received by many who had watched the station for years—a victim of a move to UHF 44 at a different transmitter site. WECT's coverage area had been substantially reduced; for many who were on the fringes of the analog NBC 6 signal, WECT was no longer accessible. However, weeks before, new digital-only WMBF-TV, a new NBC affiliate, came to the air to serve Myrtle Beach with a city-grade signal; like WECT, WMBF was owned by Raycom Media at the time.
On November 7, 2008, the FCC issued an order allowing distributed transmission systems to be constructed by stations that otherwise cannot cover their original analog footprint with their new digital channels and facilities. While broadcasters may now apply for DTS facilities, this decision was made far too late to allow the extra transmitter sites to be constructed and operational before the original February 17, 2009, analog shutoff.
Legislation
On February 8, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 bill to end analog television by February 17, 2009.Impact
Digital TV encoding allows stations to offer higher definition video and better sound quality than analog, as well as allowing the option of programming multiple digital subchannels. However, it provides these advantages at the cost of a severe limitation of broadcast range.Digital signals do not have "grade B" signal areas, and are either "in perfectly" or "not in at all". Further, since most stations have preferred to use UHF rather than older VHF channel allocations, their actual broadcast range is far less than it was previously. Viewers in major metropolitan areas will likely not notice problems; however, rural TV users have generally had most or all of the stations they previously received with acceptable but not "perfect" signals fall over the digital cliff.
Lastly, many low-power broadcasters have been temporarily permitted to transmit in analog for several years.
Consumer awareness
Although the United Kingdom spent the equivalent of more than a billion dollars educating about 60 million people, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration had received $5 million a year before the original transition date of February 17, 2009, and the FCC had received $2.5 million and was scheduled to receive $20 million more later in the year, for 300 million people, requiring voluntary education campaigns. It was also noted that low-income, elderly, disabled, inner city, immigrants, and rural Americans were targeted the most, because these groups mainly watched analog antenna TV more than any other groups.While broadcasters were forced by Federal Communications Commission regulations to devote the equivalent of more than a billion dollars' worth of airtime to public service announcements regarding the digital transition, the amount of information conveyed in these short advertisements was by necessity limited. Both the on-air announcements and government-funded telephone hotlines receiving viewer inquiries directed consumers to Internet sites to seek information, at a time when most affected were not familiar with the Internet.
Obsolete equipment
After the switch, consumers' old analog televisions, VCRs, DVRs, and other devices which lacked a digital tuner no longer received over-the-air television. Though previously recorded content can still be replayed, new content cannot be accessed. The one, direct solution to the problem was to buy an external tuner that receives DTV signals directly and converts them to analog for the television, VCR, or other analog device. Another solution was the use of a cable TV or satellite TV service, as these providers handled the necessary conversion within their respective systems and could provide the analog signal these older analog devices required.Users of analog VCRs, DVRs, or other recording devices which lacked a digital tuner had the unique problem of no longer being able to record programs across multiple channels. In order to record multiple DTV channels, the viewer had to use an external tuner box and set the device to record the output from that box, typically L-1 for the line input. Some manufacturers sold external converter boxes or tuners that automatically changed channels at preset times. The analog VCR or DVR may record at preset times, but will continue recording the L-1 line input, which would be the same channel unless the channel is manually changed.
Alternatively, the user may purchase a new TV, DVR, or DVD recorder with a built-in digital tuner. However, these newer technologies have their own drawbacks, such as being limited to only 1–2 hours with high-quality XP mode.
Loss of service
A major concern is that the broadcast technology used for ATSC signals called 8VSB has problems receiving signals inside buildings and in urban areas, largely due to multipath reception issues which cause ghosting and fading on analog images, but can also lead to intermittent signal or no reception at all on ATSC programs. DTV broadcasts exhibit a digital cliff effect, by which viewers will receive either a perfect signal or no signal at all with little or no middle ground. Digital transmissions do contain additional data bits to provide error correction for a finite number of bit errors; once signal quality degrades beyond that point, recovery of the original digital signal becomes impossible, and the image on the screen freezes, or blinks back and forth to and from a completely black image.The maximum power for DTV broadcast classes is also substantially lower; one-fifth of the legal limits for the former full-power analog services. This is because there are only eight different states in which an 8VSB signal can be in at any one moment; thus, like all digital transmissions, very little signal is required at the receiver in order to decode it. Nonetheless, this limit is often too low for many stations to reach many rural areas, which was an alleged benefit in the FCC's choice of ATSC and 8VSB over worldwide-standard DVB-T and its COFDM modulation. Additionally, without the hierarchical modulation of DVB, signal loss is complete, and there is no switch to a lower resolution before this occurs.
A hundred-kW analog station on TV channels 2 to 6 would therefore be faced with the choice of either lowering its power by 80% or abandoning a frequency which it occupied since the 1950s in order to transmit more power on the less-crowded UHF TV band. Such stations can keep the same channel number, however, because of ATSC virtual channels. The higher frequencies are challenged in areas where signals must travel great distances or encounter significant terrestrial obstacles. Most stations in the low-VHF did not return to these frequencies after the transition. About 40 stations remained in the low-VHF after the transition, with the majority in smaller markets. The FCC has long discouraged the digital allocation on low-VHF channels for several reasons: higher ambient noise, interference with FM radio, and larger antenna size required for these channels. After the transition, many viewers using "high-definition" antennas have reported problems receiving stations that broadcast on VHF channels. This is because some of the new antennas marketed as "HDTV antennas" from manufacturers such as Channel Master were only designed for channels 7–51 and are more compact than their channel 2–69 counterparts. These manufacturers did not anticipate widespread continued use of the relatively longer wavelength low-VHF channels.
Stations that broadcast in analog on channel 6 have had an additional benefit of having their audio feed broadcast on 87.7 MHz, which is at the very low end of the FM radio dial. As such, many stations that use channel 6 have taken advantage of this, and directly promote this feature, especially during drive time newscasts, and as a critical conduit of information in markets where severe weather allowed a station the advantage to broadcast their audio via FM radio without having to contract with another FM operation to do so. WDSU in New Orleans, Miami's WTVJ and WECT in Wilmington, North Carolina were among the most well-known Channel 6 broadcasters which used this approach to provide emergency information during hurricanes.
Digital television, however, does not have this feature, and after the transition, this additional method of reception is no longer available. WRGB, channel 6 in Albany, New York, used a separate transmitter on 87.7 that transmitted a vertically polarized analog audio signal, which would theoretically avoid interference with the horizontally polarized digital TV signal. This would allow the station to keep its audio on 87.7 FM after the transition to digital. WRGB ran this transmitter for approximately 6 weeks on an experimental basis, only to find that the vertically polarized 87.7 MHz signal interfered with the digital video, while broadcast of analog signals on 87.9 MHz was met with FCC objections. WITI in Milwaukee took a more direct, though still experimental, approach to restore their TV audio, having it restored in August 2009 to an HD Radio subchannel of WMIL-FM via a content agreement with WMIL owner Clear Channel Communications. A purchase of HD Radio equipment or having a car stereo equipped with an HD Radio receiver is required to listen to this broadcast.
Planning for DTV reception assumed "a properly oriented, high-gain antenna mounted 30 feet in the air outside." The Consumer Electronics Association set up a website called to identify the means needed to provide the correct signal reception to over-the-air viewers. Another website, provides geographic mapping and signal data to allow viewers to estimate the number of channels which will be gained or lost as a result of digital transition; while it estimated that marginally more stations would be gained than lost by viewers, this varied widely with viewers of low-VHF analog signals in distant-fringe areas among the most adversely affected. An estimated 1.8 million people were expected to lose the ability to access over-the-air TV entirely as a result of the digital transition.
Viewers in rural and mountainous regions were particularly prone to lose all reception after digital transition.