Countdown To TV Apocalypse Continues

Lately when I walk into a room, friends quickly change the conversation to the oncoming digital TV changeover here in the US. I guess because I work in TV & film, that makes me some kind of broadcast engineering expert. There is still a lot of confusion surrounding the change, and the many public service announcements I've seen really aren't all that informative.

Were I more of a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that these particularly unhelpful ads are to goad consumers into buying a new LCD television or subscribe to cable TV rather than buying & understanding a $20 converter box. I do read a few "behind the scenes" TV industry journals, and there are a shocking number of people surveyed who don't understand the changeover, or that they can keep their old TV's and keep getting free programming. I guess that we will all be getting phone calls next February from  a technophobe friend or relative wondering where Oprah disappeared to.

I'll admit that I am genuinely angry at how short the overlap between analog and digital broadcasting has been. In the UK when the BBC adopted an all new standard for color broadcast in 1970, they continued broadcasting the older non-compatible black and white signal until only a few years ago. The BBC gave people decades to make the switch. I'm not saying that we should do exactly the same, but they're our airwaves, right? Is it right that in February all the unadapted TV's in my house will simply go dark?

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