By law, full-power television stations nationwide must switch from the old method of transmitting TV signals known as analog to digital television (DTV) on June 12, 2009. DTV is an innovative new type of broadcasting technology that delivers movie-quality pictures and sound, more channels, and even high definition television (HDTV) to viewers with HD television sets. While the benefits of DTV are remarkable, millions of households risk losing television reception unless they take the easy steps to receive a digital signal.

DTV also can offer multiple programming choices called multicasting. Digital technology allows each digital broadcast station to split its bit stream into 2, 3, 4 or more individual channels of programming and/or data services. (For example, on channel 10, you could watch 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 or 10.4).

There is also a public safety aspect to the digital switchover. The conversion will free up parts of the broadcast spectrum, which can then be used by police and fire departments, emergency rescue and advanced wireless services.

Source: National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission

2. When is the switch to DTV Happening? When do I have to make the switch?

Under legislation passed by Congress – the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 – full-power over-the-air broadcast television stations are required to turn off their analog channels on June 12, 2009 at 12 Midnight, and continue broadcasting exclusively in the digital format.

Since digital television is more efficient than analog television, the analog turn-off will also free up parts of the airwaves to provide wireless spectrum for future innovative services by entrepreneurs. Today, 1,624 full power television stations out of 1,760 stations nationwide offer digital programming in all markets across America.

So you need to be ready for DTV on or before June 12, 2009.

Source: National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission

Do 1 of these 3 Easy Steps:
1. Buy a DTV Converter Box- Have this be a live link or put more information below
2. Buy a new TV with a built-in Digital Tuner
3. Paid Service- subscribe to cable, satellite or a telco service provider

Buy a DTV Converter Box:
If you want to keep watching your older analog TV, you will be able to buy a converter box for less than $50. This will not make your TV digital, but you will be able to receive a digital signal and the box will convert it back to analog. The converter box will also allow you to watch any multicast programming offered by your local stations.
Electronics retailers will begin selling the digital television converter boxes in early 2008.
Also, beginning in January 2008, coupons will be available to help cover the cost of the converter box. Households will be able to apply for up to two coupons, each worth $40 that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes.

DTV converter box is an easy-to-install electronic device that hooks up to your analog television set and over-the-air antenna and converts the digital television signal into analog, making it viewable on your analog TV. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will issue up to two converter box coupons valued at $40 each to households to help defray the cost of the converter box.

Electronics retailers will begin selling the digital television converter boxes in early 2008. Retailers in Central Ohio currently selling the DTV converter boxes include:

Also, beginning in January 2008, coupons will be available to help cover the cost of the converter box. Households will be able to apply for up to two coupons, each worth $40 that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes.

Consumers who receive over-the-air television signals through antennas on television sets that are equipped with analog tuners – and who do not subscribe to cable, satellite or a telephone company television service provider – will be affected by the transition.

At least 19.6 million households receive over-the-air signals exclusively in their homes, and 14.9 million households have secondary over-the-air television sets in their bedrooms or kitchens. Overall, nearly 70 million television sets are at risk of losing their signals on June 12, 2009, if consumers do not make the easy transition to DTV.

Consumers who receive free, over-the-air broadcasting on analog sets will have three options for continuing their television service:
Purchase a DTV converter box that will convert the digital signal into analog for an existing television set;
Purchase a new television set with a built-in digital tuner; or
Subscribe to cable, satellite or a telephone company television service provider if all desired local broadcast stations are carried by that service.

Source: National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission

With a good indoor or outdoor antenna, you will maximize your DTV reception. In general, dependable reception of DTV will require the same type of antenna that currently works to provide good quality reception of analog TV signals.

However, after June 12, 2009 some television stations will be moving to a different channel in a different frequency band that may require a different antenna type from the one you may now have. For example, some channels in the "VHF band" (Channels 2-13) may be moving to the "UHF band" (Channels 14-51) and vice versa. Receiving VHF and UHF signals require different antenna types, although some antennas are designed to receive both VHF and UHF signals.

Yes, but after the digital transition, you won't be be able to pick up over-the-air programs for recording from the tuner in the VCR, so the input to the VCR must be connected to the output of the DTV converter box. The tuner in the DTV converter box will need to be set to the desired channel to be recorded prior to the start of each recording period programmed into the VCR.

Source: National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission

Television has been in place since the late 1940s and is now called analog, or standard definition.

The underlying technology is that the picture tube has a phosphor coating on the front, just behind the glass. Actually, the coating is made up of phosphor dots.

Think back to high school physics or chemistry. If the phosphor dot coating is hit by an electron, it glows briefly. The stronger the electron beam, the brighter the glow. Think of it as a tiny source of light. If the strength of the beam could be controlled, we could make dark and light images on the screen by moving the beam around on the screen.

The beam technology is a fundamental basis for all television sets. A technique that varies exactly with bright and dark, or loud and soft, is called analog. So old TV sets, whether black and white or color, are analog because the strength of the beam was sent from the TV camera all the way to the home TV set as a signal that varied, weak for black and strong for white.

The trick was to read a "TV scene" and convert it to electricity, then finally electron beams and keep the television station and the home receiver moving the beam together. In the 1940s, television engineers started in the upper left corner of the picture tube and fired an electron beam at the screen which made it glow, and then moved to the right and did it again and again until they reached the other side of the tube.

Then, the beam was turned off and moved back to the left side, but down one line and turned back on until it completed another line. The process went on for 525 lines and reached the bottom right corner. It was turned off and moved back to the top left corner. It takes 1/30th of a second to do all 525 lines and reach the bottom corner. The technique of reading and writing the TV lines in order of No. 1 to 525 is called Progressive scanning. This is a key term to remember.

But there was a problem. By the time the beam arrived at the bottom corner, the upper opposite corner had started to lose the glow. This caused the picture to flicker and have uneven lighting. The solution was simple, to first scan the odd lines, which would take 1/60th of a second and then scan lines 2, 4, 6, or even lines, which also required 1/60th second. This solved the problem and still took 1/30th of a second total. The technique is called Interlaced scanning, and is the basis for all present day analog TV sets. Interlaced scanning is also a key component in Digital television.

Television pictures are made up of thousands of tiny, varying light sources. The TV screen is still scanned the same way and the brightness information is still collected to control the light sources. Modern technology has allowed thousands of more dots on the screen, doubling the number of lines. Without the old phosphors going dim, the screen can be progressively scanned. In today’s world, we call the phosphor dot a pixel because no phosphor dots are in a plasma or LCD set. In today's sets, the scanning from line to line tells which pixel to turn on and the brightness signal tells the pixel how strong it can shine.

There are a number of HDTV scanning systems, but the most popular is 1080i. In non- technical terms, this is 1,080 lines, compared to the old 525 lines, and still Interlaced scanning. CBS and NBC use the 1080i format. Another popular format is 720p, or progressive. ABC uses the 720p format. Today's HD sets can display either format. The 720p signal is more compatible with computers than 1080i and was later added to the standard.

Modern electronics allow a much wider screen width. Older electronics were unable to sweep the screen wide enough to show a movie-size picture, so the TV engineers cut off the edges.

High-definition television signals are broadcast free, over the air, just like regular analog television. All you need is an HDTV set, (not HD ready) and an antenna. There are no charges or fees but there are some things to know before you go HDTV shopping.

First and most important, the HDTV set must have a built-in digital tuner/decoder, called an ATSC tuner. If it has the tuner, it is capable of over the air reception. Today, all new Digital Televisions sold are required to have the Digital ATSC tuner built in.

The antenna must be a standard high quality TV antenna capable of receiving both VHF and UHF signals, and quality lead-in wire. This is called "Coax Cable" and RG/6 is the best. RG-59 is OK for short runs of 50 feet or less. Note that there are various qualities of RG/6 and the best is that used for satellite TV on DirecTV and Dish Network installations. Satellite cable is also the best for TV antennas. The better cables have lower loss; therefore more signal arrives at the back of the set.

The Digital signal is transmitted exactly like a normal analog TV signal, but it has it own channel along with its own transmitter at the TV station. In Columbus, WBNS-10TV is on Channel 10 and the Digital 10.1 channel is actually channel 21. You need to know the actual channel number if you buy an antenna, you need to know if the desired stations are VHF or UHF because the antennas are different. If you live in a mixed market, where there are both VHF and UHF stations, you need to purchase a combination UHF/VHF antenna.

Review the manual for your TV and find a section for the channel scanning menu. Normally, activating the menu causes the TV to look at every channel in its range and determine whether it is analog or digital and store that information in a memory.

These are the same TV channels that have been in use for years, but now there are two kinds of signals on the channels. If you tune a regular analog TV set to a digital signal, the TV will see the signal but would completely ignore it. You will just see snow on the screen and noise from the speaker, as if no station was there.

A good trick that will work until February 2009 is to manually tune the analog channel 10 signal by moving the antenna around until you get the best signal, then run the channel scan program and let it find everything available.

When the digital TV system was being designed, engineers knew both the analog and digital signals cannot be on the same channel. They also knew that TV stations around the country spent years and lots of money promoting their channel number and that would be lost when they changed numbers. A system was designed to keep the old channel numbers in the public's eye.

Here is how it works. We will use Channel 10 for the example. The analog transmitters operate on Channel 10, just like they have for the last 50 plus years. But the digital transmitter is actually on Channel 21. There is a signal within the "digital data stream," called PSIP . The PSIP signal tells the channel display on your TV screen what channel number to show you. In other words, the TV set creats a virtual channel and tells you it is on Channel 10 (10.1 to be exact) when it really is on Channel 21. So, after you get your antenna up and working and you set channel scan, you can forget about Channel 21.

Here is a breakdown of the new channel numbering for analog and digital channels.Channel 10 (analog) will show up on a digital TV as 10.0. The HD channel usually is 10.1. So, for now and until February 2009, your channel scan may show you a 10.0 and a 10.1. In the WBNS case, 10.0 is the normal Channel 10 signal and the 10.1 is really the Channel 21 digital signal. To complicate matters further, the station can break the digital data stream apart and transmit several non-HD quality signals at the same time. This is called multicasting. Multicast channels have numbers such as 10.2 and 10.3.

A question you might have is whether there can be HD and SD in the same multicast. The answer is yes. By giving up some of the "bits" or bandwidth, and some picture quality in the HD channel, it is also possible to run an SD channel. NBC does this very thing with their WeatherPlus channel. Since the extra bandwidth is needed only for fast motion, it is possible that the lower "bit rate" is never noticed.

There is a quirk in this system, at least right now. If your local station announces it is multicasting basketball and you don't see them, but your HD channel vanishes or you don’t get the Weather Plus, then re-scan the channels. Some sets don't see the new channels without a rescan. If that is the case, you need to rescan again when the multicasting is over to get the HD back. This is a problem that will be solved in the future, and is normally only a problem with earlier model Digital sets.

hhgregg Store
4250 W. Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43228
614-275-5980

Store Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. – 9 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. - 7p.m.

hhgregg Store
1700 Buckeye Place
Grove City, OH 43123
614-871-1647

Store Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

hhgregg Store
4099 Easton Loop West
Columbus, OH 43219
614-478-4280

Store Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

hhgregg Store
6440 Sawmill Road
Columbus, OH 43235
614-734-1020

Store Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

hhgregg Store
2339 Taylor Park Drive
Reynoldsburg, OH 43068
614-755-8900

Store Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

hhgregg Store
901 Hebron Road
Heath, OH 43055
740-788-6030

Store Hours:
Mon-Sat: 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

When does the required switch to all digital broadcasting taking place?
The Federal Communications Commission has mandated the end of analog broadcasts on Feb. 17, 2009.

Will I have to pay to receive programs in Digital and High Definition?
High-definition and digital programming is free over the air, as long as you pick it up with a UHF/VHF antenna. However, you will have to pay a monthly charge from your cable television provider for their high-definition package.

Do I have to have cable television to receive 10TV in Digital and High Definition?
No. You can use a UHF/VHF antenna to pick it up free, over the air. The dish companies are currently working on equipment and capacity to provide local high-definition signals to Columbus. WBNS-10 TV can be seen in HD with an HD television set with a built-in HD tuner and UHF antenna, or with a digital set-top box with the local HD package from Time Warner, WOW, or Insight.

Can I get ONN (Ohio News Network) in high-definition?
ONN is not offered in high-definition and there are no plans to do so at this time.

Can I make my old TV set high-definition?
No. But, there is a FCC sponsored program in place to help you keep your over the air tv's active for quite a while. This is the coupon provided by the FCC for a discount on a small set top convertor box that will allow your analog TV to receive digital signals. Even your older TV set will look good with this downconverted signal.

Can I play video from my DVD player, digital camera or my VCR on my high-definition TV?
Most high-definition sets have RGB and strait video inputs that allow users to use older analog devices with newer high-definition television sets.