Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing: “Status of the DTV Transition: 154 Days and Counting.” As a reminder that the Digital TV Transition is about over-the-air broadcast TV stations, one could note some of the issues raised in press coverage.

• Lawmakers See Challenges for TV Transition (WaPo)
• Early Digital-TV Switch Has Flaw: Viewers Could Lose Certain Channels on Permanent Basis (WSJ)

Some viewers had issues in Wilmington with over-the-air reception of the new DTV signal; some had problems setting up converter boxes with their analog TV sets.

NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow had a little different perspective, as he testified at that hearing. He focused on the issue of retransmission consent and how it would be effected by the transition. This FCC fact sheet covers the details, but suffice to say that retrans (and the related term “must carry”) refer to how cable operators can carry broadcast stations.

Here is some of the coverage of his testimony:

• Retranmission Deals May Get Derailed by DTV Transition, Cable Operators Warn (TV Week)
• McSlarrow: Retrans Uncertainty Creates Cable ‘Storm’ (MediaDailyNews)
• DTV “quiet period” debate gets noisy in Congress (Ars Technica)

Here is a link to the text of McSlarrow’s comments and I’ve embedded the audio below (which runs just under six minutes).

 

 McSlarrow Testimony 9/16/08: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

To help you understand this, you need to understand that retrans and must carry play a critical role in ensuring you can see your local broadcast stations as part of your cable lineup.  Some of the existing deals will lapse around the end of the year, right before the Feb. 17 transition date.

Last month, the NAB Board of Directors pledged to identify a Retransmission Consent Quiet Period. NCTA issued this statement:

“In recent months, we have discussed with NAB the need to recognize the potential for consumer confusion and disruption involved with retransmission consent disputes that might arise as we approach the broadcasters’ digital TV transition on February 17, 2009. We appreciate NAB’s acknowledgment that this is a very real concern, and continue to support efforts to minimize potential consumer confusion through the adoption of a quiet period. But the reality is that many outstanding retransmission consent agreements expire by the end of 2008. Any voluntary quiet period that does not begin before the agreements actually expire – or which is too brief to preclude potentially confusing messages about broadcast carriage during the time of the actual DTV transition – represents the illusion of a commitment and does not serve the consumer.”

As reported earlier, there was the first major test of the DTV Transition in Wilmington on Monday. Things largely seemed to go well, with a few exceptions. Ironically, since cable was originally built on delivering better reception, people seemed to have had some issues with clear reception of digital television.

Here is some of the coverage:

• Charlotte Observer
• Light Reading’s Cable Digital News
• Elon University’s The Pendulum

One takeaway from the event was that there seemed to be very high awareness of the transition, but there also continues to be some confusion between the digital transition involving over-the-air broadcast stations and the digital transition that cable operators have been conducting for a few years.

For example, here’s a recent post from the Cultured State blog: The 2009 Digital TV Transition: Flirting With Disaster. The author insists that “the cable television industry isn’t telling the whole truth on what’s about to happen to your cable service.” The false charge is leveled that you won’t be able to continue to receive your cable signal unless you have a set-top box or a Digital Cable Ready TV. Proof is offered in the form of a July article from MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan.

As it so happens, I’ve already addressed Sullivan’s piece:

Bob Sullivan, senior writer for MSNBC.com’s Technology section, posted an article today entitled “The ‘Other’ Digital TV Conversion Might Cost You,” which purportedly attempts to clear up some confusion about the coming Digital Television transition. In fact, it simply sows more confusion. Sullivan has tried to establish (falsely) a direct relationship between the upcoming “DTV Transition” and efforts by cable operators to expand their video offerings and enhance other services.

Read the whole thing for the full explanation, but suffice to say that cable needs to manage its bandwidth, which is why we see things like switched digital video or channels being moved from analog tiers to digital. This has been going on for some time and has nothing to do with the Digital TV Transition of next February.

A sinister portrait is painted of the cable industry’s intentions regarding set-top boxes. I will simply refer you to comments I made to the TV Barn blog:

“If you switched to DirecTV or Dish, you have to have a new box. If you switch to Verizon FiOS or AT&T’s U-verse, you have to have a new box. It baffles me to no end why there are four companies competing with cable and nobody has ever complained that you have to have a set-top box for them.”

Michael Marcus at the Spectrum Talk blog also has concerns: 6 Months to Go and Some DTV Confusion Continues. He tries to wade through a variety of website, but concludes, “…if you have your analog TV set connected directly to the cable system and select channels directly with your TV set tuner, you might be in trouble in the near future.”

What he’s referring to is that cable operators have offered to carry local broadcast signals on analog tiers for three years, unless the cable system goes all-digital. This does not seem to be sufficient for him:

Note that the FCC requirement only deals with local over-the-air signals (e.g. signals from NAB and MSTV members), not C-SPAN, CNN, The Food Network, etc. So the quote from the DTV Transition Coalition above (actually linked through the NCTA site) that says “TV sets that currently receive programming through cable or satellite are not likely to be affected by the transition to digital.” is at best a half truth. So is the FCC quote, “Analog TVs will continue to work with cable, satellite, VCRs, DVD players, camcorders, video games consoles and other devices for many years”. But if your idea of TV is limited to what the 15% of American homes without cable or satellite actually see, then the information is correct.

Once again, we’ve got apples and oranges. The Transition is about over-the-air broadcast stations. If cable channels have to be moved from analog to digital, that is a completely separate issue.

As you’ve probably read, the Federal Communications Commission chose the Wilmington, NC market as the first test case for the Digital Television transition (Here’s the story from the local paper, the Star-News). The switch was flipped at noon on Monday - a literal giant switch handled by Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Several of my colleagues were down for the event and one captured this video.

In that video, there were four TV sets displayed, but you can only see the two on the right. Of those two, the one on the left is hooked up to a digital TV converter box and is receiving the digital signal. The one of the right is receiving the analog signal. Once the switch is thrown, the screen first goes black and then shows a message telling viewers that they need to do something to receive the digital signal.

And here’s a  more detailed report from NCTA’s Rob Stoddard:

By all measures, the Wilmington trial was, technically, a success. The full-power commercial broadcast stations in the market were successful in pulling down at 12:00 noon Eastern Time all of the network, syndicated, and local programming they were broadcasting in analog – leaving viewers entirely dependent upon those broadcasters’ digital signals. Cable operators in the market, and presumably the satellite providers that also serve viewers there, were successful in accommodating the digital-only scenario, as well as in processing the hundreds of requests for new service or service upgrades that came in the days preceding and during the cut-over.

All major stakeholders – broadcasters, cable operators, and government officials at the national, state and local level – also appear to have been successful in collaborating on solutions that would best serve consumers. That collaboration left a halo of good feelings, in that the various groups, which more frequently are competitive and adversarial, were almost surprised to discover that they could work closely together within tight time constraints to resolve all of the issues implicit in the cut-over.

What we’ve actually learned from the trial, so far at least, is more an affirmation than new knowledge:

People will (and do) wait until the last possible moment. According to published reports, cable operators reported a flurry of consumer calls; supplies of pertinent consumer electronic devices (converter boxes, antennas, etc.) were stretched; and local officials reported a run on applications for government discount coupons, meaning that some consumers would be waiting to receive coupons well after the cut-over date – all in the hours leading up to the actual cut-over. And this in a market in which NAB reported 97 percent awareness in the week prior to the cut-over.

The “digital cliff” effect does take a toll. Published reports also say that local TV stations received, collectively, hundreds of calls right after the cut-over, many from people who had obtained and properly installed the government-certified digital-to-analog converter boxes for their over-the-air analog TV sets, but who for a variety of reasons could no longer see some or all local TV signals. We can assume that some people needed new or better antennas; others had failed to program their new boxes by scanning for available digital channels; still others just aren’t in a good place to receive local digital TV signals.

And, many people needed help from others to get over-the-air converter boxes hooked up and working properly. The City of Wilmington was persuaded to take action less than a week prior to the cut-over, to make firefighters and emergency responders available upon request, to help hook up a box, re-position an antenna, or provide other assistance to citizens who needed it.

It remains to be seen how these learnings can be applied to the nationwide cut-over that will occur February 17. However, the trial was successful in identifying the kinds of issues that tangibly could be addressed by all communities and stakeholders in the weeks ahead.

Bob Sullivan, senior writer for MSNBC.com’s Technology section, posted an article today entitled “The ‘Other’ Digital TV Conversion Might Cost You,” which purportedly attempts to clear up some confusion about the coming Digital Television transition. In fact, it simply sows more confusion. Sullivan has tried to establish (falsely) a direct relationship between the upcoming “DTV Transition” and efforts by cable operators to expand their video offerings and enhance other services.

As a public service, I’ll attempt to unpack what he wrote.

First, let me point out that NCTA has been saying for some time that there are two “digital transitions” – the digital TV transition for full-power, over-the-air television stations, and the cable industry’s efforts to transition analog channels onto digital cable tiers, in order to reclaim bandwidth and serve consumers with more and better services. This second transition is more of a “digital migration,” and it has been under way for many years now. See this earlier blog post for more details on the differences between these two transitions.

The article starts off correctly distinguishing between the two efforts, but then he makes the claim that cable’s transition “could leave up to 100 million TVs in the dark, unable to display any cable TV channels at all without adding extra equipment.” He further claims that this gathering threat will come to pass eight months from now: “Come February, though, millions of TVs will no longer be capable of displaying cable TV channels without new equipment…”

Having sounded the alarm, Sullivan then pulls back on the timing. First, he writes, “But the death of cable analog television is arriving a bit more stealthily, and more piecemeal.” And pretty soon he makes it clear that the change will be gradual:

…it’s unclear how the industry can turn off analog service without leaving millions of customers in the dark.

The cable transition will not be as brutal as the end of the analog broadcast, which will hit with one fell swoop in February.

Instead, cable operators will decide on their own when to make the switch. So far, some services – such as Time Warner – have indicated that its analog signal won’t be shut down any time soon. Robyn Watson, spokeswoman for the company, said its 3 million analog “basic cable” consumers won’t see any changes in service.

The rest of the article continues to mix concerns about the broadcast transition and the cable one, suggesting that something nefarious is afoot. The fact that cable’s transition has been going on for some years (since the late Nineties), and is anticipated to continue for several years beyond next February, appears to be almost entirely overlooked.

The transition to all-digital cable systems will provide a range of benefits for cable customers, such as access to many more channels, including high-definition offerings. Freeing up bandwidth will help with the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0, the ultra fast “wideband” Internet access that will deliver speeds of over 100 Mbps. In addition, new digital set-top boxes will deliver DVR capability, better interactivity, and improved technical quality. For consumers who don’t want a set-top, the coming deployment of tru2way technology, supported by recent progress in completing deals with television set manufacturers, will move us towards a world where consumers can elect to not have a box.

As pointed out already in the article, the cable industry is working hard to comply with the requirements from the FCC for continued carriage of broadcast TV signals in analog.

It’s important to note that DBS was an all-digital platform from its inception, which means that consumers have always needed a box on every TV for reception. AT&T’s U-verse multichannel video service has also been all digital since inception, and Verizon’s FiOS TV service is undergoing the exact same digital conversion, on a market-by-market basis, that the writer finds so sinister. Therefore, it’s amusing to read reader comments under the story expressing anger about having to take a box from a cable operator, complete with threats to go to the telcos or DBS – who will then require you to take a box.

UPDATE: Michael Willner also touched on this issue in a post today, in regards to the migration of premium channels from analog to digital on Insight’s Louisville system.

It’s been expected for a while that a city might serve as a test case for the coming Digital Television Transition (scheduled for Feb. 17 next year). It’s now been announced that Wilmington, NC will be that test market.

From this morning’s L.A. Times:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to announce today that broadcasters in the coastal city of about 96,000 — the nation’s 135th-largest media market — will turn off their analog signals permanently on Sept. 8. That is about five months before the government-mandated switch-over in the rest of the country Feb. 18.

“We think it’s going to be a good thing for the community and it will pave the way for the rest of the country,” said Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo.

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps had proposed a test market so officials could work out technical glitches and outreach problems with the digital transition, which will render older TVs that use antennas useless unless they’re outfitted with special signal converter boxes.

“It’s just nonsensical to think you can go into a transition like this and pull the lever one time for the entire country and not expect to have real consumer confusion,” Copps said Wednesday. “Even Broadway plays open on the road and you get the kinks out.”

The FCC confirmed the announcement today.

We issued a statement this afternoon from our President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow:

NCTA has previously indicated our support for the concept of a test market, and the cable industry has been working closely with broadcasters and other stakeholders to ensure that the February 2009 transition is seamless for television viewers. We applaud Commissioner Copps for proposing the concept of a market trial, and we look forward to working closely with the FCC so that local cable operators are able to help make the Wilmington test pilot – and the full February 2009 broadcast transition – a good experience for consumers.

The country is beginning to hear about the coming Digital Television transition. Unfortunately, there are continuing areas of confusion, even (as pointed out previously) among experts. One of the key points that trip up people is that there are really two transitions. Let’s make one thing clear up front. If you get television from a cable operator (or one of our competitors), you probably lump all those channels together: CNN, Fox, Lifetime, ABC, it’s all the same, right? But some channels are from broadcast stations in your area: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW. Those other channels, such as MTV and ESPN, are cable channels. The high-profile DTV Transition coming in February 2009 — as full power over-the-air broadcast TV stations switch to digital and turn off their analog broadcast signal — is the broadcast industry’s digital transition. And although cable is playing a role in that, the cable industry is going through its own transition. Let me explain the difference.

The broadcasters’ transition is about digital television, where the picture and sound information is expressed in the form of data bits representing, for example, a “1” or a “0”. You can think of this transition as analogous to the transition from vinyl records to CDs.

Cable operators are also transitioning some analog channels onto digital cable tiers in order to reclaim space. With digital cable, compression technology is used to allow more than one program service to be carried in the bandwidth space normally required for one analog program service. Typically, the signal is sent to the home, decompressed in the set-top box and changed into analog signals for display on the television. You can think of this transition as something like the manner in which you can compress large files for easier downloading, and then you decompress them for viewing.

Your local TV stations are offered in hi-def formats on digital cable, but digital TV and digital cable are two different animals.

As we’ve discussed before, part of the DTV Transition will require that you get a digital-to-analog converter box to continue watching full power over-the-air broadcast TV stations on an analog TV set. If all your TV sets are connected to cable, you won’t need to do anything to continue to watch your local broadcast stations.

However, some popular cable channels are only available on cable’s digital tiers. In addition, other popular cable channels may be moving from the analog tier to the digital tier because channel space is limited. In these circumstances, you may want to move up to digital service from your cable company — and a digital cable set-top box. But don’t confuse cable’s digital migration with the broadcasters’ digital TV transition.

There’s no denying that the Digital Television Transition is a complicated issue. Even those of us who work on it all the time sometimes have difficulty keeping all of the technical details straight. Some people seem confused over whether a box is always necessary to keep watching TV.

Here’s one example. Earlier this week, on a Public Radio program dealing with current technology issues, that subject of the coming DTV transition was discussed:

Host: How do I make sure that my TV doesn’t go blank on February 17?

Guest: What you have to do is look at how TV gets to your TV. If you subscribe to satellite or you subscribe to cable, and in either case you have a box, some kind of tuner or digital video recorder connected to your TV, you don’t have to do anything. Any digital conversion that is necessary is done in that box. At worst, your cable or satellite company will ship you a new box at some point. The tricky issue is people who either…

Host: Have cable without a box.

Guest: Yes. They have a cable ready TV and they just subscribe to basic or expanded basic so that they’re used to the joy of watching TV with only remote control on the coffee table. They may need to get a box where they didn’t have one before because the cable companies - and this is actually separate from the digital transition in a certain sense - they only have to keep providing a very basic set of channels in an unencrypted analog form that you can get with your cable ready TV.

Here’s another example: In the latest edition of the Bose newsletter, there’s the same error. It says that you’ll need to do nothing for the transition if “You subscribe to digital cable TV.” Further down, it states that it is a “Myth” that cable subscribers are ready for the changeover, suggesting that cable subscribers who receive analog service will be left out.

The source of the confusion seems to be that two topics are combined. It’s important to remember that this DTV Transition is only for the over-the-air broadcast industry. Cable is going through its own “digital transition.” Because of that word “digital,” the two often get confused.

What will cable subscribers need to do in preparation for the DTV Transition next February? The current information is that cable customers - whether or not they have a set-top box - will still be able to watch television after Feb. 17, 2009. At the same time, the cable industry has been moving towards a digital platform; as part of that, sometimes operators will move channels from the analog tier to the digital tier, which then needs a digital set-top box for reception.

Bottom line: If you have cable service, you should be fine, with the set-top box as an irrelevant factor. However, if you want to get access to cable’s newer services, such as hi-def TV or digital video recorders, or if you want to see the hundreds of programming choices available through the digital cable platform, you’ll need to have the appropriate set-top box. You can avoid having a box by purchasing a Digital Cable Ready television, but the current sets are only one-way, which means you won’t have access to interactive services. However, the tru2way standard will address this issue.

As always, you can visit the Get Ready for Digital TV site for more information (también en Español).

You’ve heard about those DTV converter boxes that you can get a coupon for. News today that the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) on an upgrade of the nine-year-old site AntennaWeb.org, “an online antenna mapping program designed to help users determine the proper outdoor antenna to use in order to receive free local broadcast channels.”

In other news, the DTV Transition Coalition, of which NCTA is a founding member, put out a media release on Friday pointing out their tremendous growth in membership. It’s a long and varied list that includes “consumer groups, broadcast, cable and consumer electronics companies, retailers, civil rights and grassroots organizations, trade associations, and state and local government organizations.”

We’re coming up pretty quickly on the official start to the One Year Countdown to the Digital Television Transition.

On the off-chance that the preceding sentence was complete gibberish to you, let me step back and explain. The DTV Transition refers to the coming switch from analog to digital over-the-air broadcast television. Congress has mandated that after February 17, 2009, full power television stations will stop broadcasting in analog, and will broadcast in digital exclusively. Changing over to a digital format will create efficiencies in the use of the radio frequency spectrum on which the nation’s TV broadcasters transmit their signals. Some of the old spectrum that’s freed up will be made available to first-responders such as local police and fire departments and will enhance the way they react to emergencies, which will significantly increase public safety for all Americans.

That phrase “full power broadcast TV stations,” however, is a really important distinction, as the FCC’s website points out:

While the majority of consumers in the U.S. can receive the programming of full-power over-the-air stations, there are three other categories of broadcast TV stations - “low-power,” “Class A,” and “translator” stations. There is currently no statutory deadline for these stations to convert to digital broadcasting.

That page defines what these stations are, but it’s useful to remember that not every station broadcasting in America is going to be transitioning next year.

But there is a solution: analog pass-through in digital-to-analog converter boxes. You’ve possibly heard that you can buy a converter box that will let your old analog TV sets receive and display over-the-air digital signals. There are some of these boxes that will also “pass-through” an analog signal, in addition to performing the conversion for the digital ones.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has a list of converter boxes that are eligible for their coupon program, which allows consumers to apply to receive up to two vouchers that offer a significant discount off the price of the converters. That list clearly marks the models that are “capable of passing through an analog signal to the TV set.” Right now, there are three such boxes, but it is expected that additional models will be available in the future.

For more info on the DTV Transition, you can visit the cable industry’s website GetReadyForDigitalTV.com or the NTIA’s website on this topic. If you’re a cable customer, the good news is that for any of your TVs hooked up to cable, you shouldn’t have to do anything to continue enjoying full power broadcast TV stations in their new digital format, whether you have a hi-def television or not.

In addition to the earlier CES panel on the DTV Transition (which had focused on the coupon program and retailers), there was another session later that afternoon entitled “Goodbye Analog Hello DTV” which examined current educational efforts to get the public ready for the big change.

The panel started with remarks from Meredith A. Baker, Acting Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), outlining how the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program is going so far. She indicated that consumers can expect to start receiving their coupons in late February and also said that of people contacting NTIA for information on the program, 74% were using the website and 26% were using the phone number.

Then a discussion followed, with moderator Jason Oxman, Vice President, Communications and Member Relations, Consumer Electronics Association; and a panel made up of members of the DTV Transition Coalition: Debra Berlyn, President, Consumer Policy Solutions, Federal Affairs Consultant, AARP; Jonathan Collegio, Vice President, Digital Television Transition, National Association of Broadcasters; Catherine Seidel, Chief, Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, Federal Communications Commission; Rob Stoddard, Senior Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs, National Cable & Telecommunications Association; and Tony Wilhelm, Director, Consumer Education and Public Information Television Converter Coupon Program, NTIA (panel pictured in order, from left to right).

Everyone painted a very positive picture of how education efforts have been going so far, but there were a couple of key takeaways. The panel said that the measure of success is in terms of awareness, not response. As Seidel said, “Some people do get the message, but don’t act.” Collegio warned that for consumers who wait until the last minute to get a converter, there will be a lag until they get their coupon which may mean some people will be left out on February 17, 2009.

Berlyn said that AARP was particularly concerned about groups like seniors, minorities, non-English speaking households, disabled persons, and those living in rural and tribal areas. She also said there was concern about consumers knowing how to connect the converters once they obtain them and suggested that local community groups such as Meals on Wheels may be useful in working directly with consumers.

NTIA is focused on over-the-air population, said Wilhelm. Households that don’t get television via cable or satellite are most in need of information about the Transition. The key questions are where these people are to be found and where the key markets are. For example, Wilhelm noted that Los Angeles is the #1 over-the-air market and that along the Mexican border, there are a larger number of over-the-air households. Coupon requests will allow NTIA to track the consumer response and make mid-course corrections.

The initial stages of education efforts seem to be effective, with consumers’ questions evolving over time and becoming action-oriented. As Stoddard noted, there is a need for “articulate communication” which helps people understand when they need to do something and when they don’t.

For more on cable’s education initiative, visit our Get Ready for Digital TV site (also available en Español).