End of and era....
 

In regards to the upcoming end of analog television I was wondering if anyone here knows, or has had any thoughts of what the end will really be like.

Will they announce the end, or will it just happen when they get around to flicking a switch.:scratch2:

I think it would be proper to have the last show be a looking back kind of documentary on television, from its start until today.

Another cool idea would be for the networks to broadcast the spinning likeness of Felix (I think) the cat for the last hour. That was supposedly one of the first images broadcasted in the early days.

Another idea I had was an Andy Griffith marathon for the entire last day.:thmbsp:

I'm hoping this event is something with some formality as it would be a good thing to record on the VCR, while it still works...:yes:

I was thinking "Topper", "The Thin Man", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"...

John

I intend to set up a couple of sets on our two analog channels, KAIT 8 and KEMV 6 to see just what will happen that night.

Is there a scheduled time?

Were suppost to be following along in a year or 2 in Canada .
So much for DXing with a vintage TV .
Best I done was on the 1954 Crosley . KCRA Sacramento .
That was a great moment .

"This is how the World Ends, then...Not with a Bang, but with a Whimper..."

I Married Joan, My Little Margie, December Brides....

When you see the angry mob with torches and pitchforks in front of thr Funny Cookie Company building you will know the changeover has taken place.

A 12-hour marathon of the movie "Freddy Got Fingered..." :D

They should play the National Anthem before they convert to digital. Just like in the old days when TV stations signed off at night.

I haven't heard anything from KTLA in Los Angeles yet, but I have eMails in to some people I know there. KTLA has pride in their history as the first commercial TV station on the west coast, and they also had a prewar TV experimental station (W6XYZ) owned by Paramount Pictures. If I had to guess, I'd bet they'll do something special. The first face seen on KTLA was Bob Hope, so sadly that's not possible. But they DO have a newsman; Stan Chambers, STILL WORKING THERE who started in '47 when they went on the air! I hope he gets involved.

Charles

I have been planning to do some kind of event -- maybe stack a small b/w set on my color roundie, tune them to different stations, and use a video camera to record the moment.

If you had a pirate TV station, it would be funny to instantly replace the missing signal with a scene of you and a pal sitting on a couch with ragged jeans, singing the theme from "Wayne's World." The sad part is that nobody would be watching to see it! :)

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

I already took the day off from work, stacking 25+ sets up(gently):) on all available channels and watching them all go to static with my camera. I think we have until midnight on the 12th, at least a few stations here said that. I may be wrong but since most of the stations in my area are just the digital station repeated on analog, therefore any special programming for analog would be on the digital station too. They might just throw the switch and that's it, but I hope not. Let's at least show the National Anthem or a test pattern or something.......

I think Merrylander is right: some folks just don't pay 'tention to nuthin', and when the TV goes to snow they won't have a clue and when they finally find out, there'll be all kinds of uproar. I'll bet we'll all be buying them new TV's for free. Sigh.

Reece

Verizon and AT%T should buy them new TVs, they got 90% of the bandwidth.

Effing BINGO !!!!

I just saw a blip on one of our local news about the transition. It seems that one person had used the two coupons and bought converters, but both crapped out in short order. One was the RCA from Wal-Mart, I did not recognize the other brand. From what I saw in the blip, the retailers did not want to replace the failed converters. With this kind of stuff happening, we may see rioting in the streets.

I have the RCA mentioned above, it has frozen and needed re-starting a couple of times, but still works. However, I recommend paying the extra $10 and getting the Digital Stream one. These seem to have better reception, do not freeze and introduce less buzz in antique TV sound systems.

KAIT 8 is switching over at 7:00 AM on the 12th.

Is it me, or does switching to digital just seem useless?

Check out "the Zapping of America" by Brodeur . . . just continuing old traditions. :yes::thumbsdn:

Since at least two of the local TV stations in Cleveland will be transitioning to digital at ten o'clock in the morning on June 12, I don't know if I'll see the event live as I expect to be sleeping at that hour. However, I could (probably will) set my VCR to tape the transition of one of the stations, although I don't expect to see much except a runner at the top or bottom of the picture informing viewers that the station is terminating analog programming, as one station here in northeastern Ohio did when it switched to 100-percent digital a couple months ago. I won't notice the difference, regardless, as I have Time Warner cable, which is already using the digital signals from every local station (direct feeds from the stations to the cable headend, not picking up signals with antennas) and converting them to NTSC analog for folks such as myself with older sets.

I do wonder, however, what the local TV newscasts will look like after the transition. The NBC station in Cleveland has already dropped its "Channel 3 News" brand (did so some time ago) for its noon, six, seven and 11 p.m. newscasts, now showing a screen just before the newscasts which has a huge, 3-D animated "HD" with a small NBC peacock between the letters, followed by a huge numeral 3 with the NBC peacock next to it and "wkyc-hd" in huge lower-case letters below the whole thing. Channels 5, 8 and 19, however, still have their original branding: "NewsChannel 5" for channel 5, "FOX8 News" for channel 8, and "19 Action News" for channel 19. Whether these will change after the transition is anyone's guess, although I think it would be in the public interest to do away with these brands that show the station's analog channel--after all, those numbers won't mean anything after the analog signals sign off. With all signals being transmitted digitally from June 12 going forward, the stations' channel positions will be expressed as a number followed by a decimal point, e. g. WKYC-DT 17.1 (the channel on which WKYC-TV in Cleveland will be operating when its analog signal signs off). Subchannels, if any, will be expressed by the number immediately to the right of the decimal point.

Speaking of subchannels, I don't think many of Cleveland's major TV stations are, at this point in time, even carrying anything much other than a simulcast of their main signal on their digital subcarriers. I do know that channel 5, the ABC affiliate for this area, does not have any alternate programming (yet) on any of its subchannels; however, channel 43, the MyTV affiliate, is supposedly carrying THIStv on one of its digital channels. I'm not sure about 25, 55, or 61, although channel 23, now an ION-TV affiliate, which does not have any digital subcarriers to my knowledge, will convert to digital "on the fly" on 6.12, if it hasn't already done so.

Finally: I feel sorry for antique-TV collectors such as Doug (drh4683), as his TVs will display nothing but snow after 06.12 unless he subscribes to cable or satellite (with many outlets, as he must have 100 TVs or more in his house). Putting that many splitters on one cable line, moreover, will cause signal losses galore, with the sets nearest the head of the line getting the best picture while those at or near the end of the distribution system will probably get the worst reception. This may not actually happen with cable, but I do know it can (and often does) occur with MATV distribution systems using antennas if the amplifiers fail or are inadequate to begin with.

They're already showing the scrolling alert at the bottom of the screen on KAIT-TV. Nothing on KEMV here though.

The Top TV is connected to a DTV converter box. The bottom one is connected directly to the outside antenna.

http://mp3.afz.biz/~hemingray/akpics/kait_d_a

I know you guys are talking TV but I'll throw this in. Back in about 1973 or so, one of the radio stations in the Cleveland area was switching to a "Brand New Country Music Format".To mark the event, they played Jerry Reed's "When You're Hot,You're Hot" for 24 hours straight. They would speed it up, slow it down, and drop in all kinds of strange noises and audio clips. If you could stay with it for awhile, it really became quite hilarious.

Newsanchor Diana Davis will probably end up looking like a Picasso painting.

Or something like that. :beerchug:

I just got my first converter from Radio (Sattelite-Cell) Shack today. I actually like the device as it gives my old TVs remote control that controls volume, as opposed to the remote channel select that a V.C.R. has to offer.

However, I don't think I like the ugly faces that the pixilating pictures produce on WAY too many channels.:sigh: The system makes you feel like you have all these free channels that you didn't know that you had. In reality, all but a few are unviewable. Nothing gained/nothing lost I guess. I guess we are just battling pixels instead of snow. Now, I only have the old rabbit ears as an antenna. I did notice that the U.H.F loop works better than using V.H.F. Who would have thought that there would ever be a market for rooftop antennas again. I see it coming, everybody who does not find the sense in/or can't afford paying $60-$100 per month to watch TV will need a rooftop antenna. Still cheaper than PAY PER DAYTV:thmbsp:. Perhaps an amplified indoor antenna would be an alternative.

Depending on location, a simple unamplified 300 ohm UHF loop with a matching transformer is enough. It is here, but I am pretty close to the transmitters I guess.

if I were to put up a new rooftop antenna it would HAVE TO be directional for DTV.

I really need to get my act together for the end. First I need to straighten out my outdoor antenna-the mount bent over the winter. With it I can bring in some fuzzy analog from DC & Baltimore. As it is I have just one analog left; their website offers no clue to anything special. The online schedule shows their analog station continuing right on into the next day. Guess that was easier for whoever does the schedule.

We have started having an issue with one of our two DigitalStream boxes. Watch a station, then switch to their subchannel...it will work. Shuffle back again and it will display the proper subchannel number but will be showing the other channel. Turning the box off and on again fixes it.

I will be visiting my mother in Atlanta when the switch happens, and sadly will miss the end of broadcasting in New Orleans. I may lug my little orange Philco with me just because I've had it so long to watch the end, although the cessation of any station in Atlanta doesn't have any personal meaning to me.

For my stations here in Grand Rapids it's 10am Eastern Daylight time. What sucks is that I'll be no where near a TV during the switch off. I'll be at a camp. I'm going to try to set my VCR to tape analog's last few moments before the plug is pulled. I'm thinking that they won't just pull the plug and the picture turns to snow, I think they'll switch to a message in big bold letters that just says "Get a converter box to continue watching this station" or something like that for a couple weeks before they really turn off the transmitters.

I doubt they'll do anything special for analogue TV. They'll probabally mention how they just axed "that crappy old [because as we all know, old = bad] analogue signal in favour of glorious godly digital. until the picure scrambles and fucks up whenever someone sneezes.

And I will bet all my money that there will be a tonne of people who are still clueless (how they can be clueless at this point is beyond me, but in general, the masses are idiots) as to why their TV won't work.

and even more people actually think that even if they have cable/satelite/etc, they still need a new TV or a converter box. morons.

Luckily, Canada isn't raping us of free TV until 2011, but after that I doubt the government will be giving us coupons for converter boxes.
I did however find out that the new digital channels will be on UHF, which is shitty since there are NO UHF analogue stations here, which means no one has a UHF antenna. VHF antennas will be useless, including the big ass areal we have on the roof. it will be a shrine to the days when TV signal was reliable.

We have digital cable, and it's ALWAYS fucking up. When that happens, i just go to my room where I still got analogue TV set up and watch in there.

even with digital cable though, you can plainly see pixels and hear digital compression and distortion. They're especially obvious on my 25" 1981 RCA XL-100 console. It's so fuckin irritating. AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE PROGRESS?! That TV has an excellent tuner too. i can pick up stations with a watchable picture, without an antenna at all. I'll bet this new digital transformation will give me nothing but CBC and the french channel, knowing the shitty TV reception in this area. (and CBC to me is totally unwatchable for reasons I can't mention here)

Well, it looks as if the schedule does go "right on into the next day.":drool: I obatained my second converter (a Zenith) and came home and hooked it to the living rooms 1949 RCA. In the spare room I just turned on the 1955 Philco with rabbit ears and waited for midinght. I even had a friend on the phone who was curious, so I heard Conan in surround. Well, midnight was nearly fifty minutes ago as I write and nothing had changed.:scratch2: I retired the real oldie experiment for the night and flipped on the 1970 or so Sears Medalist color set behind me right now to see how things progress.

By the way, I think the cheap Zenith converter recieves better than the more popular Digital Stream. I have only had two for one day so I will do a little experimenting this weekend. Also, UHF loop works better than VHF for me.

Down to the final hours now...

KAIT 8 Has terminated their analog signal just a few seconds ago from this post.

What happened when they did that? did it just cut off, or did they display a warning?

One of the stations here switched to a static message, the other two just went to snow.

Here In Detroit WXYZ went to snow, WJBK-2 & WDIV-4 switched to a "How to connect to a convertor box" program loop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MRroVXuRgU

I'm watching the last 30 minutes of analog
 

The West Palm Beach Fox affiliate is the last of our locals to switch. The crawl says the signal will go to snow at 12 Noon. I can't believe that Judge Karen will be the last show I watch on my sets...:tears: :thumbsdn:

I will watch it until it goes dark.

As of this post, All analog in this area has gone the way of ol' Yeller, with the exception of a very weak Christian LP broadcast from Batesville on UHF 15.

Oh the humanity!!! All analog is snow now in portland oregon.

It is quite sad.
Matt Davala