Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 16, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Almost half of U.S. households are not adequately prepared for the transition from analog to digital terrestrial television announced for February 17, 2009. Anyone who does not own a suitable converter box by the specified date risks soon sitting in front of a flickering television screen with no receivable signal. This emerges from a current report submitted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan investigative body of the U.S. Congress. According to the report, 84 percent of U.S. consumers said in a survey that they were aware of the implications of the planned transition. But 45 percent of those U.S. citizens who would actually lose television reception after the switch still have no plans for protecting their households from the loss of the TV signal. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many retailers do not have sufficient stocks of digital converters.
“Many consumers have not yet fully understood the impact of the transition to digital TV reception,” Democratic Congressman Edward Markey said, according to CNN, during a hearing before a telecommunications subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Spanish-speaking communities in the United States are particularly affected by the problem, adds Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin. Around 40 percent of inquiries received by the FCC on the issue are submitted in Spanish. “That is also why we need to inform this group particularly well about the implications of the transition,” Martin says.
“In Germany, broadcasters plan to complete the digitization of terrestrial television signals by the end of 2008,” explains Manfred Breul, telecommunications expert at BITKOM http://www.bitkom.org, in an interview with pressetext.de. In many regions of Germany, he says, it is already no longer possible to receive analog terrestrial television. “As far as the spread of the DVB-T standard is concerned, we are already considerably further ahead than the United States,” Breul emphasizes. Moreover, the problems occurring there during the transition did not arise to the same extent in Germany. “The media in Germany informed the public extensively about the switch. Retailers were also adequately prepared,” Breul explains.
Digital terrestrial television launched in Germany in November 2002. “At that time, however, DVB-T reception was initially limited to the Berlin capital region,” Breul clarifies. Because only seven to eight percent of German households had terrestrial TV reception even before the transition, a relatively hard switch was chosen, providing for a three-month transition period. “In subsequent years, this practice was continued across several regions. Today, DVB-T users can receive up to 24 different television channels, depending on the region,” Breul concludes.
