Analog TV Signals to Be Interrupted in 'Soft Test'.

[elleng]

Source: nyt/ap

TV stations around the country will replace their analog broadcasts for a few minutes Thursday with reminders that those broadcasts will disappear completely in three weeks.

The stations have to turn off their analog broadcasts on June 12 as part of a nationwide mandate to move to more efficient digital signals. For Thursday's ''soft test,'' analog broadcasts will be interrupted for two to five minutes once in the morning, once just after noon, at once in the early evening, around 6:30 p.m. local time for most stations.

Households that have all their sets hooked up to cable or satellite feeds will be unaffected by the analog shutdown -- which already happened on many stations in February.


Read more: http://nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/20/business/AP-US-TEC-Digital-TV-Transition.html

[L0oniX]

1. People will get "anal" about it.

:evilgrin:

[aquart]

2. It's been going on for WEEKS.

They've been doing it over and over in New York for four or five minutes at a time. DAYTIME. You mean they're now going to annoy viewers at a later time.

[elleng]

5. Just heard announcement DC area, NBC, for 6:45 pm.

.

[Jkid]

3. Why can't thet do a soft-test during primetime.

That will get a lot of attention.

[high density]

4. Do most stations even have that capability?

When my local station broadcasts a warning message about the analog shutdown, it also gets displayed on any cable or HDTV streams (which get downgraded to 4:3 while the warning is displayed.) I assume if they had the option of just showing that on the analog broadcast, they would do so already. I guess they could go to their analog transmitter for these tests and physically change the input to a device generating the warning message.

[Raine]

6. I don't think they've done any tests in Los Angeles

I wish they would. I have cable but it's old cable and I just hope I don't lose TV reception.

[underpants]

7. Anyone with cable doesn't have to worry about it

the purpose of the converters are two fold

1. we have to have the ability to communicate with people in the event of an emergency
2. there are three things on TV*
a. content (from NOVA to reality TV)
b. news (including weather
c. commercials (introducing new products and reminding people to buy the old stuff)
*not necessarily in that order