It was inevitable that Americans with over-the-air TVs are slowly realizing the their regular analog service has stopped working and won't return. It's been a few weeks since the DTV transition and there are still about 1.8% of US households that are without digital service, according to data provided by Nielsen.
News: Over 2 Million Households Without DTV
This means that about 2.1 million households are still without service. This number is down from 2.5 million from last week. Since the June 12th switch from analog to digital signals, only about 400,000 households have successfully secured digital service. The region that is most hit by this is the Albuquerque-Santa Fe region, which still has about 6.22% of all homes without TV service, followed by Austin, Texas, with 4.72%, and Dallas-Forth Worth with 4.4 percent.
Los Angeles still has the largest number of unprepared household at 190,549 or 3.37% of its population. That number is down from last week, when it was at 225,040. About 4% of people under the age of 35 are unprepared, but less than 1% of people over 55 are without digital service. Those numbers tell a tale, but we guess that there is a significant number of younger people who won't ever bother with DTV. They've moved into the digital realm of TV a long time ago, with Netflix, Hulu and YouTube and won't switch on their TVs in a long time. I haven't used a TV in years. [via Gearlog, image by Luna via Creative Commons license]
Comments (8)
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I have zero sympathy for anyone complaining about loss of their tv signal. They were told it was coming for a year, they had the opportunity to get converter boxes for pretty much free, and that's that. If they still haven't done anything to get ready, tough freakin' luck.
view tigerblade's profile
The DTV transition has caused a lot of trouble. Some people could have made a seamless change but didn't however 1) Even with converter boxes, there are people in my area who can't get the minimal amount of digital signal required to view a number of channels we used to get via analog. Analog signals transmit over longer distances than digital signals and digital signals are more disrupted by the urban buildings than analog signals. 2) Converter boxes AFTER the coupon were at least $10-$20 out of pocket *when* they were available in my area. 3) There are TVs that can't use a converter box so are now useless.
view private's profile
And I can't use my analog cell phone any more. Technology changes, people need to move on. Or not. When did TV become a basic human right?
view Marcbicycle's profile
TV watching is not a basic human right. However, the Public Airwaves belong to the public (thus why we have the FCC) and that public now cannot continue to access that public resource without additional costs. Broadcast outlets are still the primary, critical source of information for the American public in general, especially for emergency news and weather alerts (yes that is a tornado n the radar heading your way). Yet, professional engineers estimate that 50% of people who successfully used internal rabbit ears like apartment dwellers will have need a new antenna - probably external mounted. And people purchased their old TVs with the reasonably expectation that they would be able to use them unchanged until the TV's end of life...
view private's profile
>Broadcast outlets are still the primary, critical
>source of information for the American public
>in general
Hmmm. That probably explains why Americans are - in general - so staggeringly ill-informed.
view sunspot42's profile
We're Americans without DTV, but we only use our wooden framed television for playing dvds.
view someofmyorange's profile
"And people purchased their old TVs with the reasonably expectation that they would be able to use them unchanged until the TV's end of life..."
That is never a reasonable expectation when buying any kind of technology. I buy new tech fully expecting it'll be obsolete within the year.
view tigerblade's profile
The promise was that all I needed to continue to watch Over the Air TV was to buy and set up the "free or low cost-converter box".
I ordered the cards, finally get the cards, went to the store and spend an additional $20 on the Converter Box, set up up the Box and got no watchable channels. I went back to the store and spent another $20 on an antenna and still have no watchable channels.
So, after blowing $40 of my own cash and the $40 card, my TV is still useless. At least I won't have the Converter Box on all the time, increasing my carbon footprint.
view private's profile