R.I.P. Analog TV

In the Philly area the analog-to-digital TV transition is complete. Local stations officially stopped transmitting in analog around noonish (some at 12:15, some at 12:30, whatever).

Minor backstory... On tuesday some thunderstorms rolled through the area in the morning and later that night I discovered that the signal booster I had on the antenna cable had been fried. (For some reason I was then only able to receive channel 23/NJN, another PBS channel.) I'd only had the booster in the setup in the first place so that I could sort of (except in inclement weather) receive channel 12 (WHYY/PBS out of Philly) in the year leading up to the transition since even though they were broadcasting digitally it was on a temporary frequency and at reduced power. They promised to boost their digital power at the moment of transition. (This was all due to the vagaries of transmission tower locations and such, with the need to broadcast both in analog and digital for the time being.)

So when my own personal booster went belly up just three days before the change-over, I didn't worry about it. I just hoped that channel 12 would live up to their word (I confess I'm always a little skeptical when promised things like that by some corporation) and not leave me moaning WHYY, WHYY, WHYY... Well, I'm happy to report they delivered. Their digital signal is now being broadcast on actual channel 12 instead of temporary 50 and I do indeed receive it just fine without a booster. Whew! And Yay!

I was not aware though that a few other channels (non-PBS) also had been broadcasting on temporary frequencies as well. So my converter box channel rescan relocated those channels as well and removed the old useless temporary frequencies. Now I'm good to go.

One extra little thing I did, which probably most folks won't think about or bother with, is I reprogrammed my TVs' channel memories to delete all the now nonexistent analog channels, except for channel 3 which the converter boxes use to transmit to the TVs. This way if I accidentally hit the channel up/down buttons on the TV remotes, there are no other channels to go to, so it doesn't matter.
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I've been helping my elderly aunt some with this of late. She got a different converter box and of course has a whole different antenna and cabling setup goin' on. She got the slightly cheaper, but widely available Magnavox converter box (like the one I've seen in Wal-Mart, but I think she got it elsewhere).

I have to say, I'm not crazy about the way it works, especially the layout of the on-screen menus and some of the long button-pushing sequences you have to go through to do things that my Zenith can do with just one or two specialized buttons. I'm happy with the Zenith and so glad that I did the online research way back when before purchasing even if it did cost $10 more. I did that at the time because I knew going in that there were no refunds or exchanges once you used your converter box coupons to purchase one, so I wanted to do everything I could to try to ensure I'd get one that would actually work well and have features I liked.

So for some reason, prior to the transition (she only recently hooked it up with help from others in the family) the autoscan for her channels picked up channel 6 (ABC), but actually as channel 6, not from the channel 64 frequency which it was being broadcast on prior to the transition. Could be something about her antenna as to why it wasn't picking up the temp frequency, but I have no idea why it would pick up anything on channel 6 itself because there was no digital broadcast happening there yet, only analog. Then after the transition, her channel 6 came in perfectly because it was already there! Unless I'm completely misunderstanding something (possible), it just makes no sense to me. Crazy.

Bottom line, though... now that the transition is complete, I rescanned for her channels and she gets everything she would want or need except channel 29 (the local FOX outlet) for some reason. She also ended up with two different channel 10s (NBC) and channel 17s (MyNetworkTV/MyPHL17) in memory, one which worked and one which didn't. So the new channel 10/17 frequencies were picked up during the autoscan, but the old temp ones (now inactive) were not removed. I simply deleted them manually, but again that just made no sense to me as I thought it should have removed them automatically.

I receive 29 just fine at my house, both before and after the switch, and my aunt lives right next door. Her antenna is mounted high on a pole out back and I'm reluctant to try to climb up there and see if a directional angle adjustment will help. I kind of doubt that it will as it really should be pointing correctly as it is. She has DirecTV on her main living room TV and she can get channel 29 through the dish, so she can watch it there if necessary. She just can't watch it in the kitchen or her bedroom, but that's not a major hardship for her. I think it's best to leave well enough alone, especially since really doubt that any amount of tinkering with her physical setup is likely to do any good.

If I did anything I would like to try shortening her lengths of cable from the antenna, but that's not really feasible given the way the cables already run in her house and also given where her TVs are positioned. I could rig up a temporary test of such a shortened cable scenario, but even if it worked I don't see how I could implement it in a more permanent fashion without a massively huge lot of time, trouble, and effort. For one channel that she doesn't watch that much? And certainly not in the kitchen or her bedroom if she did, so it's really not worth it. If it was the only channel she ever watched, then yeah, but otherwise forget it.

Remember when TV used to be simple?... I almost long for the days of having to get up and go across the room to the TV set to change channels by manually turning a dial. Almost.