Better TV is coming, but are you ready for it?

Behind the placid pictures, a made-for-TV storm is looming.

Since the first days of television, the method of beaming pictures into our living rooms hasn’t changed much. But on Feb. 17, 2009, television stations across the country will hit the off button on this time-tested technology and switch to new transmitters, sending computerized digital signals through the air.

When the change comes, the estimated 30 million televisions that use traditional antennas will go to snow without a digital converter box. The cable industry is spending $200 million to educate customers, and Congress has set aside $1.5 billion to help subsidize the purchase of converter boxes.

Still, half of American viewers don’t know the
storm is coming, according to a poll conducted last month by the Cable
& Telecommunications Association for Marketing. For the 1 in 5
American households that still use rabbit ears or antennas on the roof,
“the day of reckoning is coming,” said Barry Umansky, a communications
professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

Not enough spectrum for all those signals
The
switch to all-digital television, and a similar switch in the wireless
communications industry, is partly a repercussion of the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when police and fire communications channels
were clogged by too much traffic.

The
Federal Communications Commission first ordered the eventual transition
in 1996, but Congress didn’t set a deadline until the the 9/11
Commission reported that first-responder systems needed a major
upgrade. [q url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22401907/wid/11915829?gt1=10841"]The problem, said Umansky, a longtime
broadcast industry lawyer, is that “America’s seemingly wide-open skies
are chock full of radio signals, and there just aren’t enough
frequencies for all the people who need to use them.”

By
taking back the analog frequencies, the government will “allow the
nation’s airwaves to be used by firefighters, police and other first
responders to help the nation when there might be a natural or manmade
disaster,” said Todd Sedmak, communications director of the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Cell phones, alarms, navigation systems also affected
Companies
will now have to bid for digital spectrum, which can carry more
information more efficiently, allowing them to transmit crystal-clear,
high-definition signals, and more of them. The auctions will mean a
windfall for the government — and a train wreck for consumers, said
Umansky and other experts.

Televisions
aren’t the only technology to use analog signals. Some cell phone
customers still use analog service, which carriers won’t have to
provide under a similar ruling that takes effect Jan. 1. So do about 1
million home and business alarm systems across the country, many of
which are small, local operations for which the switch to digital could
be prohibitively expensive.

“So
you could have your alarm going off and the signal will go nowhere —
basically fall on deaf ears,” said Andrew Stevens of Tele-Plus, a
telecommunications and security company in Hagerstown, Md.

Likewise,
General Motors’ OnStar automotive assistance service will go silent in
all models that can’t be upgraded to receive digital signals. That’s
every model made before 2002, as well as some m