• by Ryan , February 9, 2009

As the almost certainly former deadline for the DTV switchover approaches and the turmoil surrounding the switch continues to grow, I’m forced to think about my undergraduate career, when DTV was still years away…

When I first heard about the digital switch in my media law class years ago, I thought it to be a pretty good idea: everything will be in 16:9, surround sound comes standard, and no more static or “snow” mucking up your picture. We can even use the freed-up airwaves for better cell phones and a nationwide Wi-Fi network.

For the past year or so, I’ve kept up fairly regularly on the DTV switch, and I used to be pretty excited about it. However, as the switch draws nearer, with the government passing laws to to delay it, I’ve become less energized as I realize the DTV switch probably won’t have a huge effect on me.

The Washington Post ran an article a few weeks ago about the myriad of problems people are encountering with the digital switch. People are realizing that the digital signal, while being able to travel about as far, it isn’t nearly as powerful. So people that live behind hills, buildings, or trees, are having their signal interfered with, and interference on a digital signal is much worse than interference on an analogue signal. With analogue, interference will lead to an increasing amount of static, while a digital signal is all-or-nothing – a little interference will cause total loss of the picture.

And this is the reason why I don’t have to worry at all about the digital switch. Beyond the simple fact that I have digital cable, living in Muncie (which is about 60 miles away from Indianapolis) prevents me from enjoying the benefits of digital TV. I live way to far away and behind to many trees for me to pick up the Indianapolis digital signals. Years ago when my family still had an aerial antenna, we always had a snowy
picture from the analogue signal – so I know the digital signal wouldn’t work.

Furthermore, I think these are the very reasons why I hardly know anybody who is preparing for the DTV switch – everyone has cable or satellite and we live out of range of all the Indy affiliates. The only person that I know that has made all of the necessary DTV precautions says the only station he gets is the local Muncie
PBS station – but at least it’s crystal clear.

It’s kind of unfortunate, actually. If I were able to pick up any of the digital signals from Indianapolis (along with all of those fancy auxiliary channels), I would probably ditch Comcast and just use the over-the-air (and free) digital airwaves.

But since my only DTV option is Sesame Street (albeit crystal clear, widescreen Sesame Street), I think I’ll just stick with the cable.