Reprise: Analog’s Over, Now Watch TV on the Cheap

In observance of the passing of analog television at midnight, June 12, we’re reprinting this story originally appearing Feb. 6. 

I’m always gratified and somewhat amazed when I encounter someone who doesn’t subscribe either to cable, FIOS, or satellite TV. My daughters always claimed that we were the only ones in the world. But it turns out that, indeed, there are one or two other people out there (including 40 percent of the staff of the Falls Church Times).

The top three reasons I hear for refusing to join the 20^th century (much less the 21^st) are:

1) “57 channels and nothin’ on.” (Bruce needs to update that to 200 channels, still nothin’ on.”

2) “I don’t want my kids in front of the TV all day.” (Instead they’re in front of the Internet.)

3) “It’s just not worth $100 a month.”  (So why are you getting Pay-Per-View?)

Put myself in that last category — I just can’t see paying a sizable utility bill for what, when I grew up, was free. Not that that reasoning worked with my kids: When we moved to Falls Church in 2002, they presented a slam-dunk argument: Without cable, none of the friends they hoped to make would ever visit, and by the way, forget about using a TV antenna because the only shows they wanted to watch were on the Disney channel.

Faced with the awful prospect of seeing my daughters become social outcasts, I bit the bullet and ordered Cox expanded cable (Disney didn’t come on the basic service) for $50 a month. And our basement soon enough was regularly visited by groups of loud and happy teenagers. But I observed (on the sly) that they never seemed to be watching the cable. It was always videos — rental videos, with late fees.

As the girls grew up, the Disney Channel argument held less and less water until finally a couple of years ago I made a “deal” with my daughters that involved canceling the cable. I won’t go into details other than to say that we didn’t save any money with this “deal,” and that horses were involved.

But the cable has been gone ever since, and amazingly, there have been few complaints. Like any good modern family, at night we’re all hunched over our individual keyboards, surfing the web with high-speed Internet.

But still, there are times when you should have a TV. There might be another moon landing, for example. So I bought a big antenna from Radio Shack and installed it in our attic (to avoid looking like a Luddite by mounting it on the chimney). It was a nostalgic experience — we had a snowy screen just like in my youth, except now the snow was in color. 

And then I heard about February 17, 2009 — the date when all TV signals were to go digital. I got my $40 government coupons and bought some digital converters from Radio Shack for $55 each, or $15 after rebate. They even came with remote controls, which was a bonus since our remotes were either broken or missing. After a pretty simple hookup to the attic antenna — WOW, no snow! Plus, extra channels!

Channel 26, for example, now is four channels. Nobody told me that! When we had cable, my favorite was the food channel, followed by the travel channel. Now it’s all on one of the PBS channels, seemingly on all the time and with no commercials. And if I want to watch women’s ice-related sports, they play continually on NBC’s auxiliary channel 4.

In all, we receive 20 channels, and if we don’t trust one weather channel, there are two or three others. And when the government finally does mandate a switch to all digital (postponed yet again until June 12), airspace will be freed up to allow even more channels.

Apart from the crystal-clear reception, digital TV has another characteristic, personified by the “Oklahoma” lyrics: “With me, it’s all er nuthin’.” And “all er nuthin’” is exactly what you get with digital TV. Reception is either perfect, or it’s a pixilated, suspended animation. But that should improve after June 12, when stations go to full power digital transmission.