At one time it was the only way to receive television programming and the technology has remained, for the most part, unchanged since the standard was adopted in 1941 but as the world moves along into the 21st century Over-The-Air NTSC television transmissions across the world are slowly going dark.
In 2007, in the United Kingdom, the first major full power broadcast television station turned off its analog signal. TV stations across the UK will continue to transition until 2012, when the UK television market will be 100% digital. The United States and Canada have opted for a much more abrupt change with a so-called ‘flash-cut’ to digital occurring over one day. In the United States June 12, 2009 was the last day of full power analog television and in Canada that date is August 31, 2011.
What does this mean for me?
There is a lot of misinformation about the digital switchover in Canada, the most common misconception being that after the August 31 deadline; free, Over-The-Air television will no longer be available. This is absolutely NOT TRUE. Any cable/satellite company that tries to convince you of this is LYING. The only thing that will happen on the 31st of August is that analog broadcasts will be required to switch to digital or be turned off. Later on in this post I will describe how you can continue to receive TV over-the-air well after analog broadcasts have ended.
The most common question that people have is: “will I be affected?” The answer really depends on where you get your TV from. If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV such as Shaw, Bell, Rogers or others you will not be affected. On the morning September first you will continue to receive programming without having to do a thing. If, however, you currently use an antenna to receive TV then you may be impacted. If your TV is a newer, HDTV then it likely already has a digital tuner in it. Look though the documentation that came with your TV and if it mentions anywhere that you have an ATSC or digital tuner built-in then you are good to go.
If you have an older television set then it will not have a digital tuner. To receive digital broadcasts you will either need to buy a new TV or you will need to buy a Set-top converter box. Digital to analog converter boxes can be found at stores like “The Source,” however, many big-box retailers (Future Shop for example) do NOT stock these as they have a vested interest in convincing you to subscribe to cable.
The good news is that many Canadian TV stations are already transmitting a digital signal, even if they are still broadcasting in analog. CBC operates digital transmitters in Vancouver and Toronto and Global TV has temporary digital transmitters running in many of the communities it serves. These transitional broadcasts mean that you can test your equipment before the deadline and see if it is, in fact digital.
Finally, just to add to the confusion, existing digital over-the-air broadcasts that you may be receiving during this transitional period could jump to a different channel after the transition. The reason is that many broadcasters want to continue to broadcast on their old, analog channel number but because the old channel is presently occupied by the analog signal it cannot be
used for digital transmission. For that reason the temporary digital transmissions occur on a different channel until August 31st when the analog signal is shut off. What does this mean for you? It means that after the transition you may need to “rescan” for channels just in case your temporary transmissions are changing channels.
Why is this happening?
The Internet is awash with conspiracy theories about why the digital transition is taking place but the hard facts are that its not about aliens or government mind-control its about bandwidth and money. Like all wireless communications television broadcasts transmit on a certain frequency. To simplify things for the end user these frequencies have been assigned numbers which we call channels (for example channel 2 is on a frequency of 54.31 MHz). Just like every form of electronic communication, television broadcasts require a certain amount of “space” (called bandwidth) to transmit the information. The problem is that analog TV broadcasts take up a large amount of bandwidth, 6 MHz in fact. When you consider that there are currently 53 channels allocated to television and each of them requires 6MHz you can really begin to notice how much space is being wasted by these TV channels. Digital TV transmissions are much more efficient. In fact, in the space required to broadcast 1 analog channel you can fit 6 standard definition digital channels. In many markets the switch to digital will leave a lot of free space on the airwaves and this free space is not going to waste. The plan is to take some frequencies away from TV channels and re-allocate them for other uses such as Public safety or new wireless internet services.
Conclusion
As you can see the digital transition is not all bad news. While it is true that some communities will be left without over-the-air service (as most broadcasters will not upgrade all of their repeaters) the vast majority of major Canadian cities will continue to receive over-the-air programming, in crystal clear digital after August 31, 2011. There is a lot of information about the digital transition online, two of my favorite sites are:
DHC OTA Forum
Canadian Government site
a UHF antenna suitable for recption from Vancouver, Bellingham, and Victoria.
