Seattle's KING 5 shuts of analog for 30 seconds, select viewers freak out
Up until now, the digital TV transition test markets have seen their tests go over pretty smoothly. Wilmington, Las Vegas and Orlando were able to complete their respective trials without too many issues, but apparently the folks up in the Pacific Northwest aren't nearly as prepared. During a 5:00PM newscast late last week, Seattle's KING 5 simulated an analog cutoff for around half a minute which presented users watching the analog signal with a "snowy" picture. Another test was scheduled for 10:00PM, but the outcry from individuals who "had their television reception interrupted" by the afternoon test forced a postponement. If any of you reading this now just happened to be one of those characters freaking out by the distorted imagery, do yourself a favor and click here to get prepared for the 2009 cutover.
Filed under: Regulatory, Tuners, OTA
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ken @ Jul 29th 2008 2:06AM
Eh there mama, da guberment is messin wif out TV console!!!
Kevin G @ Jul 29th 2008 2:43AM
did they shut if of or did they shut if off?
William C Bonner @ Jul 29th 2008 3:44AM
Funny. I watch that channel for my nightly news, and get it over the air. My HD TiVo records the news every night, and I only catch stuff on analog when I mistakenly direct tune the channel instead of just selecting it from the guide. Free HD TV is really nice.
Schmullus @ Jul 29th 2008 4:02AM
I just find it funny that the two stations are named KING-TV and KONG-TV...
Dagwood @ Jul 29th 2008 6:46AM
That is more effective than a lame advertisement. They should have followed it up with a screen explaining who to contact for more information and how to correct the problem before the cut off. It would have saved the station the headache of answering all the angry calls. Why knows, they may have. People like to complain anyway.
DrXym @ Jul 29th 2008 7:16AM
Who the hell complains because their TV is cutoff for 30 seconds? I fully expect you could tell people over and over again that they will need a digital box on such and such a date and you would still get morons ringing up to complain as if they hadn't been warned for months that it would happen.
Dan Davis @ Jul 29th 2008 10:41AM
Oh, just wait till February...
I've told my Dad on no fewer than 3 separate occasions that his ginormous aerial antenna is going to be a relic come winter. Does he care? Nope.
ngamer007 @ Jul 29th 2008 2:28PM
It won't be a relic, that same antenna will be used to tune digital stations on a digital tuner come winter.
Travis @ Jul 29th 2008 10:23AM
The next day KING TV was apologizing like crazy for screwing up the test.
TVGenius @ Jul 29th 2008 10:25AM
Yeah, but you don't mention the best part: the 'outcry' from viewers was because of the cable and satellite companies taking KING's feed off an antenna instead of a direct feed. Sure, cable companies are running spots saying you don't need to do anything, that they'll handle the transition. Wonder how many subscribers will wake up to missing local stations because the cable company botched the switch or can't get a good enough OTA signal.
John @ Jul 30th 2008 11:57AM
According to the spot on the 10PM news where they mentioned that they were canceling the second test, the real problem was with the cable and satellite providers losing the signal as well. Like you say, apparently they were pulling an OTA analog signal. Maybe that'll wake up the cable and satellite providers as much as it does the general viewing public.
sn1per @ Jul 29th 2008 10:33AM
The complaints due to a 30 second cutoff led them to cancel the second test? Imagine how many angry calls they'll get come Feb. 17th, when the same TV junkies still can't comprehend what all those commercials have been trying to tell them for months now.
jjohn @ Jul 29th 2008 12:55PM
I've told my Dad on no fewer than 3 separate occasions that his ginormous aerial antenna is going to be a relic come winter. Does he care? Nope.
actually, your dad will be a power Digi tv user with his ginormous aerial antenna. As long as its steerable, it will work perfectly for OTA digital tv broadcast, he most likely will be able to pick up way way way more stations than before and from markets further away.....Digit broadcast reception uses the same tech as current, mainly UHF, but also some VHF. If he doesnt have a digital tv he will need a set top box however.
IseWise @ Jul 29th 2008 8:31PM
A local station here in Portland did the same thing, I don't know if there were a lot of angry people though.
anseK @ Jul 29th 2008 10:27PM
I wonder the true demographics of those people who watch analog TV OTA and why they all seem to live in Seattle.
Ethan @ Aug 5th 2008 7:27PM
I think this is a wakeup call that weather or not you like it we will have to change to a new TV if you already haven't.
Firtch @ Aug 8th 2008 12:21PM
I'm in Seattle, and Q13 ran the same test, but they were doing it right. I was watching the SD feed with Comcast cable and it didn't shut off. KING, like people are saying, wasn't sending the signal correctly to the cable/sat providers, so that's why people called, because the test failed.
jay @ Aug 24th 2008 3:53PM
I live up in Bellingham, about 90 miles north of Seattle, other than digital KCPQ-13, which broadcasts from Gold Mountain near Bremerton, I can not receive any of the Seattle TV stations in digital, and I already have a very large steerable VHF-UHF antenna plus an antenna mounted pre-amp, so much for the comment by jjohn that we will actually receive more than we now receive in analog. In addition, even though I already receive very good quality analog signals from all the Vancouver and Victoria stations without any difficulty when I turn the rotor that way, I can not receive a viewable digital signal from any of them either, and they are transmitting from less than 40 miles to my north.
The truth is if you receive a marginal, or even a slightly degraded analog signal now, you can probably pretty much forget about receiving any digital signal at all come 2009. Unlike analog reception, which will tolerate slight fading or a snowy picture that will still be watchable, digital is a all-or-nothing situation, you either get a clear signal, or you get squat. Oh, I almost forgot, I do receive all four digital channels from channel 45, they broadcast from up on Tiger Mountain, and have a viewable digital signal up here, so there really is no excuse the other Seattle stations did not plan properly in order to get their digital signals into fringe areas where analog now works. Come 2009, when analog is gone in the US, guess I'll be watching a lot more Canadian analog TV, they don't plan to switch off their analog signals until 2011...