In an effort to reduce the ZOMG surely to be experienced by whatever percentage of Wilmington, NC residents are unprepared for their early entry into a digital television-only world September 8, the city will perform a one minute Las Vegas-style "soft test" August 19 at 7:30 p.m., prompting customers with analog to upgrade their equipment to receive digital broadcasts. Readers have already reported seeing ads mentioning the upcoming early analog-shutoff, and it looks like the regions main broadcasters (WWAY, WECT, WILM and WSFX) appear to be doing all they can to get the word out, so everybody tell a friend, okay?

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.

It's hard to look around your house without seeing a bunch of devices that could be affected by the upcoming digital transition in 222 days. From old TVs, to emergency radios -- you know the ones that let you listen to audio from TV stations -- to digital video recorders; if you have an antenna hooked up to it and it doesn't have an ATSC tuner, then it's going to stop working. For the most part it's going to be up to consumers to figure out what they need to do to be ready, but TiVo is taking an interesting approach. TiVo is looking at the configuration of your DVRs and when you have analog antenna connected, TiVo is sending out letters giving you your options. The options aren't too bad either, it includes a list of digital convert boxes that will make your old TiVo keep ticking, or if you want to "treat yourself" TiVo is offering a $40 discount on the TiVo HD -- puts it at $259. So yeah, sure, $40 isn't that great of a discount, but it's more than we've heard of any other consumer electronics company offering.

Add Comcast to the list of providers getting very serious about dumping all those bandwidth hogging analog channels and plans to go all digital in 20% of its markets by year's end, and all by 2010. Of course it will have to provide free digital adapters for analog customers per the FCC, but by dropping ~70 analog channels, it'll free up enough space for about 150 HD channels (220 if you don't mind shaving a few bits). We really wonder how well this is going to go over, as we can't expect our mom to give up her simple setup, with super fast changing channels, without a fight. We figure a good percentage of customers will either give up on cable TV completely, while others may finally be enticed to switch to satellite. But honestly, we're not really that concerned, just so long as providers keep all those new HD channels coming.

Echostar can't seem to decide what brand to put on its upcoming DTV converter box. The device that many DTV converter box shoppers seem to believe will be the one to get, won't be available until June and although we originally heard it would be sold as the Sling Media TR-40, recently the little box has gotten 50 percent smaller and will be called the DISH Network DTVPal. A few sites are already accepting pre-orders that are expected to ship on June 16th, which won't help you very much if you signed up for your voucher on the first day like we did.

[Thanks, Josh]

Britain began its own digital switchover months ago, but now it seems that there may be some grousing in the UK about the post-analog world. There are some serious concerns about the takeoff of HDTV in Europe, and a recent report concludes that HD-DTT (digital terrestrial television) penetration could be limited to 7-percent by the time the analog shutoff completes in 2012. But now the UK, acting as a bellwether for Europe, is considering plans to hand back up to 12 frequencies initially headed to the auction block. The good news: this plan would produce up to 40 HD-DTT channels for all to enjoy. The bad news: this would require broadcasters to modify their transmission equipment beyond initial plans for the digital transition, which in many cases has already moved into implementation. That sounds expensive, and if European broadcasters are anything like US ones, expense was the major hurdle in getting onboard with the analog shutoff to begin with. We really admire the goal of getting OTA HD across Europe, but we don't think this will fly -- at least not without some serious turbulence.

The FCC has been the driving force behind the digital transition from the very beginning and feels that providers are using the digital transition as an excuse to stop carrying local channels. So, in an attempt to prevent provider's back door deals from interfering with your HD enjoyment, it had proposed a mandate that would require both Dish and DirecTV to carry every HD channel in a market,Me if it carried one HD channel in that market. Meanwhile, Dish and DirecTV both preferred to only carry the big four, citing limited bandwidth. So the FCC has instead given both carriers until 2013 to carry every HD channel in any market where it carries at least one. If only we were a fly on the wall of big cable's office -- the FCC wasn't so kind to them -- to watch 'em get as mad as we do when we can't watch our favorite show in HD.

With only 412 days to go until analog TV goes dark, there are plenty of questions about the new voucher program that started yesterday. While none of the new boxes are available just yet, reading through the very long list of rules, we found something a little disappointing; any STB with HD outputs (DVI, HDMI or component) can't be purchased with the help of a $40 voucher. While we understand the government's desire to cut back on fraud -- while at the same time keeping costs down -- we can't help but think about all the early HDTV adopters that have "HD Ready" HDTVs. These people bought well before the DTV tuner mandate went into effect, and will be left out of the voucher program completely. Of course one could argue that if they could afford to be early adopters, then they don't need the hand out, but what about all those who picked up an HDTV on the secondhand market? The other interesting tidbit in the rules section is the inclusion of CEA-909, aka smart antennas. This is an antenna with a interface to the STB that allows the tuner to adjust the antenna to optimize reception. This can be very important to anyone who lives in an area where transmitters are installed in multiple locations.

Yeah, we pretty much expected every big box retailer known to man to carry these things, but just in case you were worried about locating a TV converter box in preparation for the upcoming cutover, here's some comforting news. Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Kmart, RadioShack, Target, Sears and Sam's Club are all on the list to carry equipment necessary for analog TV owners to receive OTA programming after February 2009, and just in case one of the aforementioned giants aren't anywhere near you, around 100 more smaller retailers have been certified to stock 'em. Also of note, you can start the new year off right by reminding your great grandparents (or other family members, too) that they can go on and apply for up to two coupons -- which should arrive around six weeks later -- worth $40 apiece to purchase the required boxes. Or, of course, you could just pick them up a new television this holiday season and be done with it.

[Via BroadcastingCable]

It's not everyday that you see Zenith hanging out on the cutting-edge, but for those camping out under a rock since 1995, you should probably be informed that LG owns a majority share of the company. If you'll recall, LG was tooting its own horn just last week about having the first digital-to-analog converter box to be certified for the US Commerce Department's coupon program, and if two and two really equal four, the unit you see pictured above is indeed the device that was previously referenced. The DTT900 was developed and produced by LG, but it will apparently be sold under the Zenith brand name -- you know, so it'll blend in better with that 80s-era TV.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has certified the first digital-analog converter box eligible for the digital television transition coupon program. LG Electronics has developed a low-cost box which will allow consumers to get broadcast signals to their older television sets using a $40 government coupon. The converter drops higher-end features like digital audio or component outputs, but includes features designed for older sets, such as RF and composite outputs, V-Chip parental controls, closed captioning, and options for 4:3- or 16:9-ratio televisions. The company plans to have production ramped up to coincide with the launch of the coupon program in early 2008, just in time for consumers to remain clueless as to what they needed a converter box for anyway.

The digital transition only affects those who use an antenna right? Well, kinda. While a STB from your provider will allow you to access any content they offer, your provider still needs access to that content. This isn't that big of a deal for a local cable company who might carry ten or fifteen locally broadcast channels, but satellite providers DirecTV and DISH carry over a 1000 locals through the US. There are a number of collection techniques used to capture these signals, and going back to each and every station to upgrade to digital is a big job. Deploying all the locals for every channel in the country took years to complete the first time around, and now they're faced with a deadline that's less than 18 months away. We'd also bet that just switching out SD analog for digital isn't enough, and that they want to make sure they're setup to get the HD signal. We'll have to wait to see how they're going to work this one out, but we wonder why it took so long for them to figure out what many of us have known for some time.

Wow that was fast, we didn't think it would happen that fast, but we stopped by a big box retailer to find that they didn't have any analog TVs on the shelves. In fact they only had three CRT TVs under 20-inches and they all included ATSC tuners. Did the manufacturers really just stop making these things before the deadline or did the store just not expect the old sets to sell through so fast and failed to order ATSC equipped replacements? We're pretty sure this isn't the end of CRT TVs as LCD models under 20 inches are still pretty pricey. Either way there is no doubt that we are moving in the right direction; towards the end of analog TV.