Poll: Have you seen a DTV transition commercial?
With less than a year to go until the analog signals go dark, consumer awareness is one of the biggest concerns. While many analyst fear congress hasn't allotted enough money for advertising, we wonder if they've forgotten about all the public service announcement each station is required by the FCC to broadcast in return for the free use of America's airwaves. Some might argue that those who are the most affected have the best chance of catching one of these commercials, as the target audience is people who get their television programming exclusively via OTA antenna, and we'd go a bit further and say the same type don't have commercial skipping DVRs either. But these same people aren't the techy type and might just glance over any commercial not selling food or clothing, but in that case, there's no way to get to them anyways. We've seen a few of these commercials and wonder if the rest of the HD community has caught one yet, if not click through the break and watch.

















We have one running that has an old lady explaining to her son and grandson how they can watch the game at her house in HD. It's kind of funny because she says she has a converter box, and gets all of her programming in HD on her HDTV. I assumed that if you had an HDTV, you wouldn't need a converter box. I have to say, she is pretty lucky to get ALL her programming in HD.
Hey Scott..
Not all HDTVs had digital tuners in them.. I own a Zeinth 50" RP HDTV 1080i, but I dont have a digital tuner, just analog, component, composite and lucky to have 1 DVI.
So in my case to get our local FOX HD channel, seeing we dont carry here on Cable, I had to buy a digital tuner. But I got one for my PC instead of waiting for a cheep stand alone tunerbox and just us MediaCenter and my 360 to watch FoxHD when I need to..
So what is going to happen to my analog basic cable service? Is it going to disappear on this date as well? I have Time Warner by the way.
Most Cable co's will continue to pass on analog until at least 2011 or be forced to give out free STBs.
Here we are keepin our Analog service on til 2012. I really wish we would get rid of it sooner being its a bandwith hog. But we dont need to make ppl made either..
Our local cable company is running an ad where a lady comes on to tell you that if you have their service, you won't have to do anything. So, apparently, at least for the time being, they'll keep their analog going. This is Cox by the way.
They seem to allude that going with them is the only way you won't be affected.
Of course, if you have satellite and get your locals from the satellite company, you don't have to do anything either. But Cox doesn't mention that (surprise, surprise).
Comcast has a similar ad that I've seen a couple times.
I wish there were more OTA stations in the SF Bay Area. I'd love to get rid of comcast entirely. Only keeping them around for Food Network, Discovery, History, Comedy Central, and TBS. I've seen digital calbe and think OTA looks better most of the time.
What the heck am I gonna do now with my Sony Watchman I bought back in the 80s?
Hey, that picture is my TV. Panasonic Plasma. Whoever thought a thick silver bezel was a good idea was obviously drunk at the time, but it's a great TV nonetheless.
Is it just me or does the commercial above look really scam-ish? If I were an uninformed citizen, I would almost definitely tune that commercial out because it looks so much like an infomercial.
All three of our local stations are running them, ironically enough two are also showing them on their digital subchannels (but those are carried on basic cable as well). Our Time Warner runs them all over the place too, and they're not the evil cable company type, they're the legit ones.