What is the deal ...Still Getting Analog Channels !

Homer415

I thought after June 12th analog channels were done with , got up this morning and rescanned channels on my TV and it still picks up analog channels along with digital channels ?

zeke767

Yeah same here and I live in Fredericksburg, VA and carry Cox. What's the deal?

hillbilly

Delete, wrong post, not on cable.

djmattyb

Cable companies might still have analog. It's the TV stations broadcasting over the air who shut off the analog broadcasts.

deadhead68

The June 12th analog "shut-off" date was for OTA broadcasts only. Cable providers will most likely still provide an analog signal past 2012.

DeadHead68

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Sooner Al

Also be aware that some stations in some markets, ie. like KOCO here in the OKC market, will still have an analog transmission for some period of time continuously broadcasting a message about the switch. In the KOCO case they are broadcasting the same message over and over again, alternating English and Spanish versions, for the next 30 days. Note you would only see this if you use an external antenna to view local channels. You will not see this on the cable channels as previously noted by the others.

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zeke767

Thanks guys

ITALIAN926

Im surprised the cable companies dont shut off their analogs. There are boatloads of people out there stealing basic cable.

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JPL

Even for OTA, the analog shut-off only applied to full power stations. There are low powered stations that will be analog for some time to come (I don't think there's currently any plan to have them convert to digital). As for cable, the FCC actually 'asked' cable companies to stop their cut-over of analog channels to digital until after the OTA shut-off happened.

Basically, some cable companies were using the OTA shut-off as an excuse - they would move an analog channel to digital, and when customers complained the cable companies would make the claim that they were 'required' to convert their channels to digital per the (then) Feb. 17th deadline. The FCC got so many complaints that they asked the cable companies to cease and desist until after the OTA cutover (although the request came with a threat of follow-up action by the FCC should the cable companies not comply voluntarily).

What's odd about all that is that there were some cable companies that were required to go all digital before Feb. 17th. For example, Verizon is one such company. The FCC put into effect a regulation (effective 7/1/07) for separable security for all cable boxes issued by a cable company. Some cable companies complained that the cost would be prohibitive, so the FCC gave temporary waivers to small cable companies that requested it. While it's hard to think of Verizon as a 'small company', from a TV perspective, when all this happened, they were really small (only about 500,000 TV customers). In exchange for the waiver, though, cable companies were required to convert all channels to digital. I don't know why the FCC made that a requirement for the waiver, but they did.

So, while some cable companies were requested to keep existing analogs in place until after the OTA transition, others were required to cut over to full digital. Now that June 12th has passed, I fully expect that many cable companies will move ahead with their own analog shut-off plans.

Sooner Al

I also believe the full power stations in the Rio Grande Valley [RGV] along the border with Mexico do not have to turn off analog until a later date, but I could be wrong about that.

FWIW the RCA DTV converters I bought from Walmart have analog pass through for just that purpose, ie. the low power stations.

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BrianO

I don't believe the Mexican Border DTV Act ever came up for a vote. Earlier reports that the act had been passed by a unanimous vote in July 2008 in the Senate were erroneous. That unanimous vote was merely a procedural vote to accept amendments made to the bill by a technical review committee (a standard practice) and had nothing to do with the passage/rejection of the bill. After that vote the bill was merely tabled for debate at a later date, which never happened. I believe that a similar Bill in the House met a similar fate..

Of course I might have missed something.