Analog is dead! Long live digital TV!

June 12, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

All hail, all hail. Digital TV has arrived. Today is the day broadcasters nationwide shut off their analog TV signals and replace them with digital TV.

Most of the nation has converted to some form of digital TV, but an estimated 2.8 million households are still stuck on analog.

Some news outlets are following the transition around the country. The original deadline for the transition was in February, but Congress extended it to give people more time to get new TVs or converter boxes.

Now that the federal government is reclaiming the original analog spectrum, we should start seeing the rollout of various new digital services. One of them is Qualcom’s FLO TV, which is delivering TV programming to Qualcomm-based cell phones.

[photo credit: Flickr, Arnesto]

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Let's see what what happens. my dad bought the converters right away last year. I have a lot of relatives that never got them and didn't give it much concern. It'll be interesting to see if this transition has any affect in a national scale. Say forcing 2.8 million households to purchase converters or go tv shopping.
  • Mark C.
    Not quite! It would appear Time Warner is rebroadcasting the digital signal as an analog signal on it's basic cable tier.
  • I like analog TV, coz cheaper, strong, and to repair easier!
  • Don't forget, please go to my home:
    http://www.nbsnonline.com
  • It's about time.
  • I wonder what the digital tv conversion lady is watching this weekend?? http://bit.ly/14BKUR
  • Good to see this finally going through
  • greg daniel
    In Northern California we still have some ANALOG channels.......better in some ways......you can still watch tv on a weak analog signal VS a weak digital signal........ ANALOG is not dead.....Greg
  • greg daniel
    ANALOG is not dead......we still watch channels in Northern California
  • So from your post it seems to me that Digital TV is something new technology. If so, i think it is late and in this modern age it should emerged many years ago.