Audio News for February 22, 2008

DTV Transition to Hit Latinos Hard – The Nielsen Co. has released a survey concerning the impact of the February 2009 digital TV transition. It found that more than 13 million households in the U.S. receive all their TV programming OTA (over-the-air) on analog sets, meaning that they will need the D-to-A converter boxes. The survey also found that another six million households have at least one TV set that fits that description.  Overall, it found that 10.1% of all households would have no TV if the changeover occurred today. Broken down racially, the percentages of those who would be unready were whites 8%, Asians 11.7%, blacks 12.4%, Latinos 17.3%. A surprisingly figure from the survey was that by age group, those 35 years and younger represented the largest group relying solely on OTA broadcasts – seniors were more prepared for the transition. [Again, each household can request two free $40 coupons toward the $40-$70 converter boxes at www.dtv2009.gov, and cable and satellite subscribers basically won’t have to concern themselves with the boxes.]

AntennaWeb Site Launched by CEA & NAB – The Consumer Electronics Association and National Association of Broadcasters have partnered in AntennaWeb.org, a new online antenna-mapping program to help consumers and retailers to determine the proper outdoor antenna for reception of free local broadcast channels – something becoming more vital with the approach of the 2009 deadline for the full transition to DTV.  The NAB President was quoted as saying “With the proper antenna, consumers can receive free, over-the-air digital broadcasts with higher picture and sound quality and access to multiple channels of free programming.”  He also mentioned viewer access to new interactive services, including enhanced closed-captioning.

[It is very interesting that he referred to the higher quality picture and sound via OTA reception. Although in practice the very best HDTV quality is usually not achieved in most telecasts, OTA reception is not subject to the data reduction which both cable and satellite services must do in order to offer as many channels as possible to subscribers.] Users of the AntennaWeb site enter their home address and learn what OTA signals are available to them and the best outdoor antenna to use to receive them.  The database accounts for obstructions such as hills, trees and buildings which can affect a digital broadcast signal. HDTVs are expected to account for 79% of total DTV shipments in the U.S. this year.

Europe Behind on HDTV – According to a German survey made in 2006, less than a million European households received HD telecasts and only 2 million had HD-ready sets, whereas in Japan the figures were 11 million and 19 million in the U.S.  One problem in Europe is its highly fragmented, multilingual nature which fails to offer the economies of scale found in Japan and the U.S.  The EU has mandated a switch from analog to digital terrestrial TV services, just as is happening in the U.S. next year.  (A large failure rate of HDTV/DVR set-top boxes has been reported in the UK and elsewhere, involving the implementation of HDCP in HDMI connections.)