Nielsen says 6.8% still unprepared as of December

[FTA Michael]

The Hollywood Reporter says that the Nielsen Co. reports that 6.8% of US TV households are "completely unprepared" for the digital TV transition. It also said that 10% (an additional 10%?) are "partially unready," which apparently means that at least one TV in the household will go dark, but not all of them.

Full story: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3id78469d811368539902a646b58df4271

[n3ntj]

Digital TV? What is that? That's the first time I've heard that term..

;)

[BattleZone]

And this is no big deal, despite all the Chicken Little stories on the TV news.

Plenty of people are casual TV users, and may take months to notice. Other people are just stubborn, and refuse to change anything until they are forced to. These people will complain loudly, then take the action that they should have taken a year ago.

Somehow, 4+ billion people survive every day on this planet without digital television. I don't think anyone is really going to suffer all that greatly without it, at least until their next trip to Walmart.

[dave1234]

I am amazed by how low the percentage is. It appears the nation is in great shape for the shut off.

[SE_Sooner]

One thing the stations are not talking about is the fact they may or may not move to a VHF frequency. For those using only a UHF antenna, you may think your're prepared, but still have to make that trip to Wally World.

Are the stations that are schedule to switch frequencies, going to also switch in Feb and turn off their UHF channel and go to their permanent VHF channel?

[phrelin]

Today from TV Week (http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/12/three_california_tv_stations_p.php): Doug Holroyd, general manager of KCVU-TV, a Fox affiliate, reported a few calls, but few problems.

“The phone isn’t ringing at all,” he said.

He said one reason is that 83% of the households in the market don’t watch the broadcast signal directly, but instead watch through cable or satellite....

James Miller, a Federal Communications Commission attorney who is managing DTV outreach in the market, said the biggest problem turned out to be getting viewers and, in some cases, cable providers to re-scan their converter boxes to catch the new DTV frequencies of the stations. He said the NBC station’s viewership problems turned out to be a combination of problems with cable system updating their channels and viewers needing to re-scan local channels. Kind of reminds me of the dire predictions about computers and the millennium.;)

[LarryFlowers]

The simple solution to this is everyone who gets it... understands what is going on and how to deal with... takes a little time over the holidays to make sure that family members who may not be savy are taken care of. It doesn't take a lot of time.. of 30 or so relatives I checked on, 3 of them, all older, had an issue which had to be dealt with. One of the relatives was out in northern California... and pretty clueless, I called a local Radio Shack and they had a converter box. I explained the issue to the Manager and was going to have him ship it... he volunteered on his own time to stop by the house and hook it up, no charge. Still some good folks out there... he got a Thank you from me, and my Great Aunt and a long thank you letter that went to Radio Shack headquarters.

Merry Christmas

Larry

[phrelin]

The simple solution to this is everyone who gets it... understands what is going on and how to deal with... takes a little time over the holidays to make sure that family members who may not be savy are taken care of. It doesn't take a lot of time.. of 30 or so relatives I checked on, 3 of them, all older, had an issue which had to be dealt with. One of the relatives was out in northern California... and pretty clueless, I called a local Radio Shack and they had a converter box. I explained the issue to the Manager and was going to have him ship it... he volunteered on his own time to stop by the house and hook it up, no charge. Still some good folks out there... he got a Thank you from me, and my Great Aunt and a long thank you letter that went to Radio Shack headquarters.

Merry Christmas

LarryThat's a really great report - people do want to help!

[Stuart Sweet]

I've reached out to friends and neighbors, and I've found that everyone who actually watches TV (and there are those who only rarely do) was already aware of the transition. There was some confusion and some misinformation, but at this point I have to wonder if 6.8% represents those who watch less than 3 hours of broadcast TV per week, meaning the shutdown really wouldn't have a life-altering effect.