National DTV switch officially happens Friday

Television will change forever Friday.

By midnight, TV stations that are still broadcasting in analog, including those in the Florence/Myrtle Beach market, will turn those signals off and switch to digital.

So older, non-digital TV sets will lose all major channels unless they have an antenna and a converter box that allows them to accept digital signals. Those with cable or satellite service will not be affected.

WBTW News13 Chief Engineer Doug Carter said he expects the switch to go smoothly but said viewers with antennas and converter boxes or HDTV sets will have to “rescan” the airwaves to receive all channels including News13 (CBS), WPDE TV15 (ABC), WFXB Fox 43 (Fox), WMBF Channel 32 (NBC) and WIS Channel 10 (NBC).

“That’s the most important thing people need to know,” Carter said. “The TV won’t know where to find us on its own, so you’ll have to rescan and then you’ll be on your way to viewing again.”

Carter said WBTW will make the switch at 11:59. He said his team has rehearsed the process and should be able to have it completed by 12:30 a.m.

“We’ll have a slight amount of dead time when we turn the transmitter off,” he said. “It’ll take a little time to make the change, but we shouldn’t have more than 30 minutes or so of dead time.”

Since 1980, WBTW has transmitted from atop the 2,000-foot tower to an area that ranges from Fayetteville to the north, Georgetown to the south, Bishopville to the west and Shallotte to the east. Former WBTW engineer Bernie Moore, who turned on the station’s analog switch in 1954, will turn off the analog switch just before Carter turns on the digital.

Carter said that digital broadcasting produces a clearer picture. It also has other advantages.

“We will come up with a greater coverage area in digital, and the good part about it is, we’re going to do it green,” he said. “We’ll be consuming 60 percent less electricity than we have all these years to produce the coverage area that we have. It’s a very large coverage area.”

The original Feb. 17 deadline for the shutdown was delayed by the Obama administration after funding ran out for $40 coupons the government offered to help people buy converter boxes for their old TVs.

About 3.1 million U.S. homes were unprepared to receive digital signals as of late last month, according to the Nielsen Co. That’s half the number that were unprepared in February, and the number should be less today.

Early public information efforts were focused on getting people to understand the need for a converter box. Thanks to lessons lerned from areas where stations shut down analog early, the latest ads also stress the need for a suitable antenna that receives both the UHF and VHF bands.

“The good news is that we’re in considerably better shape now than we were four months ago,” acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps said last week. “We were nowhere near ready for a nationwide transition in February. Had we flipped the switch back the, we would have faced a debacle that would have made New Coke look like a stroke of marketing genius.”

— WBTW News13’s Rusty Ray and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

HOW TO SCAN

HDTV Sets

1. Turn on the set, and press menu on the remote control

2. In the menu section, locate “channel scan” or “auto channel setup.”

3. Follow the instructions to proceed to the channel scan operation. After a short period of time the screen will return to normal.

4. Test the channels you have received. News13 should be one of these. If you see News13, you also will see the other stations in the area.

5. If News13 doesn’t come in, reorient your antenna.

Converter Boxes:

1. Turn the television set on, and set the television tuner to either channel 3 or 4.

2. Turn on the converter box. You should see text telling you to scan. If the picture is not clear with clean audio, tune the television set to the other channel (3 or 4). After you determine which channel is the correct one for your converter box, you will not need to change the television again, as channel changing is now performed with the converter box remote control.

3. On the converter remote control, press menu. (Some converter remote controls say setup).

4. From the selections on the screen, highlight by moving the up / down keys on the converter remote control until you have selected scan channels.

5. You will see text (and sometimes a bar graph or a percentage number) displayed on the television while the scanning is in progress.

6. After the scanning is completed, use the channel up/down button to “surf” each channel for all the local stations. If you see News13, you have successfully scanned your converter.

7. Remember, you will always leave your TV on the channel (3 or 4) and use your converter remote control to change the channels.

8. If News13 doesn’t come in, reorient your antenna.