Are you ready for the transition? If you are currently using cable, you shouldn’t be affected, but you may want to read about how we canceled our cable service and now receive free digital broadcast TV.
If you have already purchased a digital converter box or are using a newer HDTV with a built in tuner to receive free digital broadcasts, you should be in good shape.
If you are still using rabbit ears or a roof mounted antenna to receive traditional (analog) TV, here are some suggestions…
Apply for one or more $40 government coupons. The good news is that there is no longer a waiting list and the Commerce Department has recently reported that they expect to have enough funds to provide vouchers until July 31st. If you don’t have a HDTV, you will need one for each TV in your house. There is a limit of two coupons.
In the meantime, if you have a broadband connection, you can watch many shows for free over the Internet. For a detailed list of shows, check out of ShowFinder tool.
The digital tv transition deadline has been moved from February 17th to June 12, but there are some complications. The problem is that the delay is optional. If broadcasters think they are ready, they can make the switch today as originally planned. And it looks like about one third of them will be stopping analog transmissions by midnight tonight.
Confused? Here are a few tips…
1. You can see which stations are making the transition early by downloading this PDF file from the FCC.
2. If you haven’t already placed yourself on the waiting list for a $40 coupon from the government’s converter box program, do it now.
3. If you already have a HDTV, try connecting it to a standard UHF/VHF antenna. The good news is that most plasma and LCD TV’s have built in digital receivers. So depending on your area and reception, you may be able to continue receiving all your channels with your existing TV and a standard antenna.
4. If you don’t have a newer TV and the analog versions of your channels are being stopped today, you might want to run out and pickup a low cost converter box. Our favorite is Zenith’s DTT901 which sells for about $60. If you can’t find one locally, Amazon.com still has them in stock.
They mention the February 17th, 2009 switchover date and discuss the impact this will have on over-the-air TV viewers like us. The article confirms many of the things we have been blogging about over the past year, including better picture, more channels and the ability to access HD content for free.
They mention how some people in remote areas may have problems with reception with standard antennas but discuss how broadcasters will attempt to boost digital signals starting on the transition day.
It’s a good solid article and tells people how to get the $40 government coupons and check availability.
And perhaps the most important point, they stress that broadcasters are already transmitting digital signals today and that there is no need to wait until the 2/17/09 to get ready for the switchover.
Our advice? If you are currently using broadcast TV, or are even considering canceling cable tv, take a minute and request a free $40 coupon from the government before they run out. Then pickup an entry level digital converter box and test out your reception before the actual switchover takes place. This will give you time to finetune things in advance of the changeover.
Quick post: We are receiving very heavy traffic this morning, mostly from people typing in our URL directly. This usually happens when we are featured in a newspaper article or radio show, but we aren’t aware of any new ones. If you have a moment, can you please let us know how you heard about our site? Thanks!
Update: Thank you all for your helpful comments! Looks like we were mentioned this morning on the nationally syndicated consumer advocate program The Clark Howard Show.
CH listeners: If this is your first time on our site, welcome! If you are interested in learning about free digital broadcast tv, start here. Or visit our Showfinder tool to see what shows you can watch without cable TV. And if you have canceled cable or are about to, please consider sharing your story.
Just checked our logs and noticed that our traffic is through the roof. Turns out we were just written up in a Washington Post article titled ‘TV Breaks Out of the Box‘.
The article mentions our Showfinder tool and talks about how canceling cable is becoming a viable alternative for some broadband users. My favorite was the anecdote about how Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer watches his favorite show (Lost) online for free as opposed to paying a dollar for it on Itunes. I think Post’s author Mike Musgrove summed it up best when he said “Ever have a billionaire make your feel dumb for leading an overly extravagant lifestyle?”
Netflix streaming movies will soon be available on Tivo and Xbox Experience. Previously, Netflix’s Instant Watch content could only be viewed on a computer or using a $99 set top box called a Roku. Since Roku, Tivo and Xbox will pull all the content off of a standard broadband connection, cable TV service is not required.
We’ve been using Netflix’s Instant Watch service since it first launched in 2007. At first the content was very minimal - mostly pretty unknown “straight to video” movies. This has changed quite a bit in the last year. Netflix has recently partnered with the STARZ movie channel and now offers more than 12,000 shows and movies which can all be watched for free.
Here’s a video demo of the Xbox Netflix interface:
Any downsides to Netflix Instant Watch? A good amount of brand new first run movies are not on it yet, so you may have to wait a day or two to get those in the mail on DVD. The fast forward and rewind controls are slightly clunky, although they do work pretty well once you get used to them. Also it appears that only the new Tivos (Series III and HD) and latest Xbox (Xbox Experience) will support Netflix.
In case you haven’t heard of it, Roku is a small $99 set top box that lets Netflix subscribers watch over 12,000 on demand shows and movies for free. We bought ours shortly after we canceled cable and have been really pleased with it. Here’s why…
1. It’s like having a free on demand cable box without having to pay for cable: If you are already a Netflix subscriber, all shows and movies on Roku (approximately 12,000) are free. If you aren’t, you can sign up for a $8.99/month unlimited Netflix plan. So for less than the cost of basic cable, we get unlimited instant rentals each month.
2. Much cheaper than Itunes. We recently got hooked on the show Heroes and watched the entire first season (23 episodes) on our Roku for free. If we bought the season on Itunes, it would have cost $64.99.
3. No commercials: Unlike Hulu.com, there are no commercials - even on the TV shows. So you can watch your favorite one hour TV shows in about 42 minutes.
4. Easy to use interface. The remote only has a few buttons and the graphic interface shows a picture of each DVD on the TV screen. So simple that our three year old can find his favorite shows and play them on his own.
5. Great for kids. Since titles are added from a master account on our computer, the only shows and movies on the Roku are one’s we have personally reviewed and think are appropriate for our kids to watch. And if we make a mistake or change our mind, we can easily update the queue remotely at any time.
Any downside? Sure, when we first got our Roku, there was a limited selection of current movies. This has gotten much better, mostly due to their recent partnership with the STARZ movie channel. Since most brand new releases still take a while to appear on Roku, we still watch a lot of movies the old fashioned way (DVD) using our Netflix subscription. But since our membership includes 3 DVDs at a time as well as unlimited Roku movies, we almost always have something good to watch on TV.
When we first plugged in our digital converter box and started using free digital TV, we were surprised to see that our reception was actually better than our old digital cable signal. We’ve since learned that this is very common since free digital broadcast signals are often less compressed than digital cable signals.
Here are some sample screenshots to give you an idea of the quality (keep in mind that tv screenshots look a little fuzzy on computer monitors, but notice that there is no static or wavy lines)…
All screenshots were taken using a Zenith DTT900 which we picked up for $19 at Circuit City (after using the $40 coupon we received).
After learning PHP this week, I just created a Showfinder Tool which lets you search for and watch your favorite shows online. You can search for an individual show or browse different categories (HBO shows, kids shows, classic shows, etc.)
The tool currently lists shows on Hulu, Netflix and Itunes as well as a number of different network and cable channel web sites. Once you find the show you want to watch, just click on ‘view’ to jump directly to the site.
To access the tool, click on the following button…
p.s. Since this is the first version of the tool, I would be very interested in any feedback you might have about it. Thanks!
After we switched to free digital tv, the next step was to get our Tivo working. Unfortunately, this wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. After hours of research and experimentation, here’s what I learned…
Since our Series II Tivo doesn’t have a digital tuner built in, it needs to be hooked up to a digital converter box to receive digital TV. The problem is that Tivo has not yet updated its software to support the new digital boxes. Once this happens, it should be as easy as connecting the included IR cables from the Tivo to the digital box. Tivo hasn’t announced a date for the software upgrade, but I just received the following e-mail message…
After I received Tivo’s message, I went to http://www.tivo.com/digital2009, entered my serial # and received the following screen…
