Jun122009
No snowy Patriots games after digital television transition tonight
Filed under General, Good Ole Days by bob hammerstrom at 10:25 am
Remember the days of watching those New England Patriots games on your television, or with a small battery powered tv. The reception was as snowy with static as the weather on the field. You wrapped aluminum foil around the tips of the rabbit ears antenna and pointed them in different directions to pick up enough signal to see the outlines of the players.
If you still watch ‘em that way, your hours are numbered. After midnight tonight, June 12, analog tv signals will cease, and so will your reception. Unless you have an extremely strong signal from your favorite station, the tv screen will be black. Don’t bother bringing the portable set to the tailgate party, cause unless you have electricity to power the digital converter box, it won’t work.
The digital converters must receive a strong signal in order to show a channel. Even the slightly snowy ones are a bygone. On the other hand, if you do pick up a channel or two with your new converter box, it’s a crisp picture. If you haven’t bought the digital converter yet, I say, don’t bother. Spring for the cable or satellite dish. Most of your sports only comes on those anyway. Those portable, battery-powered tv’s will make a nice paperweight.
I watched a Geek Squad installer put a digital converter box in a Nashua, N.H., home yesterday. Luckily for the homeowner, she has Comcast cable in two other rooms. Those stations she used to pick up barely from Boston weren’t there anymore. Only WMUR from Manchester came in, and only when extending the giant rabbit ears antenna and fine tuning them - an eyesore for a tv set in the kitchen. If she had an antenna on the roof, things may have worked out better. But, what about those rural tv watchers, and others who don’t have cable and live too far away from a station.
In busy metro areas, it may not be a problem to pick up the local station. But, how about the residents north of Concord, N.H., northern Maine, or western New Hampshire, and other parts of the country. There may be no local stations for them, and some don’t have the luxury of receiving cable. If you live in a wooded area, the choice of a satellite dish may not work either.
It will be interesting to see what happens when those people wake up Saturday morning and flip on the weather to the surprise of a black screen. No more weather alerts and public notifications.
-Bob Hammerstrom
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