{"id":1448,"date":"2009-06-12T16:43:35","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T21:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meisterplanet.com\/journal\/?p=1448"},"modified":"2009-06-12T16:43:35","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T21:43:35","slug":"early-morning-dtv-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/2009\/06\/12\/early-morning-dtv-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Morning DTV Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><code>[kml_flashembed movie=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/9PqzY5eqIdM\" width=\"450\" height=\"350\" wmode=\"transparent\" \/]<\/code><\/p>\n<p>The DTV transition was mandated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but 13 years later, 2.8 million Americans were still not ready for the switch that happened today.<\/p>\n<p>I had the opportunity to help answer phone calls with DTV questions on the Fox 8 News Call for Action phone bank yesterday and today, so I had firsthand experience with a few Cleveland area viewers who were not all set for the analog TV signals to go dark at 10:00 am today.<\/p>\n<p>Although most Americans are ready for the transition, according to the FCC, there was an estimated 55,000 or more Cleveland area residents who weren&#8217;t.  Most of their questions involved where to turn to as they had expired converter box coupons, having not bought their equipment yet.  The answer, of course, was to call the 1-888-CALL-FCC hotline.<\/p>\n<p>The other question that came up often was whether they really needed the converter box.  I had a number of callers who believed that because the word &#8220;digital&#8221; appeared somewhere on the front of their TV, they were ready to go.  In many cases, I found out that it was a &#8220;Dolby Digital&#8221; sticker on the set that was causing some of the confusion.<\/p>\n<p>The cutoff came and went hours ago, and the world hasn&#8217;t ended.  However, I really sympathize with anyone manning a DTV support phone bank in the US, as now the compatibility issues with faulty equipment, or VCRs that won&#8217;t automatically change the channels on converter boxes start to come up.  Good luck, brave DTV soldiers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[kml_flashembed movie=&#8221;http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/9PqzY5eqIdM&#8221; width=&#8221;450&#8243; height=&#8221;350&#8243; wmode=&#8221;transparent&#8221; \/] The DTV transition was mandated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but 13 years later, 2.8 million Americans were still not ready for the switch that happened today. I had the opportunity to help answer phone calls with DTV questions on the Fox 8 News Call for Action phone &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/2009\/06\/12\/early-morning-dtv-madness\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Early Morning DTV Madness&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9,4],"tags":[74,215,214,42,454,75,449],"class_list":["post-1448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-news","category-technology","tag-cleveland","tag-digital-television","tag-dtv","tag-geek-squad","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1448"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meisterplanet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}