» Read the Full Blog				Random thoughts from Dave Haber inspired by today's news and whatever else may be happening in his little corner of the internet. Analog TV will be a thing of the past on Saturday [Posted by Dave Haber on Wednesday, 06/10/09 1:28 pm] [Full Blog] [Related Posts] [Tweet This] The NTSC television system was adopted by the FCC on May 2, 1941, regularly-scheduled TV programs began to appear in 1947. The TV sets in use in 1941 could still view the TV we watch today. But not for long. Now, 68 years later, on Friday, the last major TV stations in America that are still broadcasting in analog will turn those signals off and go all digital. The FCC has given stations freedom to decide what time of day they will be shutting down analog. Many have opted to do it in the evening. Many stations will not be broadcasting very strong digital signals on Friday, because those signals are coming from secondary antennas. And viewers need to force converter boxes and digital TV sets to "re-scan" the airwaves to find channels that will move to new frequencies Friday. About 100 stations will keep an analog "night light" on, informing viewers of the need to switch to digital reception. According to the Nielsen Co., about 3.1 million U.S. homes were unprepared to receive digital signals as of late last month. Analog TV will be dead after Friday in the United States, but old TVs will continue to work in Canada and Mexico. However, digital TV is scheduled to replace analog in Canada on August 31, 2011, and in Mexico on December 31, 2021. (Some information thanks to the Associated Press.) » Click here to read all the blog posts

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