Barstow unchanged by digital TV switch in February

BARSTOW • The end of analog television is near — except for a handful of places, including Barstow. While countless commercials and public notices both on television and radio have harked the coming of digital television, or DTV, Barstow residents receiving channels from Elephant Mountain Broadcasting will see no changes when full-power television stations shift to an all-digital system. The switch is slated to take place in less than a month, on Feb. 17.

So what about buying a digital converter box?

“Nobody in Barstow needs to purchase one,” said Chuck Gibson, general manager of Time Warner Cable Barstow.

“They’ll wake up Feb. 17th and nothing will have changed,” Gibson said.

The Federal Communications Commission does not require low-power analog broadcasters — such as Elephant Mountain — to convert to digital, according to Cathy Jacobs, community and government relations officer at Time Warner.

In fact, said Jacobs, viewers who purchase a digital converter without an analog pass-through device may be at risk of blocking the nine channels broadcast by the low-power analog signals from Elephant Mountain.

Approximately 5,000 low-power broadcasters like Elephant Mountain exist across the United States, according to Scott Fritz, San Bernardino county communications engineer. Fritz estimated that low-power channels would have to follow suit and switch to digital by 2015.

The FCC required all full-power broadcasters in the U.S. to covert from analog to digital in order to free up bandwidth space from slower analog signals.

The change does not impact viewers using cable or satellite services, even if their televisions are analog, and not digital, according to the FCC.
The Desert Dispatch also reported on the DTV switch’s lack of impact on Barstow in April 2008.

But that hasn’t stopped many from worrying that their televisions will crackle with static come Feb. 17, according to Henry Flecher, manager of Russell’s VCR & TV repair. Flecher said he’s gotten lots of questions from customers who still use antennas.

Radio Shack store manager Lawrence Mercado said that customers concerned about losing their signals have snatched up over 250 digital converter boxes from his store since the federal government started giving out $40 coupons for converters in April.

Mercado said that Radio Shack stopped carrying televisions with analog broadcast tuners about a year ago.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4122 or elee@desertdispatch.com