The digital revolution is all around us. Even Congress has gotten into the act, (the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005) by mandating that by February 17, 2009 all full-power television stations must ditch their analog signal and begin broadcasting exclusively in a digital format.

Some broadcasters have been preparing for the switchover for many years, building digital facilities and purchasing digital equipment. To assist in the transition, the Federal Communications Commission is allowing full-power stations to use an additional frequency, so they could put the digital signal up at the same time. Then, on February 17, 2009 they can simply turn off their analog signal and transmit exclusively via their digital transmitter.

That’s all fine and well for the broadcasters. But what about the millions of viewers they serve? How does the switch affect them? If you’re a cable customer, have a satellite dish, or subscribe to other pay television services, the answer’s very simple. For most, you won’t have to do anything and you won’t notice a difference.

Michael Goodish, vice president of Networking and Technical Quality at Oceanic Time Warner Cable reassures Oceanic customers they have nothing to worry about. "For anybody that has cable services today for television, nothing’s going to change for them. It’s going to be the same after February 17th as it is today," Goodish says.

Oceanic’s 400,000 or so subscribers can breathe a collective sigh of relief. But, if you watch television with an antenna, and your television set uses an analog tuner, you have some decisions to make.

"Those TV sets would not be able to pick up that off-air digital channel once it’s being broadcast.  It’s a completely different format," Goodish says.   

If you’re attached to your analog television, you’ll need a DTV converter box, which is an electronic device that hooks up to your analog TV and antenna and coverts the digital television signal into an analog format, so that you can see it on your analog TV set.

The government is helping with that too, by making $40 coupons available (two per household) to defray the cost of the converter boxes.  The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is issuing the coupons.  You can get more information on the coupon program by calling 1-888-DTV-2009 or go online: DTV2009.gov.

The coupons have been available since January of this year and you can continue to apply for the coupons through March 31, 2009.  However, there is a catch.  Once you receive your coupons, you only have 90 days to redeem them at an electronics store. "So, that’s kind of a critical thing in terms of when an individual decides or if they’re even going to go out and buy a box," Goodish says.

There’s another possible snag.  Goodish says no one is really sure at this point how well the range of coverage will be when going from an analog to a digital transmission, “because it’s a different modulation scheme, it’s a different power level, the way it radiates, or the way it goes through trees, or limbs or stuff like that, they’re changing their frequency," he says.