On Wednesday, December 17, WBAL-TV and other Baltimore stations will conduct a Digital TV test. This is your chance to test your TV sets to determine if they’re ready for the DTV transition next February.
Here’s how to do it. Tune into 11 News at 5:00 at 5:45pm next Wednesday. Turn on any TV you want to check. At exactly that moment, we’ll switch off the usual signal from our our analog transmitter for 60 seconds. If your TV is not ready for the transition, you’ll see a message telling you so. If your TV is ready, you’ll continue to see our newscast as we tell you your TV is ready. It’s as simple as that.
If you intend to test several TV’s, be ready to move quickly around the house, as the test will last only one minute.
For those who care about the technical details, here’s what will happen. At 5:45, we’ll redirect our analog transmitter so that instead of sending out our regular programming, it instead sends out a warning message that your TV is not ready for digital. Our digital transmitter and our direct fiber optic conenctions to major cable and satellite operators will continue broadcasting our live pictures from the studio. Sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how much tinkering is required. It’s not often that we deliberately disconnect a transmitter.
Should you see the warning message while watching TV on cable, it means your cable operator is still receiving our signal via our analog broadcast. This is unlikely but not impossible. You may want to give a friendly call to that cable company to ask when they’ll be switching their reception to digital.
Extra credit for anyone who deciphers the headline of this post, and can tell me if I got it right or not.
Well, I think Regina is far from alone- I too can not get channel 11, either. All other channels come in, now, crystal clear, except 11. But that’s OK- thers is alot of good stuff out there to watch- on other channels…
You got it right, John!
I didn’t get the headline until I read your last paragraph and looked a little closer at the headline. I guess the new digital signal is binary, so your cryptic headline is perfectly clear! So, will WBAL change it’s channel to 1011?