Less than 24 hours to digital TV - Jacksonville Business Journal:

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The switch to digital broadcasts, whicnh frees up bandwidth for other communicationsd uses such as public safetyfirst responders, was schedule d to be completed Feb. 17, but was postponed becausr about 6 million households were still unpreparerd to continue receiving a signal on their televisiohn sets and government funds to subsidize purchasex of converter boxes hadrun out. The converter boxew are necessary to allow households with televisions receivingg analog signals to also receivs the newdigital signals. New antennas for some televisions also will be necessart to provide the best receptionj afterthe switch.
With the extension of the digitao televisiontransition deadline, another $650 milliom was added to the $1.5 billion initiallg committed to the transition, including the $40 couponm program and other and preparedness Now, the latest industry estimates indicate that the number of unprepared households has been cut nearly in half. The Nielsen Co. and NAB, the , put the unpreparex households numberbetween 2.8 million and threes million, according to recent measures by each entity. That’d about 12 percent of at-risk households that could still lose access to importantr news and alerts when the switch accordingto NAB’s latest survey completed by SmithGeiger LLC June 3.
3 percent of those households have eithetr applied for or received a converter box coupon fromthe government, according to the While commissioners at the are anticipatinf a smoother transition than they say wouldc have occurred in February, they will spend $40 millionh to staff call centers across the One last challenge for television viewersw after the switch: finding your favorite channels. On June 12, some digitak stations already on the air will change channel To ensure televisions receive all available stations broadcastingg in aparticular market, viewers may need to force thei r digital televisions or set-top converter boxes to “autp tune,” or re-scan, for all available