Are you ready for switch to digital?

As of today the long-awaited, much-misunderstood digital television conversion is exactly a year away.

On Feb. 17, 2009, we'll say good-bye to analog TV broadcasting as we have known it since the first public demonstration of the medium in 1925.

Will it be the end for Katie Couric? Only if she gets canceled in the meantime.

Broadcast television will very much go on, but it will be completely converted -- like much in life that's electronic -- to digital.

Will it affect you?

Maybe.

Digital signals do great with digital TVs, including the increasingly popular high-definition models.

But they can't be processed by most picture-tube TVs, of which there are still millions in use.

Thus, the federal government has created a program to subsidize the purchase of converter boxes that transform the digital signals to analog.

That doesn't mean you need to buy one. Millions of households served by cable or satellite providers already have converters, even if their occupants don't realize it.

The subsidized boxes are mainly for viewers who get their programming the old-fashioned way: over the air via an antenna on the roof or tucked away somewhere inside.

Statistics vary widely on the number of households that still get their TV over the air, running from 12% to 20% depending on who's doing the figuring.

Southern California is a particularly good place to be an over-the-air watcher because there are so many broadcast stations in the area. You just have to forget about cable-only shows such as "Make Me a Supermodel."

Here's a guide, based on the kind of TV set you watch and how your programming is delivered.

TV: Digital Delivery: Any

No worries. You don't need a converter box.

But how can you be sure your TV is digital?

If it's a flat-panel LCD or plasma model, it's digital. If it's a rear-projection set that uses DLP or LCD technologies, ditto.

Most picture-tube televisions are analog, but not all. Some recent sets can handle digital too, among them the Samsung SlimFit models and several of the current tube TVs put out by Toshiba.

But that will be less of a concern as time goes on. Many industry prognosticators say that picture-tube TVs will disappear from the market in this country within the next few years.

TV: Analog Delivery: Cable

You don't need a converter box. Yet.

That's because your cable operator does the conversion for you, delivering both a digital and analog signal to your home.