Television Signals

The move to delay next month's nationwide transition to all-digital broadcast television stalled Wednesday in the House, but supporters expected the measure to pass as soon as next week. A fast-tracked bill to delay the switch until June 12 failed to get the two-thirds majority required for an expedited vote after it passed the Senate on a unanimous voice vote Monday.

If you're still using old-fashioned rabbit ears to watch television, you may be in luck for a few more months. The mandate to switch from old-school analog to new-school digital over-the-air TV is likely to be postponed from Feb. 17 to June 12, if a Senate bill passed Monday makes it through the House, which is scheduled to vote this morning. But it's not quite that simple.

At noon sharp Thursday in Hawaii, a message appeared on analog TV sets across the islands: "All full-power Hawaii TV stations are now digital." The state shut down old-fashioned broadcast signals more than a month before the rest of the country is set to make the now-contentious switch. Even before the change, residents lighted up TV help-center phone lines set up by the Federal Communication Commission. More than 300 calls came in Wednesday, and 10 lines were lighting up Thursday.

The transition to digital television next month has been hailed as the biggest advance in over-the-air TV since the advent of color, but it's shaping up as a black eye for the government and risks leaving millions of viewers without a picture. On Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to postpone the federally mandated switch to all-digital broadcast television, called DTV, scheduled to take place Feb. 17.

Federal regulators on Tuesday approved the largest ever expansion of wireless Internet access, unanimously backing a controversial plan to allow a new generation of devices to use the empty airwaves between television channels to go online. Dubbed "Wi-Fi on steroids" by its supporters in the high-tech industry, the plan promises to offer wireless Internet service across America -- most likely for free -- and spur new systems for transmitting video and other data between devices in homes.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday proposed opening up unused portions of the television airwaves known as "white spaces" to deliver wireless broadband Internet service. The proposal by FCC chief Kevin J. Martin appeals to public interest groups and many of the nation's biggest technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which hope it will bring affordable high-speed Internet connections to more Americans.

Rumbling toward the Carolina coast, Tropical Storm Hanna may force the delay of the nation's first test of the digital television conversion. Wilmington, N.C., is scheduled to become the first media market to permanently switch to digital TV signals at noon Monday. But the storm was approaching hurricane strength Friday and was expected to make landfall just south of Wilmington early today. That's causing angst for broadcasters at the region's five commercial TV stations. Broadcasters and Federal Communications Commission officials discussed the situation in two conference calls this week and plan to have another conversation Sunday morning to decide whether they will postpone the digital conversion.

In less than nine months, old-fashioned broadcast television will go the way of typewriters, vinyl records and 35-millimeter film. Like just about everything else, it's getting upgraded to digital. If you haven't been paying attention -- and who could blame you, it's not even football season and the government-mandated change won't take place until after next year's Super Bowl -- broadcasters, federal officials and consumer advocates say it's time to start tuning in to the digital TV transition.

With broadcast TV stations preparing to switch to all-digital signals early next year, about 5.3 million U.S. households have taken the government up on its offer of discount coupons for a gadget to ensure their sets will continue to get the picture. Each U.S. household is eligible for two $40 coupons toward the purchase of converters that sell for about $60, and most have asked for the maximum.

Some movie fans hope Apple TV will do for Internet video what the iPod did for digital music. That's precisely what some Hollywood executives are afraid of. The device from Apple Inc., which debuted this spring, aspires to bring movie downloads from the geeky fringe to the living room. Touted as elegant and easy to use, Apple TV lets movies and TV shows bought through Apple's iTunes online service -- plus, later this month, videos from YouTube -- pass from computers to television sets.