Just when you thought the digital television — or DTV — conversion should be getting simpler — it’s not.
And that’s especially true for Western New Yorkers, who have gotten used to decades of Canadian TV over their antennas, in addition to the homegrown broadcasts. Those viewers will need to get a particular kind of converter box if they want to continue to watch Canadian analog TV stations that haven’t gone digital yet.
Read the full story by Elmer Ploetz at The Buffalo News
You may also be interested in in this FCC Consumer Advisory (Adobe pdf document) about how the DTV switch will affect people along the US border areas. The advisory notes that Canadian TV stations will transition from analog to digital broadcasting in August of 2011 and Mexico will complete the digital transition in 2021. The advisory also notes that:
If you purchase a digital-to-analog converter box to watch digital broadcasts on an analog TV and also wish to continue watching analog programming broadcast from stations in either Mexico or Canada, you should purchase a converter box with "analog pass-through" capability, which allows analog broadcast signals to pass through the converter box to be tuned by your analog TV. Converter boxes with analog pass-through capability will also enable you to watch U.S. low-power and translator television stations, most of which will continue to broadcast in analog after February 17, 2009.