WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Vt. TV Goes Digital

Colchester, Vermont - February 18, 2009

Digital television is here. And with it, questions about the new technology.

"Probably the number one problem has been inability to operate the box," said Keith Lawrence, a WCAX-TV engineer who was fielding questions at a call center set up at Vermont Public Television's studio.

A converter box lets old analog televisions pick up digital signals. But some are finding even with a box, they're out of luck.

"Occasionally we're getting a call where somebody doesn't get a signal because they're behind a hill or something like that," Lawrence said. "Those are the difficult ones because there may not be much we can do to help them."

By Wednesday afternoon, the call center had fielded hundreds of calls from confused viewers. Some required easy fixes, like simply re-scanning their converter boxes.

"We're talking people through," said Ann Curran, community relations director of VPT. "Go in, look at your menu, do this, try that, move the antenna, call us back if that doesn't work, And sometimes people call us back and say, it worked! It's great."

But digital technology is not as forgiving as analog. People who may have gotten a signal on rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna now get no signal on digital.

"A few people understandably are a little bit upset about the whole change to digital," Curran said. "They didn't ask for it and it's been imposed on them, but it's a government mandate so we're getting through it the best we can."

Vermont is one of the few places in the whole country where the entire area -- all the television stations in the market -- are now making the switch to digital. In other parts of the country, some are delaying the switch until June; some areas have just one or two stations now in the digital era."

"We're a little bit unusual where we all said we think our market is mostly ready," Curran said, "and those who aren't ready we're going to help them one on one."

Analog viewers are not totally losing their signal -- yet. Locally produced programming, such as local news, will continue to be broadcast on Channel 3's analog signal for 60 days. When local news is not on, that station will have information about the switch to digital.