9UNP0174SD_Tina_Hauser_Bruce_Johnson_WordPress

- Welcome to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. I'm Tom Zinnen. I work here at the UW Biotechnology Center. And I also work for UW Extension Cooperative Extension. And on behalf of the Wisconsin Alumni Association, I want to welcome you to Wednesday Nite at the Lab, which we offer every Wednesday night, 50 times a year, here at the Biotech Center. Tonight we get to have a special presentation, because one of our partners in Wednesday Nite at the Lab is Wisconsin Public Television. And tonight, we have two people from Wisconsin Public Television who are going to tell us about digital TV, and "What's Happening to my TV" sometime in February 2009. That's, oh, you know, how many seconds until it turns over. Tina Hauser manages the Digital Innovations Unit, which leads the exploration, testing and implementation of new technologies and service models, as well as new production techniques and formats. 

Tina is also project manager for University Place, a Wisconsin Public Television initiative to provide university-related lectures to audiences across the state of Wisconsin and beyond, by way of broadcast on Wisconsin Public Television's the Wisconsin Channel and over the Internet. Tina has worked for Wisconsin Public Television for over 17 years. Joining Tina will be Bruce Johnson, who is a 1981 graduate of the Boston University College of Communications. After graduating, he spent six years working at WFTV, the ABC affiliate station in Orlando, Florida, as a videographer, editor, director and producer. Realizing he really missed snow 
(laughter)
 and ice, and mud, it's all right here! He got hired at Wisconsin Public Television in 1987. He has traveled to, and shot video in Russia, Africa, Europe, Mexico and all across the United States. His work at videographer, editor and music composer, has been awarded both regional and national Emmy awards. 

He has written dozens of magazine articles and made presentations on video production topics since the late 1990s. Would you please join me in welcoming both Tina and Bruce to Wednesday Nite at the Lab! 
(applause)
 
- I'm happy that you all came out. 
(audio cutting in and out)
 You may not believe it, but this is a very, very, very big deal. Everybody who uses television with an antenna, raise your hand. That's more than half, and that's a good thing you're here. We're having a little audio problem here. 

Tom was giving away the gag for me, unfortunately. Do you know what 278 is? It's 278 days until February 17, 2009. That is when the television service that we have had in the United States since the early 1950s will be turned off in favor of a new digital service. Now I'm going to give you a Power Point here. And I'll be doing more of it than Tina will be in the beginning, because I'm going to give you a little history of television. Because it strikes me, I sit back here every week, and I see these amazing scholars come up here. I've just got a lowly BA, you know, I'm no big brain about this stuff. But I do know a little bit about the history of television. And I think it would be kind of fun to go through there-- And use my mouse, so that we can change these things. 

Uh-oh, this is not good. There we go. My mouse has failed me. A brief history of television. Not as brief as it could be. Who's familiar with this quote? "Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan." Who invented television? Does anybody know? Hang on to that thought. 

Let me go a different direction for a second. Who invented the light bulb? Edison. Who invented the phonograph? Who invented motion pictures? See, that's easy, isn't it. Everybody wants to believe that it was Thomas Edison that did all of that stuff. And we all know that's not entirely true. But basically speaking, all of that stuff came out of Thomas Edison's labs in Menlo park, New Jersey. That's great. 

I'm happy for that. But you know what? Television is the absolute antithesis of one person inventing something. For example, we're talking about starting television in the 1950s in the United States. But the first time you can really find a discovery that led toward television was in 1873, a guy named Willoughy Smith, an Englishman. And by the way, the other thing is that this came from all over the world. An Englishman discovered an element called selenium, which when he was laying cables for trans-Atlantic telephone, or telegraph cables, he tried to use the selenium as a conductor. But he realized that after a while that when the sun shined on it, it didn't conduct electricity very well. He discovered photo conductivity, which is exactly what makes television sets work today. That tube over there, the little one. 

It's got selenium in it. And he's the guy who figured it out. And that was what, 150 years ago. Next we'll go to Paul Nipkow from Germany. The scanning disc. The very, very first type of television. I'll show you a picture of it in a second. But basically speaking, it was a big wooden wheel that went like this. Can you imagine every television set in the world having a wheel spinning around in it like this? All in sync? 

Imagine how hard that would be to pull off. Now when you go past Nipkow, you get to a guy named John Logie Baird, who used Nipkow's invention, and actually figured out a way in the early '20s to transmit television signals from place to place. He did one experiment that went over 400 miles. And here's a picture of what the Nipkow disc looks like. And here's the picture that came out of it, that as I said, he transmitted shadows. He didn't have a lot of resolution, certainly not compared to what you have in television today. Then of course, we get to our good friend, Philo Farnsworth. He is the person who invented the first electronic television system, as opposed to a mechanical system with a spinning disk. Philo Farnsworth, when he was 14 years old, it is said, he was plowing a field on his father's farm, and imagined in his head the lines going across, back and forth, on a television screen. When he was 14 years old. 

That's pretty amazing. I'll show you this picture here. You can barely see it. That is one page, of like a 30 page patent application. And if you could really look at it closely, you'd see that this is really contemporary electronics schematics that, you know, I can't understand today. And this guy had this all working in 1927. And he was an American. And by the way, if you happen to be going to New York City sometime soon, there is a Broadway play called the "Farnsworth Invention," that's all about the lawsuits, basically, that surrounded television at the time. Unfortunately, the way it was written, it inverts the way it came out, with you apparently it was better for drama. As far as history is concerned, it's not so hot. 

Then of course, we have Vladimir Zworking, who was a Russian originally. He invented the iconoscope, which is the tube that made electronic television worthwhile and workable. So basically speaking, you've got people from all over the world, working on the same problem. And basically, eventually, coming to some sort of a standard. Now when I say that television started in the United States in the early 1950s, that's not exactly accurate. The first experimental broadcasts were in 1936, the World's Fair and the Berlin Olympics. Who here remembers the Berlin Olympics? I'm sure somebody must. Those were the first steps forward. In the United States, RCA was doing that. 

Of course, they had cameras that were bigger than this podium here, and not exactly portable. Then commercial television actually debuted in 1941. What else happened in 1941? 
- Pearl Harbor. 
- That's absolutely right. And then, of course, television just stopped in its tracks, because all of the industrial capacity that was going towards research on television got turned around into making airplanes, and bombs, and all the things we needed to win World War II. Yes, ma'am? 
(inaudible)
 Oh, I'm sorry. It's not working anyway. 

Now in 1953, well after World War II was over with, NTSC was codified. Who in this room knows what NTSC stands for? I didn't think anybody would. 
(inaudible)
 Hang on, we're getting there. I hate it when people jump ahead! Are you reading the script?! NTSC stands for National Television Standards Committee. That was the group of people, engineers and scientists, who in the early '50s decided to come up with a standardized television system, because at the time, RCA and CBS, who were the two leading technology, and also the two networks at the time, because RCA owned NBC. They had competing incompatible television systems. 

How many TV sets do you really want to have in your house? One, so you could watch ABC, one so you could watch NBC, one so you can watch CBS. It wasn't going to happen. So the NTSC got together and they came up with a standard for electronic television. Not just electronic television, but electronic color television, which even though, even Paul Logie Baird had color television broadcast with his spinning disc system back in the '20s, it hadn't even gotten anywhere near that point in the United States at this point. So in 53, NTSC came along. And then, as I said, NTSC stands for National Television Standards Commission. I'll tell you a joke that television people tell. NTSC, as a system, has a really weird problem, because it has that knob on your TV you can twist and change the color and everything. It's called the hue knob. 

NTSC, in television circles, as he said over there, stands for "Never Twice the Same Color." There are two other major systems in the world, SECAM, which is French and PAL, which is English. SECAM it is said stands for System Essentially Contrary to the American Method. 
(laughter)
 And PAL, as our British friends would like to remind us all the time, means Perfection At Last. PAL is actually almost a high def system. And they had that back starting in the mid-'60s. Okay, trivia question. Who here remembers "Kukla, Fran and Ollie"? We're getting into the demographic here. 

What is the claim to fame of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" on August 30, 1953? 
(inaudible)
 Pardon me? No, it wasn't Wisconsin. It was the first broadcast color television program in the United States. We have a winner way back in the back. Sorry, no prizes. So "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" had the distinction of being the first American color broadcast television program. Now of course, the '50s were known as the Golden Age of live TV. Now just yell them out. 

What shows do you guys remember best from the '50s? Milton Berle, Sid Caesar. Who else? Ed Sullivan came pretty late in the '50s, actually. Oh, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. That was a good one. Anything else? I Love Lucy. That was good. That was actually on film. 

Sky King. That was good. Anything else? Jackie Gleason. That's a good one, too. The Today Show, too, was actually a live show. That started in '56, I believe. Father Knows Best. That was in the '60s. Howdy Doody, now we're getting somewhere. 

Jack Parr, there you go. Groucho Marx, You Bet Your Life. Absolutely. Red Skelton. Here's a piece of trivia you'll never hear anywhere else. Groucho Marx invented the teleprompter. Groucho Marx couldn't remember his jokes, so he had them projected over the camera on a piece of paper so he could remember the punch lines. So Groucho Marx invented the teleprompter. Now why was the early '50s the Golden Age of live television? There was no such thing as videotape until 1956. 

And I forgot, unfortunately. I was going to bring along a reel of the tape these things used. It is literally two inches thick, this big and weighs about 60 pounds. Put that in your camcorder. So anyway, at the time, there were of course, three or four networks depending on where you lived. The CBS, NBC, ABC and the DuMont network. I never personally got to see the DuMont network, because I was born a little too late for that. They punched out in 1956. When did PBS come along folks? Trivia question. 

(inaudible)
 Well, you've got to be a little more precise than that. 
(inaudible)
 No, it was more like November 3, 1969. Something good came out of the Nixon administration. Of course, on August 18, 1958, I was born. The Golden Age of Television immediately ended right then. It's kind of funny when you talk to people my age in television that got to talk to the people who were in the television before me who got to live through the Golden Age of Television. It was just insanity. I mean, people putting on three live shows a day for an hour a piece. 

And every local station, because there were no satellites. There was no Jeopardy. There was no Oprah. There was no syndicated programming to speak of, other than Lawrence Welk. People put on tons of live shows. I mean in Madison, I didn't live here, but I know about Marshal the Marshall. What else is in town here? You weren't alive then? In the 60s? 
(inaudible)

 Jubilee, there you go. There was another thing, of course, talking about Lawrence Welk. Lawrence Welk was a show that was actually recorded on film and later on, on tape. They had a system called the bicycle, where they would make like 50 copies of the show and they would send them to 50 stations. And those 50 stations would show them in one week. And then they'd mail them to the next 50 stations, and they show them on the next week. There was no such thing as a communication satellite. That was the height of technology in getting people to watch shows on a national basis, if you were not on a network. And that all died of course, with satellites, which came in pretty strong in about 1980. Oh, by the way, if you're interested in the Golden Age of live television, I strongly recommend both of these movies. 

My Favorite Year is a vaguely fictionalized account of Mel Brooks' time at Your Show of Shows as a very, very junior writer. And Good Night and Good Luck, of course, is the story of Edward R. Murrow, who is my personal hero. If you've got some time to watch them, they're wonderful films. So anyway, like I said, it's going to be a short, a brief history of television. Between 1958 and 2008, stuff happened. A lot of it was on TV. What do you people remember most specifically about that span of time, things you saw on television? 
(inaudible)
 Pardon me? 

The moon landing. I'm glad you said that first, because you know what? Philo Farnsworth is said to have said to his wife when he saw Neil Armstrong step on the moon, he said, "The whole thing is now worth it." Apparently he wasn't too thrilled with the quality of television at the time. What else did we see in that span of time? This is easy. I was in kindergarten the day that Kennedy was shot. Lee Harvey Oswald. There you go. Vietnam. 

The Vietnam war coverage. What else? Challenger. I know exactly where I was when the challenger exploded. I was in Boston that day. The World Trade Center, that's another one. Did anyone see anything happy on television? I mean, let's go across the pond. Princess Di's wedding was a worldwide phenomenon on television. Now the reason that I'm compressing this is because we only have an hour, or so, to talk. 

And you could talk about stuff that happened between here and there forever. But it all happened on analog television, which was pretty good at the time. In the '80s, though, the Japanese, when the Japanese were going to take over the world. Remember when they were the preeminent power? They decided they wanted to have high definition television. They wanted to have a better system than NTSC, which they had adopted because we had occupied Japan after World War II. They came up with an analog system of high definition called MUSE. I won't bore you with the acronym. But they actually deployed it. They had a satellite orbiting over Japan which gave them, in the early '80s, a satellite delivered high definitions service. 

And everybody on this side of the Pacific was looking at them and saying, if they can have it, why can't we have it. So they decided it was time to start doing something about that. Who here knows about the Grand Alliance? Not that one in Europe. That was not a big Grand Alliance. The big Grand Alliance, was Zenith, MIT, Phillips, Thomson and other companies, generally. They all got together in 1993 and decided we're going to have a high def system, just like Japan. In fact, we're going to have an analog high def system, just like Japan. And at the time, computers were starting to ramp up. People were getting the idea on a computer. 

Who here had a computer in 1993? I'm not alone. This is great. People were discovering that the power of digital technology could really, really multiply the value of broadcast television. So two years later, they finally came up with a system. It was called ATSC. Anybody want to guess what ATSC stands for? 
(inaudible)
 Oh, you'd like to think so, wouldn't you? How about Advanced Television System Committee. 

Not very imaginative, when you think about it. But they did, however, have the brains to make it into a digital system. Digital is better than analog for a whole bunch of reasons. Why, I'll tell you in a couple of more slides. But basically speaking, they thought, we can turn this thing around and make it happen in 11 years, no problem. We'll just wipe everything out and start over by 2006. What year is it now? I can't remember. 2006 absolutely did not happen. The actual deadline is February 17, 2009. 

Can anybody guess why it is February 17, 2009? And I swear to God, I am not making this up. 
(inaudible)
 Chinese New Year is about as good an answer as any, believe me. This date was chosen because, for three very important reasons. First of all, it's after the Super Bowl; it's before March Madness; and, most importantly for the three, it's after a presidential and congressional election. Because even if everything goes exactly according to plan, there are going to be many, many Americans who wake up on the 17th and their TV doesn't work. But you know what? You all in this room, are not going to be in that crowd, because you're going to be up to speed real fast now. What exactly is changing is a very good question. 

TV broadcast is changing from an analog format to a digital format, where basically speaking, let's pretend that this is the size of the Wisconsin Public Television signal. At this moment in the analog world, our entire signal fills this entire pipe. It's not really a pipe, obviously. It's a wave, but the analogy holds. We can't put anything into here, more than one. We can't put any more into here than one television signal. When you go to digital though, it changes from being waves to ones and zeros. And by using compression and all sorts of other fabulous technologies, we can actually use our band width, and put much, much more information into it. Now it's not a question of if we can do this. We have to do this. 

And if you guys still want to watch television and have an antenna, you're going to have to make some choices and come along with us that way. It has much more flexibility than band width. I think I just said that. It's a big gain for the antenna people. All you people who raised your hands. It's a very, very big gain for you guys. Because even if you never watch anything except Wisconsin Public Television, when you get your digital set working, you will find, during the day, four channels of Wisconsin Public Television instead of one. If you buy a high definition set, as this one is, the stuff you watch at night will look really, really good. Really, really good. Now I think I'm going to hand it off to Tina here. 

Oh, I take that back. I've got one more slide. Why is the government doing this? Well, they want to make money. Imagine that! The upper reaches of the UHF band. Everybody here knows the difference between VHF and UHF, right? VHF is 2 through 13. UHF is an entirely separate section of the band, which goes from 14. It used to go to 83, but they gave those channels away a long time ago for taxi radios. 

Now they're selling channels 52-69, because they can be used profitably for cell phones, mostly. There are going to be, in the next couple of years, you're going to see cell phones that will do things you wouldn't believe. It might actually make an omelet, it's just so advanced. But they need more band width to do these things. So they sold off, in an auction, a huge block of the channels from 52-69. But that's not all they're going to do with it. Somebody mentioned 911 a little earlier. One of the big problems on 911 was the fact that all of the different first responders had radios that were utterly incompatible. Nobody could talk to anybody else. So there has been a move afoot to create a nationally coordinated service where people can have radios that can interconnect very easily. 

Now, it's been seven years now, and not much has happened. I'll be the most amazed guy in the world when this actually does. But they now have the band width set aside to make something like that happen. Digital, over the air of television, looks better. For example, this is a high def set. This should look good, it's a high def set. But you know what? That is a standard def television with a high def signal into it. And believe me, when you see it compared to an antenna just taking an analog signal, it's a thousand times better. It's always going to be pristine. 

If you get anything, you get all of it, and it looks absolutely pristine. Of course, that raises the question of antennas, but we'll get there later on. And of course, remember I said that the people who are behind the Grand Alliance are generally manufacturers of television equipment? I get this strange fox guarding the hen house concept there. Saying, you know, well, if we change the television sets, we don't have to buy a whole bunch of stuff. And if you think about it in the aggregate, there are about a half a billion television sets in the United States alone. Because every household has at least two. My office has one. My office has two actually. Every hotel room in America has one. 

And eventually, something's going to have to happen to them. Either they're all going to be on cable or satellite, or they'll all have to get replaced. So there's a lot of TV sets to be sold in that transition. That's my little conspiratorial attitude toward the whole thing. But we're moving forward now. Now Tina is going to take over and tell you what you need to know about the switch to digital television. 
- So my discussion will be a little more practical to help you think about what you need to do as you face February 17, 2009. Do you need to do anything about your television set, your television viewing, or are you all set? Or, maybe you have some choices to make. So if you currently have cable or satellite... 

(inaudible)
 You, in theory, you don't have to do anything. You'll still get television after February 17, 2009. You'll still get all the channels that you have. If you want to get HD service, you can subscribe to that through your TV provider. But you won't, at least if you live in certain areas of Wisconsin, you won't get certain over-the-air digital channels, because the cable and satellite providers may not pick up those additional channels that Bruce talked about in the pipe. The analog pipe provided one channel, so your cable and satellite providers are giving you that one channel. But now the different stations may provide more than one channel, which will go over the airwaves, because of the digital transition. But your cable and satellite provider, again, may not pick up all of those channels. For Wisconsin Public Television, that means for instance, in the Madison area, If you get service through a certain cable provider, you won't get Wisconsin public Television channels 2, 3, and 4. 

At least not now. That may change in the future, however. So if you decide to drop one of the services you have and get over-air digital television, then you would see that. Actually what you can do, and this gets complicated, but you can keep the pay service that you have, attach an antenna, not unlike the antenna at the back of the room, where if you can turn around and look at it. It's up on a little stand. Just a small antenna that you can buy at a hardware store or electronic supply store. 
(inaudible)
 Feeding those two over the air televisions. You can have that plugged into your TV as well. And then using the menu on your TV set, you can switch between your pay service and over-the-air television. 

- There's one more thing, too. We're being fairly Public Television centered here because that's where we're at. But this is not just us. Channel 3 is running two channels. Channel 15 is running a full-time weather channel. Channel 27, starting in the fall, will be running, 
(inaudible)
 There are more than just us doing multicasting. If you're interested in our extra channels, you'll get everybody else too. 
(no audio)

 
- Again, just backing up, with this pipe, with the size of broadcast band width, with a digital signal, during the daytime, Wisconsin Public Television is using that band width to show four channels. In the evening, this transition, that switchover that we were talking about earlier at the top of the hour, in the evening, we take some of that band width away from two of those channels and we devote it to our evening programs, which are in high definition. High definition programming requires more band width. So in order to have the pretty picture programs in the evening, we have to basically shut down two of the channels in the evening. And the Wisconsin Channel, which we'll talk about later on, is one of the channels that goes away in the evening, because that piece of band width is allocated for high definition programming. We'll talk about more of that eventually. 
- When you speak of band width, I have an antenna. I receive high definition for my set. I see all the choices there, but I'm wondering, when I receive, it's either 480, 720 or 1,080. 

When you speak of band width, is that band width? 
- Yes, but not in the context you're thinking of. The question is, if you have a 480P show or a 720P show or a 1080I show, and I'll go through those real fast. Does it take up different amounts of band width? The answer is yes. And you're very astute to pick up on this, because what you're talking about when you say 720P or 1080I, what you're talking about-- I'm going to go over here to the TV set. When you see these numbers in the Best Buy flyer, when it says 1080I, or 1080P, or 720P, what they're talking about is the number of pixels from here to here. This is a 1080P set. That means that there are 1,080 lines from here to here. There are 1,920 this way. 

So basically, the deal is that if you have set that is a 1080I set, or you have something that's signal of 1,080 lines, it has much, much, much more information. And you have to devote band width to that. What we have done in Public Television, is that we're not broadcasting in 1080 anymore. We're broadcasting in 720P and the pictures look fabulous. However, it allows us to use our band width in a much more efficient manner. We don't have to devote quite as much to the high def signal and the chances are-- I've heard it talked about, but there's no guarantees. We may actually go to one high def and two standard defs at night eventually, but not soon. As far as buying TVs is concerned, guys, folks, for most people, if you want to buy a set, 720P is more than good enough. It's all a question of basically how big you want it to be. But 720P is going away slowly, you may notice, if you pay attention to the circulars, the prices of television sets are dropping very, very quickly, and that's a wonderful thing. 

But anyway, we're getting a little off. Sure? 
- You have to watch when you are shopping. The cheapest sets are usually 480 or 720, so you've got to watch. 
- That's because the cost of the quality of technology is coming down very, very quickly. I'm you can buy 42-inch sets now for $700, which might be a lot of money, but compared to what a 42-inch television-- You could never buy a 42-inch tube-- 
- Go to Wal-Mart and see what's on sale. 
- Well, anyway, we can't endorse any companies, sad to say. So anyway, back to what you need to do if-- 
- If you're watching currently, an over-the-air signal and have a digital TV tuner, you should be okay. 

You're already receiving digital TV. Now, you could have a digital TV tuner inside your television set, and that's probably if you bought your TV in the last couple of years, you most likely have a digital TV tuner in the TV. Or you may have an external box that you purchased to plug into your TV, your old analog TV, for instance, so that you can get those digital signals over the air. That's what Bruce is showing over there. He has one of these digital TV adapters plugged into a basic analog set that's been around for years. If you're not sure what your TV is, usually it says on the TV someplace that it's DTV, digital TV, or HDTV or ATSC, again, for the Advanced Television Standards Committee. I think that's our next Power Point. There might be a manual or an owner's manual that explains that. Or if you really can't figure it out, contact the manufacturer and they'll probably tell you to describe the serial number or something like that. So if you watch an over-the-air signal right now, and you have an older TV, the only way you're getting TV over the airwaves right now, is if you have rabbit ears, as Bruce was showing. 

You might be using an antenna that looks a little bit space age, like the one in the back of the room, which is triangular and has ribs on it. You may have an antenna on the roof of your house. And if that's how you're getting TV, then you are watching an over-the-air signal. As the statistics says, you're part of 23% of Wisconsinites who have sets not hooked up to satellite or cable. What this means that 23% of viewers in the state of Wisconsin will be affected by the February 17, 2009 analog shut off. And that means that in order to watch TV on February 17, you'll have to do something, so we'll talk about what those things are. Your first choice might be to purchase one of these converter boxes that Bruce was just holding up and connect it to your existing TV and antenna. You don't need a new antenna. And we'll just kind of warn you, you may see in stores, UHF antennas or VHF antennas-- 
- Digital ready antennas. 

- That say on the box, HD ready or digital TV antennas, and they're $50. Most likely, it's a $5 antenna, and they're just calling it digital TV ready or HD ready. It's the same antenna you used in 1955. Basically, it does the same thing. It's picking up the signal. And it's still getting that signal into the TV, whether it's digital or analog, it doesn't matter. So the digital TV converter box will convert the signal that's coming over the air so it works in your analog TV. Now the federal government has issued coupons, or is issuing coupons, to help you purchase one of these digital TV tuners or one of these digital TV converters. Has anybody heard about this FCC coupon program? 
- Have you applied? 

- I have one. 
- You have yours. So that's what they look like. They look like little credit cards. You have to go to this Web site or call this 800 number and request the coupons. You can request up to two per household. The coupons are worth $40 each. When you get your coupons, you'll get a list of local retailers who offer these digital tuner boxes. You can go to those retailers and use these coupons. The boxes themselves, may cost anywhere from $60-$80 each, so the $40 coupon is kind of a price break toward the converter boxes. 

These coupons are available until the money to provide the $40 coupons runs out. 
- There was enough money for 25 million coupons. I was at a press conference on this a couple of weeks ago. They said they had already processed 10 million applications. So if you want to be in the first wave, you probably ought to get on the stick. There will be also, possibly, another pot of money coming out for people who can prove, it's a means testing system prove they don't have cable or satellite. There will be possibly another 10 million coupons. But there's no guarantee that's going to happen. So if you think you want to do this, do it fast. It's not every day you're going to get 80 bucks from the government. 

Well, maybe it is. 
- If you have cable or if you receive satellite, you may receive cable on a couple of TVs in your household, but you may have other TVs that maybe are in the basement or they are ancillary, extra TVs that are not hooked up to your pay service. Or maybe they're in your camper. Maybe you use them someplace else. Even if you get cable or satellite, you still may want to get a couple of coupons and get those DTV converter boxes for your analog TVs. Maybe someday, you want to drop your pay service and go back to analog, I'm sorry, to over-the-air television. Then you have to make sure that you have the converter box, or you'll need to go and buy a new TV, which has the digital tuner built in. Yes? 
- Why is there a deadline on using the card, which is only about a month away? 
- It's 90 days from the point of issue. 

If you get your coupon in the mail today, it will be good for about three months. The reason they say they did this, is to deter fraud. I'm not exactly how that all fits together, but that was their rationale. 
- A better box that comes out the day after your deadline, you're out of luck? 
- Well, no. I mean, they would say if the box is so much better, you could pay full price for it. But the fact is, here's a Web site I have not put into the Power Point, but if you want to write this down, you should. Who here knows about Wikipedia? If you go to Wikipedia and search for CECB, which is short for Coupon Eligible Converter Box. We have the best acronyms in the world. 

You'll get an entire grid of all of the available boxes. You can click on them. Many of them will take you to places where you can buy them. But 90 days for the cut off was their idea of how they were going to deter fraud. I don't exactly know how it really works. 
- So I ordered two coupons. One coupon for myself-- Actually no, both for my household. I have a bunch of TVs in the household. I also ordered a couple of coupons for my parents, because they're getting over air television. The coupons are correlated with your address. 

Where you live. They'll take your name when you order them, but if you should move and you're mail is forwarded, the coupons won't be forwarded to your new address. They will go to the address where you were living, because they attach to that household. And if new people move into the household and you already ordered your coupons to that address, they probably won't be able to get their coupons, in case you're in that situation. I ordered my coupons 9:00 a.m. January 1, which was the first day you could order the coupons. And it took me about six weeks to get them in the mail. So if you order your coupons tomorrow, it may take you six weeks or two months to get them in the mail. And from that point on, you have 90 days to use them. My coupons are expiring, next week actually. 

I haven't used them yet. And if I want to, I need to run out and use them. 
(inaudible)
 If you're hooked up to cable and to plan to keep using cable, you don't even have to. You can shut your ears and not even listen to this. It really doesn't even apply to you. If you want to have HDTV through your cable service, and you have an HD television, then you can pay the extra fee per month, and they will provide an external box for you that you need that will give you that service. So that's right, satellite, cable, you really don't need that information. It's only if you get over-the-air television. But if you think about it, for people who are getting over-the-air television, this is not necessarily just a matter of, you know, they're going to miss their entertainment, or miss something fun that they had. 

People get news, people get emergency information and weather alerts from their television. So people who don't necessarily know about the fact that their analog TVs won't work with their antennas anymore, they're going to be missing out on important information that comes over the air, or over television. 
- One more thing real quick. Just like we have a band width pipe, so does the cable system, so does the satellite system. And to make all of the 250 channels you never watch fit into that pipe, they compress them extremely hard. And if you are a golden eye kind of person, and you have an HDTV, if you compare the quality of the high def signal over the air to cable or satellite, you will not believe how much better it is over the air. We don't have to compress 200 channels into our pipe. So if you really want to see the stuff the way it's supposed to look, over the air is the way to do it. And I'm not just a saying it because I work at a TV station. It's really true. 

And not to mention the fact that it doesn't cost you anything per month. 
- Go ahead. 
- Would you comment on sound? The picture, we understand the picture will be very different. Is there a change in sound? I'm thinking classical music. 
- Oh, if you're listening to the Metropolitan Opera, if you could find it, it's astonishing. The quality of sound in digital television is Dolby 5.1, which is six channel sound, if you have a surround rig in your house. I'm guessing, you might not. But even that, even at that, the quality of the sound is CD quality or better. 

So yeah, it will sound spectacular. And that's one of the things that comes along with having a digital signal. They have the area sequestered, they have enough band width sequestered to have spectacular audio at almost all times. 
- Yes? 
- An antenna, you're not throwing it away, you're keeping the antenna, adding a converter box. 
- Right, keep the antenna, or keep the cable. Oh, oh, oh-- 
- I will say this. I'm not an engineer, but I have been told by many engineers, that if you have an outdoor antenna, if you do have an outdoor antenna, change the cable. If it's been out there for a couple of years, have somebody take it down and put a new piece of wire between the antenna and the TV. 

Other than that, the antenna should be good to go for years and years and years. 
- You're talking about the cable on the antenna, not the cable that you subscribe to. 
- No, excuse me. The wiring between the antenna and the digital box, or your digitally hooked TV set. This thing, being out in the weather does degrade them. It makes oxide on the connections. And you know, eventually the plastic will crack. And if water gets inside it, it makes the signal not pass very well. You really want all the signal that hits the antenna to come down your TV set for this. 
- What are the projections for cable companies, in terms of the incremental cost basis for this? 

- I have no clue. 
(inaudible)
 
- The problem with that is, first of all, I don't subscribe to high def over cable. The other thing is that every cable company is different. I mean, I subscribe to a whole bunch of lists that talk about things like that. And you know, they'll say well Charter is doing this and Comcast is doing that. Everybody is going entirely in different directions. So there's really no standard at all. All I can tell you is that it's expensive. 

- If you buy a new converter, can you get rid of your cable box converter and not have to pay the rent every month? Do you understand? 
- If you buy, or if you put an antenna up, most television sets-- 
- No, I still keep the cable, but I have to rent their converter box to get-- 
- Are you talking about Charter? In Madison, you don't have to have the cable box absolutely, unless you have things like digital cable, or if you subscribe to HBO or Showtime. You can just plug a wire into the wall and plug that into the back of your equipped TV set, and you'll get 2-76 that way. 
- He's asking if the digital converter that he buys in the store will get digital cable. 
- No, this doesn't. 
(inaudible)

 Like I say, you don't literally need a cable box in Madison, but what their box does, and what this box does are two entirely different subjects. Now the other thing though, is to consider that almost every contemporary television set has much more than one input. You don't just have the tuner, which you can go around on. You have line inputs that you plug a VCR or a DVD player into. That TV set has six inputs. Now you could have cable on your normal inputs, and then take an over the air box and plug it into one of the other inputs and be able to watch digital television that way. You can have them both on the same set. 
- I have a TV from the late 1980s. I have four different inputs on it. 
- It's not uncommon. 

And like I say, one of the things you see when you really pay attention to the TV sets that are for sale today, is I've seen them with ten inputs. That's a lot of stuff, man. 
- This may be obvious, but just to make sure it's clear. If you just get a converter box like this and use an antenna, you're not going to get the channels that you get when you subscribe to cable. 
- That's correct. You will not get cable channels with an over-the-air box. Another question back there. 
- I see you have six channels on this slip. Now does that imply that there are six satellites? 
- I've never actually read that slip. 

You do that. 
- Those are the different transmitters or antennas that Wisconsin Public Television has around the state. So in the Madison area, Wisconsin Public Television, you can reach on channel 21. But if you're living in Green Bay, you reach Wisconsin Public Television on channel 38. So that's what this that has to do with on your handout. 
- But my question really is-- 
(inaudible)
 
- It's not a satellite. It's a transmitter footprint. 

Didn't we have a map on one of these? 
- No. 
- You know, if you go to the wpt.org Web site, we have it on there someplace. Generally speaking, you're talking about a 50-60-mile radius depending on terrain. We were doing tests a couple of years ago, we went out to... Richland Center, thank you very much. We were standing behind a bluff and we couldn't see anything. I felt bad for these people, because they couldn't see anything if they didn't have cable. It's very much a question of terrain and distance. 
- And I'll respond to that. 

This is getting a little more technical, but we have six, or seven transmitters, around the state. I mean towers, rather. Those are the tall towers that are obvious that you see. But we also have another five or six translators around the state for areas like Richland Center that might be in a gully, or that depend on, for instance, the signal from Madison, but they're behind some terrain, so there's a smaller tower that will bounce that signal over to the kind of hidden area. Those translators right now, have not been replaced with digital signals, so this is kind of interesting. The first couple of years, we have been broadcasting over the air our analog signal. I don't think we were going to go into this. But the analog shut-off happens February 17, 2009. By law, all broadcasters, or most broadcasters have to stop broadcasting their analog signal. Most broadcasters have already ramped up and bought the equipment and started broadcasting a digital service at the same time. 

So most broadcasters across the country are actually sending out these two different services. So if you have an analog TV, you can see the channels you've always seen. But if you have a digital TV with an antenna, as I do at home, I can see the channel that we've always been showing, plus these additional channels, WPT2, and 3, and 4. February 17, we're going to shut off the analog service. And then I just get those digital channels that I can already see right now. The people who depend on these translators, not the towers, but these smaller translators, to get our digital signal may not be seeing the digital signals right now, because we haven't upgraded the translators to digital service. I know this is getting very complex, but it may explain why if you're in Madison you may see WPT's digital channels, but if you're in Baraboo or Richland Center, you may not see the digital channels yet, because not all the equipment is upgraded yet. By February 17, 2009, it will be. 
- I have an analog TV and I have cable. But I can't plug into WPT2? 

- No. 
- if I get the converter box and go over the air, would I be able to get WPT2? 
- Yes, if you have an analog TV that you're getting cable, if you get the converter box, you should be able to get over-the-air signals. Now with my television, I can go to my on-screen menu and switch between my cable service and over air service. It makes it kind of easy. I think depending on how old your TV is, I don't know if you'd have that on-screen menu or not, to switch, to have both of them plugged in at the same time, and then just switch with a push of a button between them. So for instance, if my husband is watching-- We have a cable service into our house, but we don't have high definition. The football game comes on, or the Super Bowl, and my husband wants to watch that in HD. So we're watching a movie, let's say, over our cable service and then the football game comes on, we go to our on-screen menu and switch to the antenna, over-air, and we watch the football game in high definition. It's that seamless. 

Again, we have a built-in digital tuner in our TV. I think this might not work depending on how old your analog television is. I'm afraid I wouldn't know that. 
- After we're done here, I'll demonstrate to you on the little TV exactly how this works. Because any TV that has been purchased, as Pete said, within the last ten years, has the functionality to do this. But I'll describe it to you later on. Sure. 
- I get channel 3 on cable, Charter cable, and I don't find the programs listed on your Web site. Is there a reason for that? 
- Channel 3, you mean our cable service? 

(inaudible)
 But they put a subset of our stuff on channel 3. 
- I can't find a program guide for that. 
- We don't really promote that. Part of the problem is that because channel 3, the television station in town is so powerful, their signal is so powerful that it makes channel 3 on cable look terrible. That's why they're willing to put us on there, because nobody else would go on that. 
- It's an ancillary channel. But another thing I'll mention, on the yellow handout that you may have received, there's a Web site for Wisconsin Channel. Actually, I'm sorry, let me back up. If you go to wpt.org, our Wisconsin public Television Web site, on the left hand side of that Web site, and I wish we were connected right now, but we're not. 

There's a place that says, "program schedules." Someplace on there, there's a place that says program schedules. If you get the Airwaves, which is our program schedule that's mailed to your home, if you're a member, you get the main TV channel program listing month by month. All the extra channels, the digital channels, are not in the Airwaves. That would be a very big Airwaves if we listed all of those channels. So those are listed on our Web site. Right now, you kind of have to dig a little, but if you go to Wisconsin Public Television, wpt.org go to program schedules, you should be able to find all of the listings for the different digital channels. Channel 3 on cable, I'm afraid, is probably not there. But I'm not quite sure. I'll mention this now, and I'll mention this again later, but my email address is at the bottom of that yellow page. 

So feel free to email me, if you have questions. If I don't have the answer, I'll find the answer for you. But that's a real tangent. Yes? 
- Another thing to point out about the digital converter box is that if you use that box, you can pull up an on-screen TV guide on that box, because the extra information is transmitted in the digital signals. 
- One of the things that is really cool about digital television is that a lot of the functionality that used to be only on cable, things like an on-screen guide, is actually in the digital signal. In fact, I can probably demonstrate this, I think. In the signal we send, there is actually an EPG, an Electronic Program Guide, I think this is the button for it. See, there you go. It tells you what's on now. 

I'm not sure about this box, but depending on which box you buy, it might tell you what's going on for a week ahead. That's one of the functions that come along with that box that didn't even exist in analog television. 
(inaudible)
 
- It says guide. 
- I can't see that. 
- Oh, sorry. See the guide? It will tell you what's on everybody else, but let's forget about that. Right now, we're watching 21-5 which is the high def channel. 

If you go to 21, you see it says right there, it says "off air." If we go 21-3 here, it will be off-the-air. That's called a barker channel. It's just a slide that says come back and visit us tomorrow morning at 6:00. And then of course, if you go back down here. This is the analog channel, WPT-1. You'll see the two are a little bit out of sync, because the digital channel and the analog channel have to be processed separately, so they will not be in sync at this moment. Tina? 
- I think I'll just move on with the Power Point. So again, your first option for dealing with the February 17 analog shut off is to buy one of these external digital tuner boxes to attach to your analog television. 

The second option is to purchase a new television, or new television sets that have these built-in digital tuners, which is what you're seeing, which is what this brand new TV has that we just happened to get this flat screen TV. So you could still use your antenna, and you don't have to subscribe to cable or satellite service. These television sets, now I've never seen one as low as $200, but there is a wide cost range. I believe it's even possible to get a digital TV set that's not technically HD. HD would refer to the quality or the number of lines in the TV set. I can see Bruce wants to say something to add to that. 
- There are sets out there. Basically the bottom line right now, is a 720P set, 720 lines vertically. But there are also sets called EDTV which is extended definition TV. That was pretty popular a couple of years ago, before HDTVs really ramped up into production. 

They're harder to find now. Now about this slide. This slide came from another Power Point. We didn't write this one. I've got to tell you, I've never ever seen a $200 DTV. And $1,600 is not a ton of money for these things. You can buy them for much more than $5,000, if you feel so inclined. Personally, not so much. So take this all with a grain, with a pound of salt, basically. 
- Right, you can get an HDTV at much higher prices. 

If you choose, you can get a flat panel, mount them on the wall. They can be pretty spectacular. Then your third choice is to chuck the whole over air thing and start subscribing to cable or satellite. You don't have to get a new television or those external tuner boxes if you want to subscribe to cable or satellite. If they think that you need some kind of adapter or box, they'll provide it for you, so you don't have to go out and buy that. And you don't need an antenna, like the one sitting in the back of the room, or you don't need an antenna on your roof top. So yes, there will be monthly fees, unlike over the air television, which is free. And you can't get cable or satellite, especially cable, you can't get it in all areas. And at least for now, you wouldn't be able to get the additional Wisconsin Public Television digital channels, or the other TV channels in your area, the additional channels beyond their primary channel. I'm just going to mention something briefly about this. 

We could go into depth, but there actually is a rule or a law right now that the FCC has, that cable carriers are supposed to carry the entire band width, or entire signal, that's put out by any local PBS stations. Some cable carriers are doing that, but they're not all fulfilling that rule right now. That may change in the future. It may be that if you subscribe to your local cable carrier, eventually, you may see only for public broadcasting stations, you may see all of the channels that they happen to spit out during the day or in the evening. 
- I don't know if "spit out" is appropriate! 
- 
(laughs)
 I know! 
- One thing quickly. I talked about, it's not just us that are multicasting. 

A lot of people will say to me who have cable, who have digital cable specifically, they will say, oh, I know about the channel 15 weather channel. I see that, it's on channel 293, way up in the digital tier. They can get that, but they have to pay extra for that. The digital tier is not inexpensive. That is something that if they just stuck an antenna in the sky and got a digital tuner, they could get it for free from channel 15. And channel 15 is very proud to be offering it. Yes? 
- What is the note, WPT-2? 
- That means that our extra channels, the Wisconsin Channel, Wisconsin PBS Kids and Create are multicast channels during the day, are not being carried by cable systems or by satellite systems, especially not by satellite systems. 
- I was going to talk about that a little bit later on. 

I was going to go into more detail about the additional channels that we're offering. Here it is. So again, going back to five years ago, or 20 years ago, Wisconsin Public Television offered one channel. It's the channel where you saw, I don't know what some of the local-- "Sesame Street," "Masterpiece Theater," "Wisconsin Magazine," that was a program from 15 years ago, "Prime Time Wisconsin." We had one channel. And this is now what Bruce described earlier, that the amount of band width, or the "pipe" that we use to send out that one channel over the airwaves, now because of digital technology, we can use that same spectrum to send out more than one channel. So, what we have right now, is we have on our digital service, you can see this on the analog or the digital service, we have the main channel, WPT, we call that now, WPT-1. So you'll still see "Masterpiece Theater," "Nova." You'll see "Here and Now" and "In Wisconsin," and all of the usual programs that we've been offering. WPT-2 is a new channel, it's called the Wisconsin Channel. 

We just launched this channel in January of this year. And I'm going to talk more about that, because that's the channel where we show University Place, which is the initiative that we have to tape lectures like this one and put them out over the airwaves. When we had one channel years ago, we had to think very carefully about how we program that channel. We only had so much space. There were only so many hours in the day to broadcast programs. We didn't really have time to pick up specialty programs or even educational programs, which is what University Place is, to show to maybe a more specialized audience or a particular audience. So now that we have the option to show many more channels. We have a lot more space or time to show many more programs, which is what we're doing, and again, it's all because of digital television. On WPT-3, we're showing a PBS channel called Create. And it's all how-to programs. 

Twelve hours a day, we're showing how-to programs. Woodworking, sewing. Again, if you have over-the-air digital television, you can see this channel for free. WPT-4 is all kids programming. I think it's mostly coming from PBS, 12 hours a day, nothing but kid's shows, educational shows, Sesame Street, cartoons. Yes? 
- Should we tune to a different number? 
- It's actually a different number. I think it appears, it would be 21-2, 21-3, 21-4 in the Madison area. If you're in Green Bay, it would be 38-1, 38-2. 

- I don't understand. How do you get the dash? 
- Well you don't have to do anything. The channels appear if you have a digital tuner, if you have that external box, or if you have a TV with a digital tuner, it will pick up those channels over the airwaves. That's what the digital tuner does, is it finds those additional channels and shows them on your TV, which your analog or your old TV won't do. 
- But you won't see them on the cable. What about remote control? 
- All these boxes come with remote controls. The remote control will control the tuner in the box, and give you a whole bunch of other functions, like the program guide that I showed you. And also, you can have somebody set it up so it can control the volume on your current TV, so you only really need one remote control. 

- So let me just explain that with newer televisions, with digital televisions, they have the ability to basically lock-in the channels. You don't have to really go looking for the channels. They'll all be in order. You do, what is it, a scan? A channel search. 
(inaudible)
 Somebody could help you with this. Do a channel search. Actually, this will be on the last screen of our Power Point. We have a Viewer Services phone number that's in the Power Point. 

And you can call these folks at our station, and they'll help you with any technical questions as well. 
- Now it's channel 11. 
- It's channel 11 because you have cable. And the cable company calls it channel 11. Over the air, it's called channel 21. The cable company can assign any number they want. 
(inaudible)
 Yeah, and I'll let Bruce talk about that. 
- The only reason they have it on channel 3 is because Charter, some of the channels on a cable system, any cable system, are provided free of charge. But sometimes, companies will pay to be on a cable system. 

- The station? 
- The station will pay, or organizations like Home Shopping Network, for example. Because of the enormous amount of power that Channel 3 has on their over-the-air transmitter, when you look at channel 3 on cable, a lot of Channel 3's signal, that is over-the-air signal, bleeds into the cable. That's why channel 3 on the cable system looks so bad. It looks so bad that they can't sell that to anybody. They put us on there basically as space saver. 
(inaudible)
 
- I mean, it's not one of our primary channels. It's not a channel you would get with your digital or over-air. 

It's just something that Charter is offering in the Madison area, because they have nothing else to put on that channel. That's all. I know it's really complicated. Because now we're dealing with so many different channels. But again, we're happy to answer questions in the future, as well, if you want to call Viewer Services, or contact me or Bruce. We can try and explain it. But I'm even trying to understand it. There's so many channels floating around. But I do know that those four channels that we showed before, if you have an antenna, and you have a digital tuner box or a tuner in the TV, you can get these beautiful digital, pristine looking channels over the air for free. Anybody can get them. 

That's the main message, I guess. So University Place, I mentioned before. University Place is a block of programs that we're offering on the Wisconsin Channel, which is one of the digital channels that you can get over the air. You may have seen me talk about this before. But this is why we're here taping, almost every Wednesday. The lectures that are being presented here are then being broadcast on University Place. They're also shown on the Internet, because the Wisconsin Channel is streamed on the Internet as well. You can access that through wpt.org, the Wisconsin Public Television Web site. Our goal is to find interesting and educational lectures, primarily university-related lectures. We're focusing on the Madison area right now, because that's where our crew is and we have limited resources. 

It's easy to start with Madison. But I am in contact with other campuses and other university departments who are even taping lectures themselves. And we plan to get those lectures in, and put them on the air. So that eventually, we'll have a huge database, or a huge pool of these informative educational lectures that we make available over the television broadcast and over the Internet to the public. So here we are. Here's all the information you might want to jot down if you have questions about these FCC coupons, about digital tuner boxes, about over-the-air television, about why you can get certain channels on cable but not over the air. You can call our Viewer Services 1-800 number. There's information online at the Wisconsin Public Television Web site, Digital TV. And I believe the white handout that you have, the two-sided handout, that information is also in the Digital TV part of our Web site. Then, you can email me or email Bruce. 

And if you ask me technical questions, I'll forward them right on to Bruce or one of our engineers. We'll get back to you to answer your questions. This is very complex. The whole digital transition has been occupying our station, our engineers, other stations, the National Association of Broadcasters, the technology industry for years. They've been trying smooth over and sort out all these different issues. Yes? 
- Are there difference between prices of converter boxes? 
- Do you know? 
- Well, I'll tell you, there are. If you go to the Wikipedia site and look at the chart, there's a bunch of technical gobbledy-gook on there. 

But right in the middle of it, are three rows where they have red or green or yellow. These are various technical specs that the boxes either do or do not have. There will be a box coming out in June from a company called Echo Star, which will cost $40. So you'll be able to use your coupon and get literally a free box, plus tax. But some of them have things like, oh, S-video outputs. Not everybody knows what that is. Some of them have the capacity to use Smart Antennas, which are electronically steered antennas which don't actually move, but the signal is sucked in much more efficiently. But the thing is, more often than not, well, look at the antenna in the back of the room. I thought, when I asked our engineer to come in here and set up a digital television feed, that we were going to have to put this thing out in the lobby by the window. These are much more powerful antennas. 

I'm shocked that it works in here. I'm absolutely astonished that it works in here. So depending on where you live, if you know where the towers are, and by the way, just for the record, guys, the towers in Madison are all over on the west side, over off Mineral Point Road. Channel 15's is just off the Beltline. Point your antennas in that direction, and your chances are pretty good that if you don't live too far away, you're going to do just fine. Yes, ma'am? 
- We just bought a combination VCR/DVD player, but we have an analog TV. So right now, we can watch movies, but we apparently can't tape off of TV until we get a digital converter box. That's what we were told, anyway. 
- It depends. 

Actually just this week and last week, I was off shooting a story for In Wisconsin that will be on next week, about this very subject. We went to American, not that I'm endorsing anybody. We shot at American. They had on the shelves, already, a DVD recorder with a digital tuner built into it. So you could actually record off the air to a DVD. They're coming. I don't know that I know of any VCRs that actually have digital tuners in them. So you might be a little behind the curve on that. The other problem of course, is that if you have a tuner outside of the VCR, you have to tune it before the thing records. It won't do it automatically for you. 

But on the other hand, I hope you like it. 
(laughter)
 
- There TVs you can connect the output from the TV to the VCR, and you can record it that way. 
- Yeah, but on the other hand, when you do that, if you have the output of the TV set going to a recorder, you can't watch one show and then record another, which is why people really love VCRs the way they were before. Now, having said all that, I don't think there are going to be too many VHS decks with DTV tuners in there. VHS has pretty much reached the end of its life. On the other hand, there will be lots of DVD recorders. There will be hard drive based PVRs they call them, Personal Video Recorders that will have that capacity. So, you're going to have to keep your eyes open and be careful what you buy. 

The scary part is, a lot of time, and this was not the case when we went to American, a lot of times, the people you talk to at the stores know less than you do. What I was going to say before we leave this subject, I was in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters convention a couple weeks ago. I went to a press conference on this subject with the Undersecretary of Commerce, who's in charge of this thing. They had a panel of two different guys. One guy from Univsion, which is a Spanish language network. One guy from WHYY in Philadelphia, which is the PBS affiliate in Philadelphia. They were talking about the case studies and what they've done to try to drive adoption, or help adoption of the digital television switchover. And the guy from WHYY, their general manager, told a spectacular story of how they are going out and going to every civic organization they can touch and saying, we want to deputize you. We're going to teach you what you need to know, just like we've done for you guys tonight, and we want you to go out and tell everybody else. And then have them go out and tell everybody else. 

That is the only way we're going to be able to reach the underserved the audience, that is so much the PBS audience. The antenna people are very much PBS's audience. They don't watch Discovery. They don't watch HBO. They don't watch a lot of commercial network television. They watch our stuff. If you people, who are antenna people, take the knowledge you learned here and go tell your other friends who are also antenna people, we can all get through this thing a lot more easily than it's going to be on February 17, 2009, when everybody in the world is picking up the phone and calling Tammy Baldwin, and saying why isn't my television working. 
- Can I add something? There are some TV stations around this state, or I know around the city at least, that have been going out and doing speaking bureaus and educating the public in forums like this, talking to people. And we're going to be doing that as well, sending people around. 

We're going to send staff around the state to set up these public forums to talk about what's going to happen. We're trying to spread the word. You'll see, on air, promotional videos. Some of them are short. Some of them are longer, explaining the whole analog shut off and DTV transition, as well. 
(inaudible)
 
- Next Thursday at 7p.m., we'll have a package on about this very subject. Yes, sir? 

- If you have, as you said, if you have cable TV, you really don't have to do anything. 
- You don't have to do anything. 
- If you would like to get these additional channels, all the channels that you talked about, would it be well to buy a digital TV and plug it in. And not connect it to cable, you would get that? How does that work? 
- It depends on how you set it up. Like I said, any contemporary television has multiple inputs. If you've got a tuner box like that and put an antenna on it, and put it on one of the secondary inputs to your TV set, you can switch, with your remote, back and forth from the tuner, which will be getting the cable signal, to the line inputs, which will be getting the signal over the air. It's not very hard to set up. Once you get your head around how it's set up, it's not that big of a deal. 

You can have them both. And like I said, there will be $40 tuner boxes out there. So you can basically have it for free. 
- And I'll just point out again, that the setup I have at home, I live on the east side of Madison. I have cable coming into my TV. I have a smaller flat screen, actually a tube digital TV. The cable comes into one input. And then I have a little $15 Radio Shack antenna I bought years ago. It's a double bow tie type, you know, just brass looking. I plugged it into another input. 

And using the on-screen menu, I can have both, you know, one at a time. But I can switch between them seamlessly, depending on what I want to watch. 
(inaudible)
 
- You have a question? 
- Do you expect the local television stations to do more broadcasting, more channels? 
- Yes. 
- For people that are just going to have an antenna? For example, in 1953, I had a wire in my attic for 35 cents. And I get better signals than downtown Beloit, for a $700 tower. 

So I can get FM from Chicago with 35 cents. So if you live a hill, or you live next to, or on the west side where you have access to the towers, are they going to put out more channels? 
- Absolutely. I guarantee it. As of this fall, Channel 27 will be putting out a secondary channel. I don't want to call it the oldies network, but it's basically a repackaging of shows you've all seen before. It's definitely going to happen. And the other thing you want to think about is that in Madison, we're talking about two channels from Channel 3, two channels from Channel 15, four or five from us, two from Channel 27 and I don't know what Channel 47 and 52 are going to do. But in Chicago, for example, they have all of these television stations. They've got more than 35 over-the-air broadcast channels now. 

So the closer you are to a big city, the better off you are. 
- Can I just add something? Even though we put out multiple channels, the band width still is a limiting factor. So compression is as good as it is. And if we tried to put out eight channels, they'd all look pretty bad. So we kind of did some experimenting a couple years ago. We decided that four standard definition channels right now works. But then we have to take two of them away in the evening, if we want to show HD. So it's sort of, each station will make decisions about how much band width they allocate to their HD programming, and how much they want to splice up that band width or spectrum to devote to different channels. It's really their internal decision. 

But it has to do with quality versus quantity. And maybe the compression techniques or technology will improve over the years. And maybe you'll see it cut up into more channels down the line. But you're not going to see one station putting out 20 channels. I just don't think you'll see that. 
- Are you going to have any connection with Milwaukee's Public Television? 
- Right now, the Wisconsin Channel, we are broadcasting some of Milwaukee Public Television's programs. We already show Outdoor Wisconsin, which is a Milwaukee Public Television program. We do some program sharing. I think that, you know, we also create our own original programs. 

Then we both show national PBS programs. So we've always had a relationship. I don't know if it's going to go any further than that. We have licenses for our own particular transmitters. And that's not going to change. 
- Sir? 
- Will converter boxes generate a format on the older TVs that blank out the top and the bottom, or can you make a setting on the converter box that fills up the entire screen, not wasting the top and bottom? 
- I won't say all of them. Most of them that I've seen give you that option. You basically push what's called the aspect ratio button. 

It says either aspect or ratio. It doesn't say both, of course. So you push it and it goes around in a circle. It'll give you the letterbox version, which is black on top. It might give you the pillar box version, which is black on the sides. Then it will zoom it up bigger, and then it will zoom it up a little bigger. And then you keep going through a circle, until you pick the aspect ratio you like. Now having said that, the hi def signal on the standard def tube looks best when you letterbox it. I'm sure on a tube that size, it makes it hard to watch, granted. But by the same token, as a photographer, I'm not knocked out by the wide screen format like a lot of my friends are. 

You can lose a lot of information out here that you just don't see. Not everybody shoots to protect the middle. That's what it's called, shoot to protect. Often times, it's not a good idea to do that. But yes, you can modify the aspect ratio on most every box. 
- You can fill up the entire screen. 
- Right, but then what you're doing, is whatever the video is, you're chopping off the edges of it. So you're not seeing that. I mean, it's just like you've seen old movies that are pan and scan. They're Cinemascope, or wide screen originally. 

But then to fit on your 4:3 television, they've created these artificial computer moves, or you just lose action happening on both sides of the screen. So you have to choose if you want to do that. Then you might be, the other way is to blow up the middle, too. So, you might lose quality or lose information. 
- Yeah? 
- This is an HD TV, and you subscribe to an HD service. Now if you'd had an HD TV and decided you didn't want to subscribe to an HD service, how would the picture change? 
- Well, you find it'll probably look better. If you're comparing HD Wisconsin Public Television over cable, to HD Wisconsin Public Television over the air, the over the air will look a lot better. 
- You can have an HD TV and not subscribe and still get it? 

- Absolutely. That's half of what this is all about. You don't have to buy high def service from cable or satellite. You can just, it's in the air all around you right now. You've just got to stick the right piece of wire up and you'll get it. 
- But I think to answer your question, if you have cable service, but you don't pay extra for the HD channels, you can still go out and buy an HDTV, and see your cable service. It might look better, yes. So it's not like you'd get a blank screen or something. Yeah, it works no matter what. 
- I'll be happy to demonstrate some of this if you come down here after we get done taping. 

(inaudible)
 
(applause)
 
- Thank you very much.