The digital transition, as clear as it gets

I sat down with WHAS TV reporter Andy Treinen on Wednesday to talk about the digital television transition that will be happening next year on February 17th.

Andy put together an excellent story that helped to clarify what consumers need to know to successfully transition from the current analog television transmission to digital. His story also mentioned Insight's transition of HBO, HBO2 and Showtime.

Andy helped to clarify that Insight's HBO/Showtime migration to digital (which affects only a few thousand customers out of 300,000 in the Louisville market) has nothing to do with the February, 2009 transition that everyone is hearing about. We are moving those three channels to digital to make room for many new high tech services coming soon.

I have written previously about the digital transition and Andy has helped to remind people that they should consider all of their options on all of their televisions, sooner rather than later.  Remember, if you have a TV in your home that is not hooked up to cable or satellite, you need to determine if it is a new digital TV or an older analog one.  If it's the latter, it will not work unless you hook it up to cable or satellite or get a digital converter box prior to February 17, 2009.

Andy's story also mentioned this blog. So, if you're here for the first time because you saw it on WHAS TV, welcome!  Feel free to look around and stay awhile.

If you're a regular reader of the blog, and you want to see the interview with Andy, you can view it here.

Comments

[Michael]

Why is it necessary to make users pay for additional digital boxes to see HBO and Showtime. Is the government driving this change.

How come i don't need a digital box to see all of the other channels?

Seems to be a way to get people who want premium channels to pay even more to the ever rising cost of cable.

This HBO change is costing me more for less service. Thanks.

Do you understand that 8 HBO channels is 6 HBO channels too many.

[RCA]

Hi Michael... I thank you for giving us an inside idea of what goes on at Insight. I was wondering, however, if you could possibly post a blog about what comes next for Insight, and also could you PLEASE post something about WAVE - TV here in Louisville being the FIRST and ONLY station to go completely HD in Louisville. It's a HUGE milestone here in KY, and I'm sure, the remaining "laggers" will try to catch up to WAVE's ever growing leaps into the future. Thanks Michael.. and have a good day.
-RCA (Yes, that really is my initials.. and NO, I don't own a RCA TV or anything. =))

[LexingtonCust]

How long after the digital changeover will Insight continue to provide the analog tier of stations on channels 2-98 before reallocating these frequencies to digital programming?