Hawaii’s move to digital TV surprises some residents

Most of Hawaii switched to full power dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion a few hours ago at noon Hawai­ian Time on Thurs­day, 15 Jan­u­ary 2009.

Appar­ently, hun­dreds of Hawaii res­i­dents have ignored months of pub­lic ser­vice adver­tise­ments, tests, and crawls on their old ana­log tele­vi­sion sets. They finally real­ized that their ana­log tele­vi­sion ser­vice had ended when a 7-minute “dig­i­tal night light” seg­ment began appear­ing on the local ana­log tele­vi­sion chan­nels instead of reg­u­larly sched­uled programming.

This week, both Hon­olulu news­pa­pers have run front-page sto­ries on the tran­si­tion. See Hawaii makes DTV switch tomor­row from the Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin for an example.

Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­ated Press, FCC and broad­caster hot­lines have been flooded with calls this week about the tran­si­tion. See Hawaii takes closely watched dig­i­tal TV plunge for more details.

Most res­i­dents of Oahu use dig­i­tal cable or satel­lite tele­vi­sion, so they already have the proper set-top boxes. Res­i­dents who had spliced into the ana­log cable sig­nal may have lost their stolen ser­vice today, how­ever. Basic cable ser­vice in Hawaii still works, as Ryan Ozawa pointed out in his com­ments below. See Oceanic Time Warner’s FAQ page for more details.

Thou­sands of view­ers in rural areas of Oahu, Maui and the island of Hawaii rely on broad­cast tele­vi­sion. Because dig­i­tal sig­nals tend to have lower power than ana­log sig­nals, res­i­dents may not receive dig­i­tal ser­vice on chan­nels that had usable ana­log signals.

Kauai relies on low-power ana­log repeaters, so that island has received an exten­sion for its ana­log service.

The FCC allowed the state of Hawaii to cut over to dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion a month early, so that ana­log trans­mis­sion tow­ers could be taken down ahead of the kestrel’s dark-rumped petrel’s mat­ing season.

Related arti­cles and pages on billso.com

• Dig­i­tal television
• 15 Decem­ber 2008: All day dig­i­tal TV test in Hawaii
• 31 May 2008: Adver­tis­ers wor­ried about dig­i­tal television conversion
• 16 May 2008: Want to test your dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion in Hawaii?
• 25 March 2008: Dig­i­tal TV is coming
• 18 Jan­u­ary 2008: Dig­i­tal TV and business models
• 12 Novem­ber 2007: I want a bet­ter tele­vi­sion — but it’s not ready yet
• 12 Sep­tem­ber 2007: The Google Phone and the iPhone – both look­ing for soft­ware and spectrum
• 5 July 2004: San Diego Padres promote HDTV

Tagged as: dtv, FCC, Hawaii, hdtv, Honolulu, Maui, Oahu, television