It’s FINALLY here!!! Months overdue in my humble opinion…
If you receive any US television station over the air, and you don’t have an ATSC compatible television or converter box after tomorrow I assure you that you will be staring at static. Not just from WRAL but EVERY station. If you receive all your programming from cable, DirectTV, Dish, ATT or some other means than this doesn’t affect you.
If you are already prepared for the transition, you aren’t out of the water yet. You may have to turn off or rescan your TV or converter box in order to receive the new channels as each station moves to their new frequencies.
Why? Well in order to release the frequencies the government plans on re-purposing for public safety it was required to play an elaborate game of musical chairs. For example, WRAL which now broadcasts on Channel 5 and Channel 53, tomorrow at 1PM WRAL will turn off its Channel 5 analog transmitter and move its digital carrier from Channel 53 to Channel 48. At this time you will have to rescan in order to see WRAL at its new home.
WRAL waited until the last day to give people as much time and information as possible to take the appropriate action. Several stations have already turned off their analog carrier, mostly to save the thousands of dollars of electricity it takes to run two transmitters. This doesn’t mean that they won’t be moving frequencies, if you seem to be missing channels the best advice is to RESCAN!
Here’s a general guide to rescanning from our resident converter box guru, Tyler.
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How do I rescan/reprogram channels?
All converter boxes and HDTV’s are different in terms of rescanning procedures. The following is a general guide, but the steps or the terminology may be different for your device:
1) Press the “Menu” button on your converter box, converter box remote, HDTV, or HDTV remote
2) Go to “Setup” or “Settings”
3) Go to “Installation” or “System” or “Channels”
4) Go to “Scan channels”, “Program channels”, “Autoscan”, “Autoprogram”, or “Autotuning”
5) Press “Select” or “Enter” or “OK” to start the scan
Note: Typically, you will need to press the right arrow button or “Select”, “Enter”, or “OK” to choose an option. The up/down and left/right arrow buttons or the up/down channel and volume buttons should move you through the menu choices.
Note: As a precaution it might be a good idea to rescan again on June 13 in case some stations had interference issues in the process of transitioning.
Have Fun!!!
