Nothing
Up My Sleeve
Jon
Gallagher
Converter Boxes Nothing New
Although the official date of
converting analog TV signals to digital signals has been pushed back to June
12th, most TV stations in the nation switched over to digital this past Tuesday
night at midnight. This means that if you’ve got an old TV AND you’re using
an antenna to receive TV stations, as of this past Tuesday night at 11:59pm,
you just became a former TV viewer, unless you bought something called a
“converter box”.
For those of you with older televisions
who are hooked up to either cable or Satellite TV, nothing has changed.
I didn’t realize how many people still
used old TVs and antennas to watch their idiot boxes. Based on the way
converter boxes flew off the shelves (at least at our store), hardly anyone had
newer TVs, or cable or satellite.
I’m sure that none of these boxes were
sold to people who just didn’t understand they really didn’t need one (please
insert the proper amount of sarcasm into that sentence as you read it).
For those of us who are really old and
have lived in the Galesburg (or Peoria) area for any length of time (like
before there were human footprints on the moon), converter boxes are nothing
new.
Prior to cable TV, we all had to watch
TV from an antenna. There was no other way. In the Galesburg area, we got our
stations from the Quad Cities, channels 4 (WHBF-CBS), 6 (WOC-NBC), and 8
(WQAD-ABC), and from Peoria, channels 19 (WIRL-ABC), 25 (WEEK-NBC), and 31
(WMBD-CBS). This was nice because if one of the network affiliates preempted a
program for something local, we could just tune into the corresponding network
from the other city.
The problem was that most TV sets back
then only got channels 2 through 13. Those were VHF (Very High Frequency)
stations which means we could watch TV from the Quad Cities, not from Peoria
unless we had either a new fangled TV that received UHF (Ultra High Frequency)
signals or we had a converter box.
My family owned an ancient black and
white set that required a pair of pliers to change channels (I’m told that my
playpen was left too close to the TV one time, thus the absence of the channel
knob). It didn’t get UHF so while those around us could watch Peoria channels,
we were stuck with just the three stations from the Moline area.
My friends would tell me of the
wonderful shows that were available on Peoria TV. They could watch re-runs of
Superman and something called The Captain Jinx show. I was stuck with Captain
Ernie’s Cartoon Showboat and the Three Stooges. I begged my parents to go buy
whatever it was we needed to watch Peoria TV, but being able to watch Captain
Jinx and Salty Sam didn’t justify the expense of buying a converter box and a
UHF antenna.
I guess there was good reason for not
getting the box. My older brother had watched Superman before I was born and as
the story goes, he had tied a dishtowel around his neck, mounted a windmill at
my grandparents’ farm, and attempted to fly. He won’t talk about it much now,
instead preferring to glare at me whenever I ask about it. My parents probably
didn’t want me climbing up somewhere in an attempt to defy gravity.
There’s something to be said for
nagging, I guess, because my dad finally found someone who had a converter box
that they didn’t need anymore. A family in our neighborhood had purchased a new
fangled TV that had UHF channels built in, so they didn’t need the box. They
gave it to us. Dad hooked up a cheap pair of rabbit ears (actually what we
needed was the round antenna that went with the rabbit ears), and we were in
business.
It was a dark brown box with a cream
colored dial with the number 13 at one end of the dial and the number 83 at the
other end. There were some random numbers in between those two, more or less to
give you an idea of where you were on the dial, but not specifically. The TV
had to be set to channel 3 or 4 (depending on which one wasn’t in use), the box
had to be flipped on, and then the glories of Peoria TV were available.
Whoopie.
Okay. So I got to see my first ever
episode of Superman. This just precipitated me running around the house in long
underwear with a towel pinned on my shoulders and trying to figure out some way
to actually fly. Unlike my older brother, my attempts centered on doing
bellyflops on the floor, and later on the bed when I figured out that the floor
was less forgiving than a down mattress.
And I got to see Captain Jinx and Salty
Sam. Peoria has recently honored these two gentlemen who brought so much joy
into the lives of kids back then. Someday maybe I’ll devote a column not only
to that show, but to the wasted hours I spent watching Captain Ernie (WOC-TV)
and Grandpa Happy (WHBF-TV) as well.
It wasn’t until the mid 70s that my
family bought a TV that could receive UHF signals without the converter box. By
that time, cable TV had found its way to Knoxville and we didn’t need the box
anyway.
I tried, in vain, to find a TV around
the house that received analog signals so I could watch the official demise of
the analog system. Unfortunately, the only TV I have that is analog is an old
Sony Watchman, a small handheld TV with a 2.5 inch screen. I turned it on
Tuesday morning to see if I could use it, but unfortunately, it’s given up the
ghost, and gone to the great electronics graveyard in the sky.
Now as we enter the digital age,
instead of having just three (or six) channels with nothing on, we can tune
into 57 channels. And as Bruce Springsteen says, there’s still nothing on.
Some things never change.
2/19/09