Another article not directly related to Media Center but one of some importance depending on how your receive your television signal. 

CEPro has posted an article relating to how the transition will take place and why, if you’re using an aerial to get your TV, you may have some issues come February 9th, 2009.  This all has to do with how some stations will have to make the transition due to frequency restrictions.  I don’t pretend to understand all of it and personally, I don’t need to worry since I’m hooked up to digital cable right now.  However, you may need to make some adjustments come the day of the switch.

From the article:

Here’s what’s going on: After the analog shut-off, some stations will move their digital broadcast frequency from UHF to the now-vacant VHF frequency that they were previously using for analog.

One reason broadcasters are doing this is because it requires less power to broadcast VHF. In other words … it’s cheaper.

WABC in N.Y. will move its digital channel currently in UHF to its “old” frequency of channel 7 — High VHF, 174-180MHz. Some stations are making the switch early so customers can “find” their over-the-air signals. And Wilmington N.C. has already adopted the DTV transition.
Some stations are tweaking their frequency locations, but after February 17, 2009 all of these changes are permanent. The FCC ruling is considered final. (pdf) So the “channels” or frequencies of TV channels do not change after the DTV transition. The channels remain 6 MHz wide and are exactly as they were before for well over 50 years.

The only difference is that the UHF band shrinks after the cut-off date, topping out at 700MHz. Channels 52 through 69 will no longer be active for TV. These frequencies are being auctioned by the government for other uses.

Therefore, the “new” UHF band will be 470 MHz to 700 MHz, about 100MHz smaller than the UHF band as it exists today.

The VHF bands remain the same: low VHF (channels 2 to 6) will be between 54 MHz and 88MHz, while High VHF (channels 7 to 13) will be in the 174 MHz to 216MHz range. Regardless of band assignments, all full-power TV stations will broadcast digitally after the February transition.

Again, I don’t pretend to understand all of this and maybe one of my readers can comment and shed some light on the topic, but with the mention of some stations not being available without tweaking, I thought it was important to share.

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