About ten years ago, I speculated that we wouldn’t need separate devices for the phone, answering machine, tv, vcr and internet. I thought they would all merge into one device – which would be serviced by the “media company.”  While that didn’t quite happen, there are now companies selling the service.  Both Verizon FIOS (phone company) and Time Warner (cable company) offer phone/tv/internet where I live.  We aren’t on a single device, but some did merge.  And they overlap more than I though they would.

What got me thinking about it was an article from Frank Carver on convergent technology. This technology allows the devices to remain separate while simulatenously allowing them to work together to enhance the user experience.

Since everyone and their brother must be blogging about this week’s broadcast TV switch to digital – or the lack thereof – what’s one more.

Officially, the cutover date is now June 12th.  In addition to the stations that had planned to cutover early, 491 stations are cutting over February 17th anyway.  So instead of doing this all at once when publicized, we are now using even more dates.  That’s not confusing at all to the people who somehow managed not to know about the February 17th date which has been publicized for over a year.

Interesting things in the list:

1. New York City does not have any stations cutting over early.  A couple surrounding communities do have an independent station which is.  This information was suprisingly hard to find before looking at the list.  The newspapers haven’t felt it neccessary to print that something is not happening.
2. Los Angeles and Chicago do not have any stations cutting over early either.  LA has one in the immediate area cutting over.  This means that the three largest cities in the US have made February 17th essentially a non-event.  Similarly for Pheonix
3. San Diego has ABC, CBS and FOX going in early.  And possibly the CW.  (The San Diego newspaper says the CW is switching, but I don’t see it in the 491 station PDF list.  I think the newspaper is more likely to be up to date though.)  They have done a good job publicizing it.  I’ve been reading about this online despite living on the other side of the country.  As far as I can tell, this is the largest city having most stations go digital this week.
4. Every area is supposed to have at least one station remain analog until June.
5. Some stations will be having their analog stations broadcast a reminder to go digital after switching.  Others will just go dark.
6. In case this isn’t confusing enough, there will be other cutover dates.  For example, San Diego is having PBS switch the first week of April.

If you are reading this, you likely have broadband or the like.  Please be a good friend/relative/neighbor and make sure others know.    Especially if you live in one of the cities most affected – “The switch includes some big-market stations, among them stations in Minneapolis, Memphis, Tenn., Pittsburgh, Reno, Nev., Phoenix, San Diego, Nashville, Tenn., San Francisco, Tulsa, Okla., and Baltimore.”