Mike McKoy gets frustrated when the new digital picture on his old 30-inch RCA television freezes.

“It comes in so clear, when it comes in,” said McKoy, a Madison deliveryman. “And it comes in most of the time. But it’s aggravating during a Packers game. Actually, it’s more aggravating during ‘Jeopardy!’”

It’s been more than four months since the federal government required television stations to broadcast using a digital signal, which provides a clearer picture than the former analog signals and allows a station to “multicast” more than one channel.

Though most viewers have successfully navigated the transition, officials at the Madison area’s six over-the-air stations say they get a few complaints each week from viewers who have trouble with their picture or who can’t get pick up their station at all.

The change has been most daunting for people like McKoy, who rely on a traditional antenna, and the occasional satellite subscriber.

FOX Channel 47, WMSN, which carries most Green Bay Packers games, including Thursday's contest from Detroit against the Lions, has heard about the problems from viewers.

Fox officials say they’re in the process of moving the station’s digital signal from a Very-high frequency (VHF) to an Ultra-high frequency (UHF) channel to improve reception. UHF and VHF are the most commonly used frequency bands for transmission of television signals.

“Broadcasters nationwide are finding that VHF (channels 2-13) DTV signals do not penetrate buildings as well as UHF signals,” said WMSN General Manager Kerry Johnson.

In 1996, the U.S. Congress authorized the distribution of an additional channel to each broadcast TV station so they could start a digital broadcast channel while continuing their analog broadcast channel.

Later, Congress set June 12, 2009, as the deadline for full-power television stations to stop broadcasting analog signals. Since then, all full-power U.S. television stations have broadcast over-the-air signals in digital only.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the digital transition has led to hundreds of thousands of people in south-central Wisconsin having access to over-the-air channels they couldn’t receive previously, while in limited cases some people in Dane and surrounding counties lost access to a channel.

For most viewers having trouble receiving a digital picture, the antenna is the problem.

“Ninety-nine percent of the ‘fixes’ always involve the receiving antenna or the antenna system,” says Leonard Charles, director of engineering at WISC-TV, Channel 3. “It almost always has to be fixed at the receiver’s end. Getting the proper antenna is the start.”

But Kevin Kukowski, manager of engineering and operation for WMVS and WMVT, Milwaukee’s public television stations, said finding the right antenna can be problematic.

“Even antennas that are labeled good for both UHF and VHF — it ain’t necessarily so,” he said. “An antenna may be clearly advertising both UHF and VHF, but perform so poorly with VHF channels that they are useless.”

But viewers with good rooftop antennas may be getting the best deal of all, said Kukowski.

“In my opinion, the best way to receive digital TV is with a traditional rooftop antenna, hands down,” he said. “It’s free, and you are going to receive all the local digital stations and all their subchannels that cable and dish may not carry.”

Only 16.6 percent of homes in the Madison area, or 62,730, use antennas to capture television signals as of this month, down from 19.4 percent, or 73,350 homes, in November 2008, according to The Nielsen Company.

The FCC said the conversion angst is mostly over.

“We are continuing to work with about a handful of stations to resolve their reception issues,” an FCC spokeswoman said. “The amount of complaints we receive now are a minute fraction of those received in the first few weeks after the transition.”

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