Changing signals without much static

So she made a phone call to John Fabiano at the city of Boston's Commission on Affairs of the Elderly.

In a visit Tuesday to her West Roxbury home, Fabiano hooked up the connections between the small converter box, her TV set, and the rabbit-ears antenna she uses to pull in the channels. He showed her how to set up the box so that it will deliver the new digital versions of Boston's local TV stations. Savage, who worked as a draftswoman at Draper Labs in Cambridge in the 1960s, was delighted. She called the eight-year-old portable set in her kitchen, "my new, old TV."

Over the past five months Fabiano has visited the homes of about 120 seniors who get their TV shows the old-fashioned way - over the air, through an antenna - helping them to hook up digital converter boxes so that they can receive digital signals.

He's racing against time. Analog TV broadcasts are scheduled to end in the United States at midnight tomorrow. Thousands of government workers, private contractors, and volunteers are scrambling this week to convert millions of TV sets nationwide.

"For homebound seniors, a TV is their only connection to the outside world," Fabiano said. "We get very appreciative people who are happy that their TVs are working better than ever before.

Tomorrow, every major TV station in the country will stop using the analog broadcast technology that dates to the birth of commercial television. Instead, they will broadcast a digital signal, which will deliver pictures that are free from static and will allow TV stations to broadcast two or three channels of programming rather than just one.

Already, TV stations are broadcasting digital signals. By midnight tomorrow, they will go digital. The move will not affect about 85 percent of US households that subscribe to pay TV services and have sets connected to satellite or cable systems. But the remainder of American homes still get their TV broadcasts over the air, and many cable subscribers have spare sets that are not connected to the service and won't be receiving programs after stations go all-digital.

The Nielsen Co. estimated that as of May 21, 3.1 million US households, or 2.7 percent of the total, still aren't ready for the digital transition. The Boston area is doing much better, with only 1.1 percent of households unprepared. Even so, that's about 28,000 local households where TV sets will soon go blank.

The conversion to digital TV was supposed to have occurred on Feb. 17. But in January, it became clear that the transition was in crisis.

The US Commerce Department had set up a program to issue two $40 coupons per household to help pay for the converters, which are usually priced at about $60. But in January, the government said it had used up the $1.34 billion set aside for the coupon program. The agency started a waiting list, and more than a million consumers signed up. It would have been impossible to get coupons distributed by the deadline.

So in early February Congress agreed to delay the digital changeover to June 12, and the federal government set aside an additional $650 million to assist in the transition.

Most of the money went to fund the converter box coupon program, but $90 million went to pay for an upgraded public information campaign to inform consumers how to deal with the changeover.

Another $14.4 million was spent to hire independent contractors to install the converters free of charge for senior citizens and disabled people. The Federal Communications Commission says it has hired 34 companies and organizations to do the installations, enough to hook up about 200,000 consumers nationwide before the deadline.

After tomorrow, consumers will still be able to get some help with the transition. Three Boston TV stations - WGBH (Channel 2), WBZ (Channel 4), and WCVB (Channel 5) - will keep their analog signal going for another month, showing an informational video on how to convert to digital broadcasting.

In addition, the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association will run a 24-hour-a-day hotline through June. Viewers may call 866-961-2492 to get information about the digital changeover.

Fabiano, the only city employee with the job of helping seniors install converter boxes, said the people he helps are delighted to see him. Sometimes they promise to pray for him; others offer to take him to lunch.

"The majority of installations I have completed have been for women, most of whom live alone," Fabiano said. "So they don't mind when a young man comes to visit them."

He also encounters people who need more than a digital converter box. Yesterday in Mattapan, for instance, he met two elderly sisters, one of them disabled, who had a 22-year-old television. "The TV was covered in dust, the remote was broke, the rabbit-ear antenna was attached to the TV and could not be removed, and the back of the TV had screw connectors, not a coaxial cable connection," Fabiano said.

But he had a newer set that he had received as a donation. Fabiano gave it to the sisters, along with a converter box and a new antenna. "One sister was so happy that the new TV was so much better than the old one, and that they were getting so many channels, that she cried," he said.

There are other organizations that received federal funds to help with the conversion. Best Buy Inc., a major consumer electronics retailer, won a contract to have its "Geek Squad" service technicians install converter boxes at no cost for customers who ask for the help.

"Today I installed three of them," said Don McKearney, an installer based at the Best Buy store in Brockton. Connecting the boxes is easy, but McKearney said he sometimes finds that a customer's existing antenna, which was adequate for analog broadcasts, isn't able to pull in a clear digital signal. In such cases, he will try to sell the customer a more advanced antenna, usually for an additional $50 to $100.

The FCC has also worked with businesses to set up 500 walk-in centers, where consumers can go to get free advice on the digital transition. Public television station WGBH operates one of these centers at its headquarters building on Guest Street in Brighton. Spokeswoman Jeanne Hopkins said that about 45 people have visited the center since it opened on April 1, most of them in the past three weeks, as the digital deadline approaches.

The switch to digital is also an opportunity for cable companies to sign up new customers. Comcast Corp., the nation's biggest cable TV provider, has launched a rapid response program. Until tomorrow, customers who order new service before noon will be connected to the cable system on the same day. Comcast offers a basic service with about 20 TV channels, including the major broadcast networks and key local stations, for $10 a month. Senior citizens in Boston are charged just $5 a month, and Comcast offers a variety of senior discounts in other New England communities.

But Ruth Savage doesn't need cable service. Her home gets excellent reception with her standard, rabbit-ear, set-top antenna, and now, a converter box. Besides, she's not much of a TV watcher, preferring to read the newspaper and go through her collections of old National Geographic magazines. "I think TV is a good inducement for falling asleep," she said.

Yet she does like to catch the news broadcasts and maybe a little daytime drama.

"I watch one soap when I'm having my lunch: 'Days of Our Lives,' " she said.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.