“Snow” appeared in some Pierce County homes Friday as America switched to digital TV, leaving analog televisions without a digital converter box with no signal.

Even having a converter box might have required some juggling of the TV placement. A good UHF/VHF antenna also is advisable.

People with cable TV service, however, should have survived the transition from analog signal to digital with little interruption.

Brien Dexter, 51, uses an antenna on his 32-inch TV to get about 12 channels. He hadn’t picked up a converter box before Friday, and by 9 a.m. he had only two channels left.

“Some channels went out, some didn’t,” he said, as he filled out an application for a $40 coupon to buy a digital converter box. (Some broadcast channels were set to switch to a digital signal Friday night.)

Dexter was sitting outside the Centro Latino office in Tacoma on Friday at tables decorated with festive balloons and “Be Ready for DTV” signs everywhere.

Centro Latino on South 10th Street kicked off its DTV service Friday for anyone having trouble in Pierce County with antenna TV reception because of the transition. Workers had applications for coupons and even demonstrated how to hook up a converter box and antenna to a TV.

Centro Latino will be offering help through June 30.

Dexter said he knew the transition was coming but just didn’t have the time to get the converter box.

Tania Maria Rosario with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which has been coordinating help centers in King and Pierce counties for the past few months, said their other outreach offices took a lot of calls Friday morning from people angry about their TVs going out.

She said they have provided information to residents and even gone out to homes to help people hook up the converters.

An estimated 22,000 households in Pierce County and 33,000 in King County that are not using cable TV have not applied for a converter box coupon, she said. She said that as of two weeks ago, 109,000 coupons were given out in the two-county area.

Her organization has reached out specifically to vulnerable groups: senior citizens, people with disabilities, non-native English speakers, refugee and immigrant communities and low-income households.

She expected the calls for help to increase Friday afternoon as people return home from work and find out their antennas don’t work.

The $40 converter box coupons might not cover the entire cost of the converter box. The holder must pay the sales tax on the box at retail stores such. Some stores also charge more than $40 for the box.

Cable TV users generally didn’t have to worry about Friday’s transition.

Walter Neary, a spokesman for Comcast in Tacoma, said he was not aware of any interruptions though there might have been some in certain areas as stations made the switch.

“Things are going pretty well,” he said.

That was the same story at Click Network, the City of Tacoma’s cable TV service.

“Technically, we’ve been working with the local broadcasters for the last two years, in preparation for this time, and it’s been a fairly smooth transition,” Click spokeswoman Diane R. Lachel said.

Like Comcast, they have seen an uptick in people ordering cable service to avoid any problems with the transition.

“In the last two weeks, we’ve taken an unusual amount of new customer installation orders than what’s typical at this time of year,” she said.

“About 10 percent of our telephone inquiries are from current customers asking if they are really OK, and we’re happy to tell them yes.”

Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692

mike.archbold@thenewstribune.com

if you need tv Help

Pierce County

Centro Latino, 1208 S. 10th St., Tacoma, 253-572-7717

South King County

Leadership Academy, 425 S.W. 144th St., Burien, 206-988-3760