If you woke up Friday morning and turned on the television to catch the morning news or the weather report, only to find snow on most of the channels, you are not alone.

If that happened to you, though, you probably belong to one of the few remaining households that hasn’t yet made the switch to digital television.

The government-ordered conversion from analog television signals to digital ones finally took place for nearly all American television stations at 9 a.m. on Friday, and area retailers report that most folks in Suffolk seem to have been ready.

“Most of the customers in our area are proactive,” said Sam Wiggs, manager of the Walmart store on N. Main Street.

Wiggs said only a few people had come to the store on Friday looking for the equipment needed to convert the new digital broadcast signals to an analog format that their older televisions could interpret.

Most, though, already had taken care of the purchase earlier this year. The conversion originally had been slated to take place on Feb. 12, but government officials postponed it when they learned that many American households were unready and that the taxpayer-subsidized coupons that could be used to reduce the cost of the equipment had run out.

“Ever since last year, we’ve been dealing with it,” confirmed Chen Ripka, manager of the Radio Shack store on College Drive in North Suffolk.

Ripka said she had sold about eight of the converter boxes on Friday and had even dealt with a few customers — mainly elderly people — who were completely unaware of the pending switchover.

Her employees, she said, also had spent time talking to customers about the fact that they might need new antennas, in addition to the converter boxes. Some of the older “rabbit-ears” types of antennas are inadequate for pulling in strong digital signals, she explained.

In contrast to a weak analog signal — which results in a poor, but watchable picture — a weak digital signal can result in the broadcast being unwatchable.

Customers who faced that problem were encouraged to pick up a new antenna, take it home for a test drive and return it if it didn’t work, she said. Ripka also recommended checking www.antennaweb.org for information about the best antennas for a particular area.

She noted that her store carries antennas ranging in price from $11.99 to “hundreds of dollars.”

Antenna sales at the downtown Walmart have been a bit slow, said Wiggs, who explained that the store has a limited selection.

“We don’t sell a lot of rabbit ears,” he said.

Both stores do, however, still have converter boxes, and both have employees who have been trained to give advice on how to set them up.

“It’s a pretty simple setup,” Wiggs said. “It’s not like someone’s coming to set up fiber-optic Internet or anything.”

The converters run between $50 and $55 each. Government-issued coupons for $40 each will be available until July 31 and can be ordered at http://www.dtv.gov/getcoupon.html.

The switch to digital television signals was mandated by Congress to free up parts of the broadcast spectrum for public-safety communications, such as police, fire departments and rescue squads.

Those who subscribe to satellite or cable television services — and those with sets that have built-in digital tuners (including any that were manufactured after May 27, 2007) — are unaffected by the conversion.

For more information about digital television, including setup guides and troubleshooting tips for poor reception, visit www.dtv.gov.