The end of analog TV

The only digital televisions on sale thus far have been big-screen, high-priced HDTV sets.  Not until next year will manufacturers start selling smaller-screen sets with digital tuners — and under current law all sets won’t have digital tuners until 2007. Thus at present there are only about 30 million televisions with digital tuners in American homes, out of a total of several hundred million installed sets.

That’s where the Congressional loophole comes in.  Congress can ignore the end-of-2006 cut-off if fewer than 85 percent of households have digital television sets.

But Congress needs to do something nonetheless. For starters, there’s the remarkable fact that Americans are still buying over 20 million analog sets each year, all of which could be obsolete rather quickly. If Detroit was selling cars that used a type of gasoline that would soon no longer be available, consumers would expect to be informed. Thus analog sets clearly need some kind of warning label, and proponents of a “date certain” say this will make the labels far more meaningful: i.e., “This television will no longer receive over-the-air signals after December 31, 2006.”

The really big question: What will happen to all those old-fashioned television sets we’re still buying when the analog transmitters go off the air? To continue to receive free broadcast television via antenna, you’ll have to buy a digital converter box; cost estimates range from $100 or so in 2006 down to $50 by 2008. (Those converters won’t turn older sets into fancy high-definition sets; they will only restore conventional TV service, in digital format. The picture quality will be fairly comparable to today’s analog version, although there will be some improvements for people who use antennas — no “snow” or “ghosting.” On the other hand, when digital signals are weak, there is often no picture at all.)

Many analog television owners won’t need a converter: 85 percent of Americans now get all their television from cable or satellite providers, so for the most part the change-over won’t affect them.  (A lot of those households, however, also have second and third sets in basements or bedrooms that do rely on over-the-air signals.) The real problem is the 15 million or so U.S. households whose only television service comes over the air. For these people, predominately lower-income and disproportionately black and Hispanic, the cut-off will be bad news indeed.

Most discussions in Washington contemplate some sort of free or subsidized converters for low-income households, paid for by the government, perhaps with the help of broadcasters or consumer electronics manufacturers. Estimates for the costs of that subsidy range from under one to several billion dollars — the cost declining as the cut-off date is moved further into the future. Proponents argue that the cost of the subsidy is small compared to the economic benefits, although last year the Bush administration indicated it was not in favor of subsidized converters.

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