No Panacea

Democratic candidates squared off on MSNBC yesterday–watch highlights of the debate.

The FCC is driving the transition to digital television (DTV). So let’s all day a moment and say goodbye to your old antenna and over the air analog television (doubtful that anyone reading this has one though). Don’t panic if you do however, the change won’t actually happen until February 17, 2009, so there’s still some time left.

The FCC is also telling retailers that they have to post “Consumer Alerts” informing people of the change (a pretty good idea given its marginal how many Americans follow the spectrum policies of the FCC?). I’m rather favor this type of consumer protection as retailers are going to be rather tempted to offload all their inventory at this point; hopefully, they won’t dupe consumers too much. I’m curious 1) how the FCC is going to enforce these measures 2) What are the fines if any for non-compliance. If you do have an analog TV that you can’t live without, you don’t have to junk it; there are digital tuners you can purchase that will convert the signal for you from digital to analog.

You’ll be seeing this message more often:

This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after February 17, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the Nation’s transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products. For more information, call the Federal Communications Commission at 1-888-225-5322 (TTY: 1-888-835-5322) or visit the Commission’s digital television website at: www.dtv.gov.

Consumer info about Digital TVs