(Scott) wrote in news:4748e56a.551894267@localhost:

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:20:11 GMT, in rec.aviation.piloting, Marty
Shapiro wrote:

"Morgans" wrote in
:

I hope the price of the converters come down, a lot.

The National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA)
expects the price of the converter box to drop to about $50 to $60.
Of course, if the manufacturers want to push us into buying new TVs,
VCRs, DVRs, etc, they will just keep the price on these high. At
Fry's Electronics, they only converter they had for sale was from
Samsung. My guess is that there will be a run on these come February
17, 2009.

The sensible part of my mind wants to think that if DTV adoption is
not high enough, the television advertising industry (which is the
only bunch of folks with any real stake in this) will subsidize the
devices to whatever degree necessary to retain their audience. The
cynical part of me says that in that circumstance, the ad industry
will cry and whine until the government pays to subsidize them.

I'd be more ashamed of my cynicism if that business model didn't seem
to be working so well for the airlines.

-Scott


I wouldn't hold my breath. OTA (over-the-air)class A channels (high
power) must switch to all digital on February 17, 2009. They do not have
the option of continuing to broadcast in analag after that date. Most
channels already are broadcasting in digital as well as analog. Just about
every HD set sold for the past three years already has the ATSC (digital)
tuner. As of March 1, 2007, all tunable sets (TV, VCR, DVR) imported to
the U.S. or manufactured in the U.S. have to have both the analog and
digital tuners, although existing stock without a digital tuner could be
sold as long as a warning about the requirement of a converter was clearly
displayed at the point of sale. If the price of the converter remains
high, it might just push the sale of new sets. The prices I saw last
Wednesday on VCRs and DVD recorders, for example, made it a much smarter
choice to simply buy a new one rather than buy a converter even with the
$40 coupon.

Cable and satellite are not required to switch to digital. Since
their customers pay for service, there is more clout there for them to
supply an analog signal, at least for a few years. But some cable
companies are already switching some cable only channels to digital to
better utilize their available bandwidth.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

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