I understand that US broadcasters are required to broadcast in digital at some deadline in the next few years. At some point, are existing analog television sets going to be largely unusable? In other words, will everyone HAVE to be digital set at some point/
What I’ve heard is that the FCC has stated the total switchover to HD digital broadcast must be made by sometime in 2008. Regular analog TV will be phased out that year, however owners of analog TVs wont be left in the dark; they can receive the HD digital via an adapter receiver (usually in the range of $300 
, at least for now).
EDIT::
one thing I think I’m grateful for in this whole situation is that, if the FCC wasn’t mandating it be done and soon, it might never get done at all.
I suppose someone could get a digital receiver with a digital to analog converter and pump it into an old box.
Have you heard how many hours we will be required to view a week after we are required to get one?
I think one will be required to view at least 137 hours of weekly television… 
Official info on HDTV here: http://www.dtv.gov/
I haven’t been particulary blown away by the HDTVs in the stores or on display at the fair or home shows.
And just how wonderful of a picture of the shopping networks and informercials do we really need anyway??
I’ll wait until we can’t get anything on the regular TV before buying a new one, if I can and unless my husband decides that we need one right now. He tends to buy impulsively and I try to hold him back.
This side of the Pond, most are into digital, either through cable, satellite or converter boxes.
Really good point, no ghosting, and it either works or doesn’t. Multiple free channels and also digital only radio channels. The digital to analogue boxes are cheap and so are radio frequency amplifiers. I’m a fan.
If you have satelite tv then you are already 100% digital. It has nothing to do with your tv set and everything to do with the box that receives the signal. If you are on cable you may already have a digital receiver (currently optional here at a price). However, if you are still using the old rabbit ears on the back of the tv set then, yes, you are indeed going to be $ht out of luck within the next few years.
djm
Some of on the Yurpine side haven’t gone digital yet. But our (Main) TV died on Christmas eve, so the Financial Adviser has deemed that the Cairns family will be going digital before the New Year.
We have a decreed Changeover in the UK too - no more analogue after, gee, I don’t know, sometime in the next two or three years. We don’t actually watch a lot of TV. But we do play (a large amount of) computer games and DVDs. Friends and relatives have gone cable. We haven’t seen anything that inspires us to follow suit.
Our local analogue transmitter is due to shut down in November 2009.
Some of them aren’t due to close until 2012.
http://www.ukfree.tv/closedown.php
How about cable-ready TVs?
Haven’t been looking so I couldn’t tell you (I’m currently a satellite user). Next year we will be able to get tv over basic twisted-wire telephone lines (the phone companies and cable companies are at each others’ throats here) so I may look into that if it is comparable.
djm
I wish it wasn’t getting done at all. Nobody’s ever satisfied with what they got. Always fidgeting. Always making newfangled contraptions. Always pushing consumerism. Making folks buy more and more and more and more.
Hi Tyler
Geez you are being ripped off, (makes a change from rip off Britain). For the equivelant of $300 here you get a Freeview dual tuner system with hard disk recording.
I use this one.
http://www.humaxdigital.com/global/products/pvr-9200t.asp
David
I bought a WinTV device. It lets me watch HDTV on my computer. Works well, cheap, good the environment (old computers, monitors and TVs are a trash plague). It is a win-win-win for those willing to watch TV on their computers.
Folks, I’ve been working in digital TV for the last decade, HD digital TV for the last 3 1/2 years. I’d like to think I have a good overview and a fair amount of in-depth knowledge.
A few points:
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Yes, broadcasting is supposed to go totally digital in 2008 (just after the Super Bowl - no one wanted to interfere with that!). Analog TV needs a LOT more spectrum than digital TV - you can fit 6-8 digital video channels in the same range of frequencies needed for a single analog channel, with no loss in quality. And the government really wants to take advantage of that.
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Adapters will be available, and the current plan is to give a government subsidy. But the cost for basic functionality will be somewhere in the ~$50 range, not ~$300 - the higher figure was the one put out by the folks who wanted to slow the rollout. For ~$300, you’re looking at a lot of extra features like picture-in-picture, premium channel access, and digital video recording. I should know - my company is one of the major vendors of chips and drivers used for the digital receivers, and we expect to do very well from this - at the $50 consumer price. And the government subsidy should cover most, perhaps all, of that.
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Analog video may remain available for some time to come on cable systems - they aren’t covered by the government mandate, so it’ll be up to them when they think it’s worthwhile to switch over. My gut feeling is that most will be fully digital by 2010 or so, but they’ll likely switch over gradually.
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The basic receivers will be capable of receiving HD signals, but current TVs are mostly not HD capable. Although you’ll be able to watch HD programs they’ll be downconverted to standard resolutions. You’ll still need to buy a HD-capable set if you want to watch HD programs in HD.
Expect to be hearing more about this over the coming year. Unless you’re living in a cave, there should be plenty of time to get a digital converter before the switchover. Although I’m planning on buying a HD set sometime this year, we have a couple of perfectly satisfactory analog sets that we’ve no intention of retiring anytime soon.
$50 is a lot better than $300. I still can’t think of any shows that I really NEED to see in high definition. I’d rather hold out until I absolutely have to get the converter in order to watch anything at all, or until this TV that we have now dies.
Thanks. That was the crux of it all for me. I’ve got this mongo analog TV the size of a small bus that doesn’t look like it’s gonna be croaking any time soon, and it is NOT something anyone enjoys moving, no matter how strong they are. So that’s something of a relief. And no, I couldn’t afford such a thing. It was inherited.
Anyway, I don’t HAVE to have HD quality for my own enjoyment, and if my guests would ever have the utter gall to complain or make snide remarks, I’ll just bum them out with calm, reasonable rebuttals pointing out things like famine and wars, and do third-world countries have HD? I think not. It’ll be a wonderful opportunity to bask in my self-righteous glow, and it will redirect their attentions from the fact that I really just don’t want to shlep the damned thing around. 
We’ve got one monster of an analog set like that ourselves; I don’t plan on moving it until it dies. Quite honestly, unless you’re sitting right against the screen it’s hard to tell much difference for small-to-medium screens. And even for big screens, the bulk of digital content is still standard definition (you can fit a lot more content per channel with SD). A HD set will make SD look a little nicer, but it’s not a huge difference.
To brighten things even further - one of the main differences between digital and analog TV is picture quality. Analog signals degrade as the signal gets weaker - snow, nifty multipath ghosts, etc. But until a digital signal gets quite weak (equivalent to a mostly snow and static analog signal) the picture and audio quality remains the same.
If you’re on a cable system, this may not matter much - but if you’re using an antenna, the odds are that most of the over-the-air channels will look better.
Plus you can expect quite a few more channels as things switch over. For instance, our local PBS station has a single analog feed, but 5 digital channels - one kid’s programming, one travel-and-food, one news, and one old movie channel by day. At 8 PM, the kid’s and the travel channels go quiet, and the bandwidth is used for a HD movie channel. Not every broadcaster will be able to take full advantage of the increased bandwidth like this, but expect to see a lot more content.
Digital channels are numbered X.Y - “X” is the “major” number (usually one major number per physical channel), “Y” is the “minor” number - the PBS station I mentioned, assigned major channel 9, has channels 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, and 9.5. At work (Sunnyvale, CA) our rooftop antenna gets 17 physical channels, for a total of 37 digital channels of content. Most areas will see a similar expansion of viewing choices.