Washington, D.C. (October 17, 2007) -- Retailer Best Buy today said it has stopped selling analog TVs, taking all remaining sets off its shelves.

:sadwave:

I would have guessed everything analog-only would have been blown out already. I know Best Buy sells returned items on Ebay-maybe their remaining stock of analog-only TVs will go there too?

Costco did that months ago in March.

Check out the new DVD/VCR combo units too. They are all w/o tuners. If you want to record television, you need a cable box or some other sort of outboard tuner.

Now are sets really are ancient history!!!

OK, I will admit I like shopping at CostCo but not for electronics. OH wait, I don't do Best Buy either and I am ashamed to say I helped build 5 or 6 of them here in the Valley. After the 3rd round of the same stupid mistakes on the blueprints, their level of stupidity in this area became kind of mind-numbing. It wasn't rocket -science. All the stores were almost identical and you would have thought that they would get the prints revised after being shown the same money-wasting, time-consuming errors again and again.
Hehe, I don't shop at Wal-Mart either. Sam is pumping far too much into the Chinese economy.
OK, I feel better now.:smoke::smoke::smoke:

Washington, D.C. (October 17, 2007) -- Retailer Best Buy today said it has stopped selling analog TVs, taking all remaining sets off its shelves.

:sadwave:

I don't get it? What is an analog TV vs digital, and what does it do that a digital TV doesn't?

I don't get it? What is an analog TV vs digital, and what does it do that a digital TV doesn't?

The current analog signals and frequencies are fixing to go bye-bye. By 2009, those of us with old style sets will have to use a convertor box. It'll be interesting to see how much the local cable companies charge their customers for box rental and whether the rates go up signifigantly or not.

At least there will be converters to allow analog sets to soldier on.

Also, those older sets with adjustable tuners might pick up some interesting things once the frequency range is taken over by other forms of communication.

I think they should keep a few VHF analog stations on the air for emergency broadcast purposes.

I have a feeling pirate television stations will start popping up everywhere. Of course, the FCC will have to hunt them down to keep all the people they sold the bandwidth to happy (I mean you AT&T.)

Only a small piece of bandwidth will be sold, about equal to what was already sold to cell phone companies in the 1980's. There will also be more frequencies used for public-safety radio systems and other purposes. Since digital TV stations work fine on adjacent channels (unlike analog stations, another advantage of ATSC/DTV), we can end up with more stations on the air, many of them with multiple channels, while also reusing part of the old, highest UHF TV spectrum.

After buying a HDTV converter and seeing how well HDTV works when the signal is weak, I agree with MRX37. Some analog broadcasting should continue. Analog continues to convey information, most importantly sound, after digital has failed. This is extemely important in bad weather.

Our local PBS station has the dublicate channels mentioned by Chris, but as of now, it is just a duplicate of their main channel(or blank).

When reception is good digital works fine on my 30+year old TVs (using the converter).

---

I also noticed that those dual DVD VCR combos have mono audio on the VCR.

Costco did that months ago in March.

Check out the new DVD/VCR combo units too. They are all w/o tuners. If you want to record television, you need a cable box or some other sort of outboard tuner.

Yes, my cousin just bought one of those $59.99 DVD/VCR units for his church. The stupid thing didn't even have an RF output, let alone a tuner. He had to buy a seperate modulator to use with the TV. I've seen a few higher priced DVD recorder/VCR combos with ATSC tuners. I wonder if anyone makes a stand alone VCR with an ATSC tuner?

Its going to suck when i cant carry my little metal cased sony around anymore.

Its going to suck when i cant carry my little metal cased sony around anymore.

I'm waiting for some high quality ATSC portables to come out. The one that Best Buy sells looks ok but the reviews are mixed. Right now, I get portable digital TV on my laptop with the USB tuner. True HD really looks great on my HP NC8430 with the 15" widescreen. The tuner also lets you record off the air as a DVR.

I still would like a pocket size digital set.

Might be a good time to get a "deal" on a decent large screen analog tv, if you use satellite or cable, or if you will be using a "converter box".
Kevin

I took the posted picture the other day, and it underscores my reason for liking analog. 27 year old $7 Zenith TV from the thrift store, hooked up to an outdoor antenna. Sure, the picture is awful snowy, but it has full and correct color and sound. It's watchable and listenable. This is a deep fringe station for me; I was surprised it came in at all. I don't know, but I have a feeling that with ATSC I will not be able to get any distant stations at all via antenna. Yes, in an emergency I can see this being an issue. By the way, the station in the picture is Spanish language, the only one anywhere in our area.

I could just never go back to the visible scan lines and off-axis flicker of a standard-def CRT set for constant use. The flicker is one of those things that, in my case at least, I never realized how jarring/annoying it was until I lived without it for a while. I love old TV sets for occasional use.

I noticed too at Walmart the VCR's do not have a tuner section, just audio/video inputs, I guess to get around the rules requiring digital.
I would really like to try a DVD recorder/digital tuner as I should be close enough to the TV transmitting towers to receive a good digital signal. It would seem like these units can output an analog video/audio signal right?
(still using old analog TV's here!)

I was at my local Wal-Mart supercenter today and noticed a VCR with digital tuner. So I guess some of them do sell them.

As this is $268, my mail order converter + RF converter is quite a bit cheaper for broadcast only use(which is what I have been doing).

As for scan lines, I have never noticed these except on very large screens. I did see a projection NTSC TV that was something like a 48 inch screen-it looked horrible. Also never noticed any flicker and do not see any now when comparing CRTs vs flat screens showing the same signal(easy to do at the local Wal-Mart.)

In addition, I again noticed that to me at least, the CRTs looked better for the low def signal that Wal-Mart sends to their TVs. (I do not know why the do not fork out the money for a true high def signal as Sears and Frys do).

I stil believe that when analog is turned off, people in rural areas better have an alternative way to monitor the weather(such as a weather radio) as HDTV is just like satallite, not worth a crap when the weather degrades.

The cable company in my area (Time Warner) recently began carrying local TV stations digitally. I asked one of the techs about that the other day; he told me that TW is trying to stay at least one jump ahead of everyone else, to be absolutely sure they are ready when the analog stations go off the air just under 18 months from now. The same technician told me he was planning to keep his 32" analog CRT TV as long as it works; I feel the same way about my two 19" analog CRTs, both of which work very well for their ages (my Zenith Sentry 2 has 12 years on it and works as well as when it was new, as does my RCA CTC-185 19"). As long as these TVs continue to work as well as they do now, I see no reason to get a flat panel HD set. I feel the same way about DVDs as well. Seems a lot of new movies are coming out these days on HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Won't bother me a bit as long as they will play in my current DVD player, or if Netflix still carries standard DVDs.

I did not realize that new TV/DVD systems do not have RF tuners or antenna inputs until I saw a post in this thread which mentioned that fact. (I'm learning a lot in these forums.) I guess we're going to be going digital shortly whether any of us likes it or not--it seems the government's rules about having analog stations go off the air in February 2009 and the current trend towards HD/DVD combination TVs now being manufactured without RF tuners are forcing us into the digital age, in some cases kicking and screaming, but...oh well. As Walter Cronkite used to say at the end of each night's broadcast of the CBS Evening News, that's the way it is.

I was at my local Wal-Mart supercenter today and noticed a VCR with digital tuner. So I guess some of them do sell them.

As this is $268, my mail order converter + RF converter is quite a bit cheaper for broadcast only use(which is what I have been doing).

As for scan lines, I have never noticed these except on very large screens. I did see a projection NTSC TV that was something like a 48 inch screen-it looked horrible. Also never noticed any flicker and do not see any now when comparing CRTs vs flat screens showing the same signal(easy to do at the local Wal-Mart.)

In addition, I again noticed that to me at least, the CRTs looked better for the low def signal that Wal-Mart sends to their TVs. (I do not know why the do not fork out the money for a true high def signal as Sears and Frys do).

I stil believe that when analog is turned off, people in rural areas better have an alternative way to monitor the weather(such as a weather radio) as HDTV is just like satallite, not worth a crap when the weather degrades.


Ok I confess, I work at Wal-Mart, and I sell tv's there. I was retired and my wife said I needed to get out of the house. Anyways, The vcr's with digital tuners are also dvd recorders. We do not carry any units that only record on tape with digital tuners or analog tuners for that matter. They start at $158 and go up. Still an expensive alternative for a converter and RF modulator.

As for the TV display, Wal-Mart stores get their TV feed from satallite, some analog, some digital and some HDTV. On the "TV wall" there is a receiver feeding digital 1080i signal to the HDTV sets via componant video cables and distribution amplifiers, and the CRT sets are fed from the analog sat feed via coax and splitters. Most of the HDTV sets that we sell currently are only 720p sets, We only sell 1 that is capable of 1080i. The display in the main Isle is supposed to be fed from an upconverting dvd player. Problem is that they required us to use the RGB componant output, which is only 480p at best. I connected an HDMI cable to one of the sets so that we at least had 720p and that looked quite good.

All of the current TV sets we sell have digital tuners. We do not sell any stand alone sets that do not have a built in tuner.

Bill R

It must be similar at the Wal-mart that I visit. However, even the 1080i(I did only see one as Bill R. mentioned) model had a fuzzy looking picture. From the local Wal Mart layout it appears that the 1080i model is on "the wall" as Bill also mentioned.

The ones at Fry's and Sears look great(at least in Austin, Texas).

In our store it is the 46 inch Polaroid on the top shelf right next to the 50 inch Sanyo plasma set. Ours has a good clear picture. There may be a problem with the distro amps, or the sat feed. I keep thretning to come in with my own signal generator and set all of them up properly, but I already give away to much information that I would normally get paid for. You would think they would at least offer me a little more money because I do know more about electronics than anyone in the district, but no. Oh well it keeps me out of the house and out of trouble.

Bill R

You would think they would at least offer me a little more money because I do know more about electronics than anyone in the district, but no. Oh well it keeps me out of the house and out of trouble.

Bill R

No. That's the way it is. When I worked photo at walgreens, it was the same situtation, only with photo. They don't care.

HDTV is just like satallite, not worth a crap when the weather degrades.

Lies. When we were having shitstorms almost every other day down here, my dish stayed crystal clear. Dishes that go to pot in the weather probably aren't aimed correctly.

My mothers satellite TV was crapping out when during thunderstorms this summer in OK(during my visit). The ones at the Gym at work(also satellite) crap out here in Austin, Texas, during thunderstorms. The two satallite systems that I have experience with have trouble with bad weather.

I took the posted picture the other day, and it underscores my reason for liking analog. 27 year old $7 Zenith TV from the thrift store, hooked up to an outdoor antenna. Sure, the picture is awful snowy, but it has full and correct color and sound. It's watchable and listenable. This is a deep fringe station for me; I was surprised it came in at all. I don't know, but I have a feeling that with ATSC I will not be able to get any distant stations at all via antenna. Yes, in an emergency I can see this being an issue. By the way, the station in the picture is Spanish language, the only one anywhere in our area.

The TV show in question is "Sabado Gigante" (Giant Saturday), a staple of Spanish-language TV and source for a lot of Simpson's humor.

This past Saturday night, our local Detroit channels carried the following shows:

2 (FOX) Stupid Baseball :drool:
4 (NBC) Stupid Bionic Woman :stupid:
7 (ABC) Idiotic Football :rolleyes:
9 (CBC) Some weird Canadian crap :headscrat
20 (MYTV) Some teenager crap :yuck:
50 (CW) One of those "urban" shows about ??? :puke2:
56 (PBS) Antiques Roadshow :boring:
62 (CBS) Some un-watchable Jerry Bruckheimer cop show :thumbsdn:

So I DX'ed over to Ontario (Canada) public TV, channel 32 from Sarnia (I think). The station is plenty watchable, but with just enough snow that you couldn't get a damn thing if it was digital.

They ran a solid 8PM-2AM block of:

The Taking of Pelhum 1,2,3.
Dog Day Afternoon
The Chase

Uncut, Uncensored, and with director's commentary in between!!! :banana::thmbsp::banana::thmbsp:

Yes, I know I could have just rented that stuff on DVD, or subscribe to cable, etc... But nothing is going to beat the thrill of DX'ing and finding gold like that on a DUD TV night!!

I'll miss you non-corporate, analog TV :tears::worried::cry:

This past Saturday night, our local Detroit channels carried the following shows:


9 (CBC) Some weird Canadian crap :headscrat

So I DX'ed over to Ontario (Canada) public TV, channel 32 from Sarnia (I think). The station is plenty watchable, but with just enough snow that you couldn't get a damn thing if it was digital.



I'll miss you non-corporate, analog TV :tears::worried::cry:

Is Canadian analog TV scheduled to shut down as well? If not, then people living near the Canadian border will have watchable analog TV.

Will Mexican analog TV also shut down? Do they have any channels in English? If so, then people near that border would then have watchable TV as well.

But I'm in the New York City market, and we are not near a border. Wonder how often tropo ducting from Canada will happen?

Is low power TV (LPTV) analog also supposed to shut down as well?

When I was a little kid; my parents let me use their old 9" late '60's GE B&W set for my room. I remember being able to receive many distant TV stations either late at night or early in the morning. The pictures were usually not clear; but, they were watchable. This won't be the case with digital; since digital is either "all or nothing."

Yay, I know what you mean, thew funny thing is.. The 36" SONY XBR HDTV ready I use in the living room cannot pick up any of the Sacramento stations, except channel 6 PBS and 29 UHF QVC. My ctc-16 picks up all the VHF and UHF, not clear but good. I live 20 miles up the hill from Sacto. Interesting thing about that, the Sony's tuner is like bad quality in the newer sets in means that they knew that NTSC was not going to last long, and thats 2002 when the set was made.. Kinda makes you think.

I think I remember reading somewhere where Best Buy stopped selling CRT sets. I was looking through the most recent Best Buy sale paper; and, found 2 SD CRT sets. They were both Dynex brand (never heard of them) 27" and 20" sets. I suspect they would be considered "throw away" when they die.

Yeah, iv'e seen those sets out here in operation, horrible picture.. Cheap chinese crap! Suprised these are still selling, probably a run off..

Canada switches off on August 31, 2011.

I think I remember reading somewhere where Best Buy stopped selling CRT sets. I was looking through the most recent Best Buy sale paper; and, found 2 SD CRT sets. They were both Dynex brand (never heard of them) 27" and 20" sets. I suspect they would be considered "throw away" when they die.

Dynex is a BB house brand. However cheap they're selling that stuff for, it's being made for about 10% of it. Seriously. Same with Insignia and Rocketfish.

I was in Best Buy not long ago so my wife could look at new computers. I was really struck by the signs that said, in tall letters, "TUBE TV'S". Whole 'nother meaning! Actually, most of the shelves those signs hung over now have flatscreens on them.

Folks - that same analog antenna that you use now works perfectly with digital signals. If it has enough elements on it, you'll still be pulling in those distant stations.

Confused as to what type of antenna best suits your needs for where you live? Try visiting the AntennaWeb (http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx) site run by the Consumers Electronics Association. Just enter your street address, C/S/Z and uncheck the marketing boxes. No need for names or phone numbers. After evaluating your location, it will give you a list of both the analog and digital stations in your vicinity, along with their originating cities and (God bless them) the compass orientation of their transmitter from your house. The color coding of the stations applies to the type of VHF/UHF antenna recommended to draw in that station. You can also sort the list on Analog, Digital, or both. Clicking on the "View Street Level Map" opens a popup window that shows your location with the compass points and the stations available along that path.

Hope you folks find this as useful as I did...

Ok I confess, I work at Wal-Mart, and I sell tv's there. I was retired and my wife said I needed to get out of the house. Anyways, The vcr's with digital tuners are also dvd recorders. We do not carry any units that only record on tape with digital tuners or analog tuners for that matter. They start at $158 and go up. Still an expensive alternative for a converter and RF modulator.

As for the TV display, Wal-Mart stores get their TV feed from satallite, some analog, some digital and some HDTV. On the "TV wall" there is a receiver feeding digital 1080i signal to the HDTV sets via componant video cables and distribution amplifiers, and the CRT sets are fed from the analog sat feed via coax and splitters. Most of the HDTV sets that we sell currently are only 720p sets, We only sell 1 that is capable of 1080i. The display in the main Isle is supposed to be fed from an upconverting dvd player. Problem is that they required us to use the RGB componant output, which is only 480p at best. I connected an HDMI cable to one of the sets so that we at least had 720p and that looked quite good.

All of the current TV sets we sell have digital tuners. We do not sell any stand alone sets that do not have a built in tuner.

Bill R

Bill, you are one of a very few (ive yet to meet another) walmart employees that knows anything about their TV setup, or what signal is fed to what TV. My local walmart has too many tv's on one splitter and it looks horrable.

The walmart around here is lucky if any of the TVs are working or displaying more than snow or "no signal" screens.

When they ARE on the pictures from TV to TV look so incredibly different it is hard to pick out which one, if any, is "correct". Do they bother doing any kind of calibration or do they just plunk them under the blinding fluorescent lights and use the settings right out of the box?

The walmart around here is lucky if any of the TVs are working or displaying more than snow or "no signal" screens.

When they ARE on the pictures from TV to TV look so incredibly different it is hard to pick out which one, if any, is "correct". Do they bother doing any kind of calibration or do they just plunk them under the blinding fluorescent lights and use the settings right out of the box?

After I had been off for a couple of days, I came back and most of the tv's were blank. I was told they had been off since the day before and no one could get them to come on. I got a ladder out and climbed up and turned on the sat receiver and presto tv again.
As to the calibration the answer is no. How ever they are when we take them out of the box is how they are put on display. If the picture is totally off I will fix it or pull the display and send it to be repaired. For the most part people that would recognize correct do not shop for tv's at Wal-Mart. We do have some with surprising good pictures for the money. The Samsung, Sanyo and even the Vizio sets all look good. We really do not get many of the lcd sets returned

Bill R

After I had been off for a couple of days, I came back and most of the tv's were blank. I was told they had been off since the day before and no one could get them to come on. I got a ladder out and climbed up and turned on the sat receiver and presto tv again.
As to the calibration the answer is no. How ever they are when we take them out of the box is how they are put on display. If the picture is totally off I will fix it or pull the display and send it to be repaired. For the most part people that would recognize correct do not shop for tv's at Wal-Mart. We do have some with surprising good pictures for the money. The Samsung, Sanyo and even the Vizio sets all look good. We really do not get many of the lcd sets returned

Bill R


My dad recently (bout 2 months ago) bought an emerson 32(i think) inch lcd 720p TV from the local walmart for just under 600 bux, too it home and out of the box looked like every lcd you see on display-color ramped up, contrast off the chart. me and him fooled with it for about 5 minutes (he and i have the same idea about how a tv looks good to us so i ran the remote and he made suggections as to where to set the lttle bar graph charts) and i have to say the thing looks good, and even thow its not 1080, the 720 with HD programing is quite impressive. he's happy as a clam with the set, and so far so good. So i can back up the good picture for the money claim as long as you have the patience to get through the menus and adjust the picture.

For the people in rural areas, I think C-band satelite may be your best hope for a picture. C-band is still free (for network channels anyway) and those receivers can go with either analog or digital connections.

I happen to live in a big metro area yet I can not get digital signals very well at all at this point, mostly because of the UHF numbers they are on. And thats after I put up a huge 10' antenna pole on my rooftop. This does not inspire my confidence in digital reception at all.

So I am going to keep my C-band dish around a few more years atleast.

It will be very interesting to see what analog television prices go for on ebay after the conversion is complete. I suspect the market will tell us very quickly how well this works out.

Using my converter boxes, I receive the HDTV channel that I watch the most, channel 36, fairly well with amplified rabbit ears. I am around 30 miles from the transmitters. I also get the other UHF channels fairly well with careful antennal placement. The one that I cannot get is the only VHF channel we have hear, channel 7. This is kind of funny as it is the strongest analog channel we have.

I am taking the converter box to my mothers place in rural Oklahoma when I visit her next month to see if I can receive anything. I suspect not as her external antenna is in bad shape at present and her analog reception is poor.

My brother has arranged for her to have satellite(with local channels) and she has a weather radio, so receiving broadcast TV is not a priority for her at present.

I'm 55 miles from 4 digital stations broadcasting out of South Bend Indiana. I can receive their analog counterparts fuzzy with a handheld Sony watchman. With a 20-element yagi with reflectors mounted on a pole outside I get them clear as a bell. Not a peep from the digital stations. I'm 12 Miles from the 4 Fort Wayne Indiana digital stations. Analog counterparts are clear always, of course. Digital will get "blocky" and drop out at the least provocation. Digital is clearly "urban". Most audience for the least effort is good enough I guess -- now we're back to my "pride in your work" rant...

I used to stay up late and DX as a kid. Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Toledo, Dayton, Lima, Cincy, Louisville, Indy, Muncie, Terre Haute, South Bend, Chicago were usually reachable. Sometimes a treat would drop out of the sky, like Lexington or Windsor or some such. That was back before every station played the same thing, so you'd always get some local surprise. Kept me off the streets.

I don't believe there will be any DXing with digital TV. Like others have said, it's all or nothing. My nearest neighbor and "easy get" South Bend has never been anything but "nothing". No chance of Chicago or Indy.

Glad there's still AM radio...

I don't believe there will be any DXing with digital TV.
Here is one site with digital TV DX pictures, some from 300 miles away. Notice one thing... Except for one picture, They are all crystal clear! Try that with analog TV DX. :)

http://fmdx.usclargo.com/dtv.html

There are many more sites with digital TV DX, and some video sites as well.

Digital TV reception will get much better when the TV stations get off their butts and shut off the analog transmitters, then run full power digital signals.

---

I'm skeptical of a single-source anecdotal report. If 300 miles is reachable with a rooftop antenna -- well I should get 50 or 70 channels from my tower. I'll let you guys know in 2009.

Unless the "rooftop antenna" was mounted on the roof of his Cessna 150...

You joke about the Cessna. However, RCA had an ad in the late 1950s about how their portable TVs were "Jet tested". The TVs were loaded into a jet plane and operated as it was flying over the tower. Of course, they should have operated fine as the tower was less than 6 miles away.

---

The hard thing with digital DXing is that you don't see anything until it works 100%. It's hard to know when you're getting close, or even where to look. With analog you stop when you see something in the snow. A lot of digital tuners don't even have any kind of signal level meter.
My 45" Sharp Aquos LCD has a dynamic bar graph signal strength meter built in as part of the on-screen Setup menu. A minimal 60-65% strength typically produces a picture, although at that low end there is occasional picture pixelation and freezing as the tuner strives to reacquire the signal. Anything above 75% is clear as a bell.

Even in the station's market, if their broadcast tower is being buffeted by a windy day, the antenna at the top can bounce back and forth by a substantial fraction of the wavelength of their channel carrier frequency. Digital TV does have some echo (ghost) cancellation references but it does have limits. Depending on how the ghosts are where you live, you could get momentary failures as ghost strengths and phasing changes as the tower moves in the wind. And things may get to be more fun as DX, but maybe not, the ghosts may get weak enough to not be an issue...

I live at least 70 miles away from the nearest station I receive if you don't count the local UHF station that's fed off a crappy microwave connection from another station that's nearly 100 miles away. With my rather large Channel Master VHF only antenna with a mast mounted amplifier I receive 2 stations Channel 8 and Channel 12 crystal clear, above the VHF antenna is a UHF antenna that's yagi about 5 ft long with a corner reflector and also goes through a mast mounted amplifier, I use RG-6 coax. These antennas are on top of a 40 ft mast and I live on a hill on fairly high terrain for this area. My UHF reception from stations in the same locations as the VHF stations is very marginal.

I went out on some of the websites mentioned in the thread and followed some links where I found a few signal contour maps. Somewhere I've read that I'll need to be in an area where I'll be able to receive at least a -60 db signal strength to receive digital TV. This area shows that the digital UHF stations that are associated with my present VHF stations are putting about -125 db in this area, me thinks over the air will go away for me Feb 2009.