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Originally Posted by kx250rider
I have yet to see ANY non-CRT set with any kind of decent picture.
Charles
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That is exactly why I intend to hold on to my two 19" CRT sets, as long as they work as well as they do now. (Both sets have excellent, razor-sharp pictures, despite being seven and 11 years old respectively.) I already have digital cable, so when the FCC outlaws analog telecasting, all I'll have to do is call the cable company and have them install a new ATSC cable converter. I'm willing to tolerate the blank spaces above and below the picture, as long as I can get the same cable channels I'm getting at this time. Who knows, maybe by then the technology will have advanced to the point where cable operators will have SDTV cable boxes, for people such as myself who still own and use analog sets. There are already SDTVs available (from RCA/Thomson), so I don't see why Motorola, the major cable box manufacturer, couldn't make a SDTV converter box, which, after all, is just a TV set without the video/audio circuitry and CRT.
The FCC forced digital TV on us, pure and simple--just made an arbitrary decision to shut off all analog TV, first by 2006, now the cutoff date is some time in February 2009. Most people I know don't care about that anyway; in fact, I don't think many people outside electronics are even aware of the cutoff date or even know the difference between digital and analog. They will probably find out what's going on when they turn on their analog TVs with antennas/rabbit ears, and find out they cannot get the stations anymore they had been getting for years. I do not think this is a nightmare scenario or something being blown out of proportion; I think it could and probably will happen in a great many cases when the analog TV stations go off the air for good in 2.5 years or so. Remember, there are still literally millions of analog televisions in use in this country today, some of which are relatively new and a great many of which are still usable even though they have a few years on them.
Everyone is going to discard their analog TVs en masse in 2.5 years and go out to get new flat-panel HDTVs as soon as the analog stations gasp their last breath? Nope, it won't happen--unless the sets are ready for the landfill anyway. As the old (?) CRT sets go bad from defective CRTs, flybacks, etc. and are put out for the trash, they will of necessity be replaced by FPs as more and more stores discontinue CRT sets, but as long as the existing sets are still out there and still being used, there will be a market for standalone ATSC set-top tuners and cable boxes. There is no reason why any analog TV in use in this country today cannot or will not work with digital signals; just use an outboard set-top ATSC tuner to replace the set's own tuner. The TVs video/sweep circuits don't care what type of signal the signal chain presents to them; they will work just as well with digital as with the present NTSC system. The only difference will be the 16:9 aspect ratio which, simply put, means that a TV picture transmitted in HD will not fill a standard TV screen vertically. I see this more and more on the networks (broadcast and cable) as we get closer to "HD-Day." The small window which pops up in the lower left corner of the screen proclaiming "Presented in NBC HD" (as well as similar notices on ABC, CBS, PBS and cable), etc. at the beginning of prime-time programming is a constant reminder to everyone in this country that NTSC's days are numbered, regardless of whether the viewers know anything about the changeover (or, for that matter, what "NTSC" means) or not. Even the NBC television station in Cleveland (channel 3) proclaims in huge letters before its newscasts that the latter are being presented in HD; the station recently moved to a new studio/office building and retooled their entire operation so that everything broadcast over that station, network as well as local, is transmitted in 16:9 high-definition. The other network stations in town (5, 8, 19, 23, 25, 43, 61) aren't making that much noise about HD, but I think they are retooling their operations for the new technology nevertheless. By February 2009 they will have to be transmitting in HD digital anyway, so they won't have a choice; it will be digital or nothing.
Some smaller TV stations, mainly independent UHF operations in smaller markets, faced with the forced conversion to HD, have gone off the air permanently in the last few years, claiming the conversion would be far too expensive; if I were a betting man, which I'm not, I'd bet those stations aren't doing all that well financially as NTSC analog operations. I think such stations may be just breaking even as it is. The conversion to HD would bankrupt them in days or weeks if not sooner, IMHO, especially if they are operating on a shoestring advertising budget.