The idea of boxes killing TV sales off, now that makes sense! But, for the past few years, the HD displays they've sold the poor suck -er customers won't really work as HD tvs without a HD source.
K, now get this: the box stores up here all sell digital cable terminals from the cable company (and motorola/gi), and the Canadian version of Dishnetwork, Expressvu's HD receiver.
Why these and no "free to air" ATSC boxes at the big box stores? The sales staff/store receives commissions on every subscriber terminal/receiver sold, and residuals (a small % of your bill goes to the retailer who suckered you into the terminal). There is no *incentive* to sell you one, as there would be with a subscriber terminal, and or the lesser prize -a new tv. What will screw them in the end is that the ATSC tuners are now standard equipment in the current year's tv.
Until someone at Fry's (tried that one eagerly as I read the prior post, plus I like wandering their seas of cheese for NTE components), BB, CC, or ? figure out that people like me would rather watch a crt, and have already "early adopted" an HD capable display (my 40" wega in the living room), or own a "legacy" display (new vernacular for analog tv), I guess, I'll be the new minority.
In Canada, Walmart, and the other big discount small business killers have shelves of chinese tvs all without ATSC tuners. Only Walmart has HD tvs with digital tuners, which they have no doubt imported sets originally destined for the U.S. Not a single SD or "legacy" (I hate that term) TV I have seen there have an ATSC tuner.
Here's the reason:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter.../sf08702e.html
and
http://testunix.mediaforce1.com/CDTV/en/index.htm
How Long will Conventional Analogue TV Signals Be Available?
Since the transition to digital TV will take a long time to complete, you'll be able to watch analogue broadcasting for years. As a point of reference, it took 13 years for sales of color televisions to surpass black-and-white sales. In comparison, digital television represents a change of even greater complexity. The earliest that Canadian analogue stations may be allowed to shut down has yet to be determined but it is likely to be much beyond the year 2009, when analogue television broadcasting is expected to terminate in the US. Because analogue broadcasting will be with us for some time, current models of HDTV receivers also receive and display analogue TV signals.