US delays switchover because consumers not ready
Thursday, 05 February 2009 10:11
In a move backed by President Obama, the US House of Representatives has voted to delay the nationwide transition from analogue to digital broadcast television by nearly four months. Many consumers are still not prepared for the switchover and the Government has run out of subsidy coupons for the purchase of digital converter boxes.
The planned switchover on February 17th has been replaced by a new date of June 12th.
It appears that significant numbers of consumers have not yet bought and installed the equipment needed to receive the new digital signals. For many, this is due to them having not yet received the $40 subsidy coupons that are available to help with the cost of converter boxes for those with analogue television sets. Many vulnerable people haven't yet applied for their coupons and only now are specific efforts being made to reach out to seniors, minorities, rural residents and people with disabilities. People who applied for and received their coupons some time ago but have waited until close to the switchover date to go out and purchase their converters have discovered that their coupons are out of date. To exacerbate the situation, the Government has now run out of coupons.
The Federal Communications Commission is very concerned about its own lack of readiness and doubts its ability to handle what it expects will be a "crush of inquiries" because of the number of people who will experience service problems. For many deaf or hard of hearing viewers, these problems may surface in the form of problems with captions. There have been many reports of missing, garbled or unreadable captions on new digital services and many TV companies simply aren't ready to ensure they can deliver the required quality.