The feds are going to provide ATSC to NTSC converters free (cough
cough) of cost to the poor.

Cable and dish are a big part of the market. It isn't clear to me if
the feds are going to mandate that HD be delivered over those services.
Even if they feds do mandate HD to subscribers, there is cash flow to
recover the cost of new set top boxes.

My preference would have been for a new broadcast band for terrestrial
digital audio services, rather than a retrofit that causes interference
to conventional users. I don't get too bent out of shape over FM IBOC,
since the capture ratio of the analog receiver will give the fringe
listener a fighting chance at decent reception. However, AM BCB is
another story. You can't reject the IBOC hash in AM.

clifto wrote:
wrote:
The trouble is that there are (probably) a half-billion analog
receivers in the USA alone capable of receiving analog AM / FM, and
these can't be abandoned overnight.

Funny, there are more television sets than people in the USA, yet they are
being abandoned virtually overnight. Or at least the chuckleheads in the
FCC think so. The cable and dish providers, and the public, know better.

--
If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.