Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Others Fined Over Digital TV Notices

Ian Lamont writes "The FCC has fined 11 retailers and television manufacturers for violating rules relating to the 2009 digital TV transition. Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Sears, Kmart, and Wal-Mart supposedly failed to place notices near analog-only TV sets warning customers that the sets did not have digital tuners. In part, the required notice reads: 'This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after February 17, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the Nation's transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products.' The fines total $6.6 million."

Comments

And will any of this $$$...

[BUL2294]

...go to the purchasers, who got duped, into buying said TVs? NO...

Why, oh, why didn't the government ban imports of analog-only TVs after a certain date (say 1-2 years ago)? I mean this would have solved 95% of the problem...

Re:And will any of this $$$...

[vtcodger]

Unfortunately, since the US uses NTSC for analog and our frequency allocations are different from anyplace outside the Western Hemisphere and I believe our digital formats also are unique, your $20 converters won't work here. Ours didn't even show up in the stores until about 30 days ago and cost USD $60 or so. There is will be $40 off coupons available from the government and I've requested one, but it hasn't turned up yet. Oh yeah, and last time I looked, only 3 of our 8 local stations have their DTV transmitters on the air.

And there is the seldom mentioned problem that analog TV viewers tend to be folks living on small incomes, fixed incomes, or both. They don't necessarily have even $20 to spare.

I'm curious how well digital is going to work in my area which has a lot of hills and where folks tend to get marginal coverage. Analog coverage around here used to be described as "one and a half stations". Rumor has it that digital coverage is not as good as it was with analog. Oh yeah, cable coverage around here is minimal. I have cable. Folks in the next towns out from Burlington don't have cable (or DSL, but that's another story). And not everyone has a clear line of sight to satellites.

The US DTV rollout has been an on-going shambles. It looks like they are going to procede with it whether digital works or not. I wouldn't bet that they don't turn analog back on about 30-60 days after they turn it off. There are possibly going to be a LOT more complaints than anyone anticipates.

I'm not against digital, but the entire roll out in the US has been a textbook study in how NOT to manage a technology upgrade. We'll see what happens in about ten months.

Re:And will any of this $$$...

[xaxa]

I don't really think you can apply your country's pricing to the cost of the devices in the United States. Here the cheapest they go for is about $60. So to say that it's half the cost of a $40 voucher doesn't exactly make sense. If there weren't vouchers from the state (and there aren't in the UK), you can bet they'd be $40 cheaper ;-)

Re:And will any of this $$$...

[CastrTroy]

The nice thing about analog, was that you could get 1/2 a station. Analog degrade gracefully. Sometimes you lose a bit of the picture, or the sound is a little garbled, but you can at least get something. It's kind of like watching Youtube. The quality is terrible, but at least you can make out what's going on. Anybody with satellite can probably tell you that when you get a bad signal, the whole thing drops out and becomes completely unwatchable. I know many people with satellite, and often when there's just bad weather, the whole thing just doesn't work. I hope the same won't be true for digital broadcasts.

Re:And will any of this $$$...

[TheRaven64]

The nice thing about digital is that it includes a lot of redundant error correction information so that you can lose a lot of the signal before you lose any of the picture. My parents live in a hilly area and their picture quality went up significantly when they switched to digital. When conditions are really bad, they see artefacts (usually blocks of primary colours), but most of the time they have a crisp clear signal where they used to have a fuzzy one.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies don't really like telling you that thing you are about to buy sucks.

Their shareholders should be up in arms about the companies wasting the chance to upsell customers on a converter box, but they're too stupid and lazy to care either.

Re:Just the cost of doing business

[timmarhy]

I challenge this idea that 6 million dollar fines are just considered a cost of doing business. have any of you actually dealt with an accounting department before? as a manager, if you cost ANY company 6.6 million your ass would be fired and there would be hell to pay.

Re:Just the cost of doing business

[cheebie]

But what if that $6 million fine was the result of an extra $60 million profit from selling cheap TVs for people to put in their bathroom/camper/boat/etc?

These fines should be based on some percentage of the profits from the activity in question. And that percentage should be over 100%.

Re:And where does the money from the fines go?

[Vectronic]

This may sound somewhat conspiratory... but they stop Analog TV, they stop Radio Broadcast TV... "they" end up having complete control over TV... who can see it, for what price, and whats on the channels... because Bob, In South Dakota cant afford to upgrade to Digital, and his little 15watt transmitter is now void... there goes the local channel 10, you gotta watch Big Brother 16 in 1080p, cause... thats your only option..its on all 255 channels...

Kinda like the inability to protest in many places these days...

I wouldnt be suprised if HAM/CB/etc radio's start being banned aswell... and only Satelitte radio will be put in new cars, and electronics... etc...

Anyone still broadcasting AM/FM etc will be fined, or jailed for disturbing the airwaves... cause the military needs all the airwaves now... cant have simpletons listening in...

They'll make the money back

[chaosdot]

If there wasn't a coupon program, I'd say this thing would retail for $15 and they'd make money. Charge $49.00 and the consumer is out 10 bucks, thinks it's a bargain. Meanwhile the stores get every penny of that coupon for something that cost them $10. Considering they have DVD players right next to these things for just $29, it pretty much shows they are making immense profits off those boxes at government expense.

Re:Just the cost of doing business

[c6gunner]

But what if that $6 million fine was the result of an extra $60 million profit from selling cheap TVs for people to put in their bathroom/camper/boat/etc?

For your scenario to make sense, they would not only have to sell enough TV's to create that much profit, but they'd have to sell them to people who would not have bought one if those signs had actually been placed on the TV's. Considering how few people actually care about over-the-air programming, I find that rather unlikely.

Re:Just the cost of doing business

[cheebie]

If you think people don't care about over-the-air programming anymore, you're probably only talking to well-off people. I know people who can't afford extra money every month for cable. But they could afford a one-time outlay for a small TV.

Also, how's that cable gonna work on a boat, or camping? There's still a good market for cheap TVs.

kill your television (yet another reason)

[drDugan]

yet another reason to remove the TV from your life. now we have a device that not only shuts off your brain and delivers unhelpful marketing into your home, but on top of that, it has government support to encourage a digital system that is both more expensive than working alternatives and allows increased information access control.

every time I see places where consumer marketplaces have heavy handed intervention from government (read: not regulation to protect consumers, but rules or supports to direct consumer behavior), it seems there is something wrong. corporations a bit too close to the state.

in a healthy marketplace, if digital TV products and services can't out compete and win vs. the analog systems, then they would lose. period. if the government is going to come in and with the corporate-directed, lobby-directed practice of mandating a specific technology -- just because it works better for the business practice of some large companies -- well, this is not in most people's interest.

the truculent refusal to admit the changing nature of content distribution and actions like this with digital TV on the part of existing content and hardware companies has already has created a vibrant black market for their products. luckly many people are building alternatives...

Re:Just the cost of doing business

[cybereal]

But what if that $6 million fine was the result of an extra $60 million profit from selling cheap TVs for people to put in their bathroom/camper/boat/etc?

These fines should be based on some percentage of the profits from the activity in question. And that percentage should be over 100%. It isn't going to be, there is no chance that the 3-4 analog sets remaining in these stores makes that much revenue let alone profit.

In fact, in most of these stores I have personally seen the warning signs that are required, so they are not skirting the issue. Most likely, a few individual stores failed to properly update their signage according to the corporate directions and that's resulting in the fine. The most likely result will either be store manager firings or at best, a massive training effort to prevent this from happening in the future.

Furthermore the constitutionality of intentionally harming the profitability of a business as a penalty is suspect. Fines generally must be the same for anyone who violates the rules, and not based on percentages of facts about them.