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: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%.