Slashdot Mirror
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."
Goodwill and oter thrift stores (and maybe even pawn shops) better hope they don't get noticed for not putting the notice on the TVs themselves. I know that Goodwill has just been sticking up the notice in a random place on the wall or something. And right now thrift stores and pawn shops are probably the main place to find analog-only TV sets. But hey, as long as they have a video input, they're still useful for video games. And they will still work with an external tuner.
On the other hand, I've gotten two satellite tuners with ATSC at thrift stores for ten bucks each. One even had a broken analog NTSC tuner, which I found amusing. Unfortunately I wasted another ten bucks because I didn't realize that the DirecTV H10 and H20 require a satellite subscription to receive ATSC. Bargain hunters, stay away from those two models!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I dislike Wal*Mart. And if they were fined I'm sure they deserved it.
But my personal experience is that I've only seen those notices twice within the last year, and both times were in Wal*Marts. One was in Wisconsin, late last summer; the other in Massachusetts. I didn't see any notices at all when I was recently in Best Buy.
And: the day I received my converter coupons in the mail, which was February 29th--I must have been among the very first to get them--I called Wal*Mart to see if they had converter boxes; they said yes, I got there and they had a huge display of them in a featured location in the aisle just outside their electronics department, the pre-coupon price was $50, and they were ready and happy to process my $40 coupons.
Based on my highly scientific sample size of two, I don't see any indication that Wal*Mart is dragging its feet. Offhand I'd think they're making a good-faith effort to comply. If they haven't been getting the notices up I'd attribute it to general chaos and cluelessness, not to any systematic attempt to unload analog sets on unsuspecting customers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think that people are making far too much of an issue of the whole thing. Digital tuner boxes are cheap, simple and easy to get hold of. I know we're on a slightly different system here, but they start at about £10 which is equivalent to $20, half the value of the vouchers that your government is dishing out for the switchover! A product that will need a £10 upgrade for some users (i.e. those without cable or satellite) really does not need to be banned from import.
Oddly enouugh, Tesco (Walmarts competitor in the UK) are running an advertising campaign on TV just now where this is the exact premise. "Buy our budget mushrooms, they're ugly as sin but are cheap and going in a pie anyway". Novel approach.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
The FCC has fined 11 retailers and television manufacturers
The FCC did what now?
The FCC has the authority to regulate the use of a few communications-valuable portions of the RF spectrum.
To the best of my knowledge, they have no authority to regulate trade. We even have a similarly-named governmental TLA for that - The FTC.
Anyone care to 'splain it to me, by what stretch of the imagination fining retailers satisfies the goal of allocating spectrum for the greatest public good?
At least addressing an analog TV doesn't require climbing up on your roof.
I'd believe it. People who don't watch TV usually tend to be quite vocal about it. ;)
All the people I know who bothers having a TV on their boat also have small satellite dishes for them. If you can afford a large boat, you can certainly afford a dish for it. They also usually have VCR's, DVD players, X-BOX 360's, etc, so I very much doubt that they'll miss the ability to receive mediocre programming over the airwaves.
As for camping, I can't say I've ever brought a TV along on a camping trip. I did however carry one around in the field when I was working with the military, so ok, I guess a few army guys might be occasionally inconvenienced by not having a digital receiver in their TV's.
I don't know how it is in other states, but here (AR) the 27in analog for $259 flies off the shelf almost as fast as they can put them up. Here in AR most folks don't bother with OTA due to all the mountains and valleys making for a lousy reception, so the $259 set hooked to cable/sat makes for a good deal. And we tech guys seem to forget that there are a lot of folks that don't know squat about tech and would be spooked off by the sign(I can't remember seeing any sign a couple of months ago when Mom got one of those 27in for her sat) so I can see a local Wal Mart deciding the profits made from the cheap sets were worth taking the fine. I know my Mom would have probably passed had she seen a sign and I wasn't there, even though she hasn't watched a minute of OTA tv since '82. But that is my 02c, YMMV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.