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

Just the cost of doing business

[hairyfeet]

With the money they make on cheapy tv's this is just the cost of business. Wally world still sells a ton of cheap analog 27in.

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:Just the cost of doing business

[hymie!]

if you cost ANY company 6.6 million your ass would be fired and there would be hell to pay. RTFA. The fines (plural) total $6.6 million. The largest fine (for a merchant) was $1.1 million

What did you expect?

[Dishevel]

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

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 $$$...

[Megane]

Actually, they did ban the manufacture, import or interstate shipment of analog-only TV sets a little over a year ago, which was two years before the analog broadcasting cutoff. That doesn't mean that there weren't six months or more of analog-only TV sets in the warehouses. And this also applies to VCRs, DVRs, and any other device which has an NTSC tuner, but no ATSC tuner.

Also, this only applies to sets with a tuner. Tuner-less sets (aka "monitors") are exempt.

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 $$$...

[cdrudge]

Those are UK Freeview tuners. Which are cheaper specifically because they do not receive HD. The US went for HD from the start, which costs more initially, but it also means that we won't have to toss out a bunch of electronics all over again to maybe get HD by 2012, like will happen in the UK. Some of us have been getting HD for over four years now.

DTV != HDTV. The cheap or free tuners (after coupon) are not high definition, they are only standard. The US is switching over to a digital television...which just happens to include some high definition programming.

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

[BUL2294]

DTV != HDTV. The cheap or free tuners (after coupon) are not high definition, they are only standard.

You need to clarify your statement here. The converter boxes are required to down-convert all ATSC digital channels, both HDTV and SDTV , including 16x9 1080i, using an analog connection (RF, composite, or S-Video) to a TV/VCR/display. RF and composite connectors are required of all converter boxes available thru this program. S-Video connections are permitted, but anything higher than S-Video (specifically DVI, HDMI, Component, Ethernet, Firewire, and 802.11 wireless) is expressly prohibited.

Not every HDTV channel has a multiplexed SDTV version of that same channel, and requiring one would use up bandwidth, degrading the primary HDTV channel's picture mode (i.e. down from 1080i to 720p).

NTIA at the US-DOC has a very readable document listing the requirements for a CECB--a Coupon-Eligible Converter Box. It's too bad that the NTIA didn't "lock-down" the design more as CECBs will have differing feature sets (i.e. program guide, S-Video, etc.)

Thrift store TVs

[Megane]

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!

Wal*Mart: looked OK to me

[dpbsmith]

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.

Prolonging the agony

[itsdapead]

At least it sounds as if the US are going to yank the elastoplast off in one go and just switch in 2009. Here in the UK they're pussyfooting around by turning it off region by region over a 4 year period.

The TV ads are dumb - too: they're clearly designed by marketdroids who's aim in life is to establish "the Digital tick" logo and their cute little robot mascot as Brands - which is not the same as delivering factual information to people who - if they haven't got the message after 5 years - need a gentle tap with the cluebat.

Me, I'd do it like this:

(Burst of interference followed by black screen)

Voicover (the woman from "Weakest Link" or similar):

If you don't get a digital TV box in the next few months, your screen will go black permanently.

So take some personal responsibility and find out about what you need - and check that someone's sorting it all out for the little old lady next door, too. In fact, while you're at it, check that she's eating properly and her heater is working because if she's that isolated and can't even save up £30 for a Digibox, missing Eastenders for a week is going to be the least of her worries.

For pity's sake, people, its been in the news for the last 5 years and at the end of the day its only TV - its not like we're turning off the water supply or something!

...but then I was born with a defect in the gene responsible for political expediency.