Best Buy pulls plug on analog TVs

[ViRaL1]

From MSN Money - http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/BestBuyPullsPlugOnAnalogTVs.aspx


The consumer-electronics giant has removed all analog television products from its store shelves and is selling only digital television products.

By The Associated Press
Best Buy said today it has stopped selling analog televisions and pulled all remaining stock from its shelves, signaling the end of an era as consumers increasingly move toward digital products with flat-panel and high-definition screens.

Best Buy (BBY, news, msgs), one of the nation's top electronics retailers, heralded the reign of digital TVs, saying it made the move "as the end of the analog broadcast era draws near."

Best Buy instructed stores to stop selling the products on Oct. 1.

Beginning Feb. 18, 2009, broadcasters will stop transmitting analog signals. Non-digital television sets that are not attached to a cable or satellite service or not equipped with special converter boxes will no longer work.

Best Buy is the first consumer-electronics retailer to report an exit from the analog-TV business.

More than 60 million U.S. households rely on an antennas or analog cable, and cable operators are required to guarantee their customers will receive broadcast channels until February 2012.

Those millions of households offer a lucrative market opportunity for electronics retailers and television manufacturers alike.

"We are committed to helping people understand the digital television transition, and exiting the analog video business is one way we can help avoid confusion," Mike Vitelli, senior vice president of electronics for Best Buy, said in a statement.

After the first of the year, the government will offer every household two coupons worth $40 each that can be used to buy two converter boxes -- devices that pick up digital signals and convert them to analog. Best Buy will sell coupon-eligible converter boxes starting in early 2008.

[Marvingj]

Our Options are now limited.....

[ViRaL1]

Maybe there will be rock-bottom pricing for those still willing to go the analog route.

[oldandinthe way]

Not an earthshattering move. Manufacturers have been prevented by Federal regulation from making analog only TVs in larger sizes for some time. And many have ceased smaller sizes.

Walmart now has warnings signs on analog only devices stating the date of discontinuance of analog broadcast service.

There has been plenty of planning and warning and I suspect there will be few rock-bottom priced analog devices.

[gadgetguy]

There has been plenty of planning and warning and I suspect there will be few rock-bottom priced analog devices.

I agree. I would think there are plenty of markets outside of the US that could absorb any remaining stock.

[edDV]

That article misrepresents the situation and is designed to make people think they need to buy a new TV from Best Buy.

1. The FCC required all TV sets sold in the USA and manufactured after early summer (forget exact date) to have an ATSC tuner. Now it is late October, remaining analog tuner sets are stale inventory.

2. Best Buy is selling many 640x480 frame buffer standard definition digital TV sets that produce lower resolution images than some analog TV sets that they have nixed. Digital tuners and digital TV sets are unrelated to high definition display. Some are SD and some are HD. A good (evil) tort lawyer could file a class action against Best Buy based on this puff piece that all SD digital TV sets sold should be replaced by real HDTV sets based on this press release.


"More than 60 million U.S. households rely on an antennas or analog cable, and cable operators are required to guarantee their customers will receive broadcast channels until February 2012.

Those millions of households offer a lucrative market opportunity for electronics retailers and television manufacturers alike.

'We are committed to helping people understand the digital television transition, and exiting the analog video business is one way we can help avoid confusion," Mike Vitelli, senior vice president of electronics for Best Buy, said in a statement.'"


Most people use cable or DBS and are uneffected by the digital transition until maybe 2012 if then. Best Buy seems committed to confusing rather than "helping people understand the digital television transition". They want to sell new TV sets period. They don't make it clear that the "converter boxes" allow continued use of your older analog TV for over the air digital reception. You don't need to buy a new TV at all.

[Nilfennasion]

Ah, confusion is such a great marketing tool. Without it, there'd be no analogue-only amps on the market. No VHS tapes being sold anywhere, period. No HD-DVD format...

[valvehead]

Here's an exercise:

Go to Best Buy and see how many stand-alone ATSC tuners you can find. I found two buried on the bottom shelf of a rack of cables and cleaning supplies. Yeah, that's really helping consumers

[RabidDog]

I cant help thinking in all of this, that analog is spelt analogue
no, really, stop mangling the English language

[oldandinthe way]

I cant help thinking in all of this, that analog is spelt analogue
no, really, stop mangling the English language

The US and Britain have often been described as two nations separated by a common language. Just another example.

[lordsmurf]

Analog goo. I prefer the American English version.

I will always spell it "theatre" however. Dictionaries and "English teachers" be damned.

[davidsama]

I like theater, center and saber better.

[handyguy]

'Maybe there will be rock-bottom pricing for those still willing to go the analog route. '

My CRt is going to be worth a lot more some day.

dtv.gov if you want to read what laws are.

[Nilfennasion]

My CRt is going to be worth a lot more some day.

Quite the opposite, actually.

On a drive with family out to the first stop past the outer limits of Sydney that is called Katoomba, we happened to pass by one of those old-fashioned junk shops. This was back in 2000, just when the DVD-Video format was making the move from cinemaphile acceptance to mass-consumer acceptance. Imagine my dear old dad's shocked reaction when he finds the exact same JVC shoulder-pack video recorder he used to record extended family gatherings with sitting among the disused rubble.

In a later conversation over lunch, I advised him that by the time I am his age (about 2028, roughly), that shop would be one of the few places you would be able to so much as look at a 4:3 CRT anymore. And with the way the ramp-up is happening in high-def video, it looks like that might happen even sooner. My dad is just about due for a new television set, what with the reds on his CRT fading to grey. He is getting to be an old man now. Do you think he wants to have to lift a CRT into his TV stand? I am against the lifting of CRTs for any purpose other than disposal, and I am not even thirty years old as yet. Hell, my 106cm plasma weighs less than my dad's 68cm CRT.

[thecoalman]

I would think this is poor business decision for a few reasons, mainly though whether the consumer is knowledgable or not about the situation many are going to balk at paying the extra cash for a digital TV when they can go get one at Wal-Mart for for 1/4 the cost. Some people can care less if their TV is analog or digital as long as they can see a picture.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Analog goo. I prefer the American English version.

I will always spell it "theatre" however. Dictionaries and "English teachers" be damned.

You mean "English teachres" surely?

[Nilfennasion]

Some people can care less if their TV is analog or digital as long as they can see a picture.

Then they go to their more-savvy friend's house, see a 1080P picture, and wonder why their set cannot do that. And when they find out, they feel a bit miffed both at Walmart and themselves about the lack of education/knowledge (delete as applicable).

[MOVIEGEEK]

Do people still use an OTA antenna for SDTV?(rhetorical)
As was mentioned the 2/18/09 deadline only effects maybe 10% of the US households.

[edDV]

ATSC tuner requirements are forcing even basic Walmart TV sets to go "digital" but not necessarilly LCD or HD.

Some basic models:
http://www.walmart.com/search/browse-ng.do?ic=48_0&ref=125875.331180+500920.4293837039&catNavId=3996

Most of these use a 640x480 frame buffer for HD to SD resizing and display output.

Cheap ATSC tuners intended for existing analog TV sets and DVD/VCR recorders will hit the market in the spring. Expect those to get near free by Feb 2009.

[thecoalman]

And when they find out, they feel a bit miffed both at Walmart and themselves about the lack of education/knowledge (delete as applicable).

Or they could be a bit miffed about the inevitable propaganda Best Buy employees are going to use to convince them they need a digital TV.

You're missing my point, if given the choice my grandmother isn't going to spend $600 on a TV when she can spend $150 to watch The Price is Right. If Wal-Mart has a sign up that says these are anlog and will require a digital tuner what eles do you expect from them, it's not as if these TV's are going to become obsolete overnight. They will still function providing you have a tuner.

[edDV]

This 20" RCA Digital SD TV looks particularly interesting. It has an ATSC/QAM tuner, internal DVD player and plays MP3 and Divx MPeg4 DVDs. All for $188.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5633691



Next I want to see a 16:9 one with a built in DVD Recorder for Divx or wmv.

[oldandinthe way]

For 27" or less CRT based TVs, Walmart has offerings that blow away the prices of all of the other bigbox stores just about every day.

Some have ATSC and analog, others are only analog. The folks who view price as their prime motivator buy there as well they should.

I buy this sort of tv there because the quality is good enough, and given the lousy warrantees on consumer electronics I view them as disposable. When I buyer more cutting edge products I buy elsewhere. The Walmarts I visit seem to always be marking as clearance the higher end televisions, so I suspect that others segment their purchasing.

The digital television mandate has always seemed questionable. It was not based on consumer demand. My personal opinion is that the politicians were lobbied to generate an income transfer program to the far-east. The broadcasters have never seemed committed to HD-digital broadcasting.

[SCDVD]

Analog goo. I prefer the American English version.

I will always spell it "theatre" however. Dictionaries and "English teachers" be damned.

You mean "English teachres" surely?

Good one! If I want to visit a tree with theas on it, I would visit a thea-tre. However if I want to see a movie, I go the a thea-ter. Spell it like it sounds. Maybe the English are just trying to get even with French who waste a ton of ink by putting letters at the ends of words that they don't even bother to pronounce.

[edDV]

I spent a summer in the UK when I was 12. When I returned my teachers were marking me down for using "theatre", "colour" and "blimey"


http://english2american.com/dictionary/wholelot.html
example:
clap n applaud. In the UK, "giving someone a clap" means applauding them in the same way as Americans might give someone a "hand". Not to be confused with giving someone "the Clap", which means the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic.

[SingSing]

CircuitCity carries a line of LCD TVs with both ATSC and NSTC tuner. They run from $219 to $449.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Televisions/sem/rpsm/catOid/-12867/N/20012866+20012867+40000982/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do?WT.mc_n=472383&WT.mc_t=U&cm_ven=PA ID%20SEARCH&cm_cat=ADVERTISING.COM&cm_pla=CATEGORY %20-%20TELEVISION->CLASS%20-%20TELEVISIONS&cm_ite=192606%20PURCHASE%20KEYWORD-ELEMENT%20TV&cm_keycode=472383

[lordsmurf]

I'm amused by the word "snog".

[Seeker47]

'
My CRt is going to be worth a lot more some day.

Could be, if it's a really good one, still in good condition.
When I first saw this Best Buy headline, my first reaction was wondering if it might mean all the CRTs were being discontinued there. But that announcement cannot be too far off at this point . . . .

[dphirschler]

I cant help thinking in all of this, that analog is spelt analogue
no, really, stop mangling the English language

Why waste time typing those extra letters? It doesn't make the word look any better, or easier to read or spell. It's just extra crap.. just like the 'u' in colour.


Darryl

[lordsmurf]

Why waste time typing those extra letters?

I hear that about text messaging too. But kids still find a way to screw that up. Just watch those tv ads:

Mom: Who is that you're texting?
Girl: IDK My BFF Jill.

Now, why would you waste the time to type "IDK" (I don't know) when you give the answer right after? What kind of retarded crap is that?

I was in a fast food place a few weeks ago, and overheard two teenage girls talking about one of their girl friends, and her boyfriend. One of the girls said something along the lines of "Yeah, like did you hear that her and John and them broke up?"

Her ... and John .... and them? Who the hell is "them" ?

At least "colour" is proper and makes more sense than "IDK and them".

[solarfox]

Analog goo. I prefer the American English version.

I will always spell it "theatre" however. Dictionaries and "English teachers" be damned.

You mean "English teachres" surely?

Not at all. The suffix "-er" is commonly used to modify a verb into a noun which refers to a person who performs the actions described by the verb:

"worker" = "work" + "-er" = "one who works"
"speaker" = "speak" + "-er" = "one who speaks"
"teacher" = "teach" + "-er" = "one who teaches"

This means that the use of the "-er" spelling of "theater", "saber", and "center" is clearly incorrect, since by the above rule it would mean that:

"theater" = "theat" + "-er" = "one who theats"
"saber" = "sab" + "-er" = "one who sabs"
"center" = "cent" + "-er" = "one who cents"

All of which are, of course, clearly ridiculous.

...or at least, it would mean that if English spelling and grammar followed anything even remotely resembling a sane set of consistent rules.

(The previous bit of pedantic nonsense was brought to you by the letters "Q", "Z", and the number "3.14159".)