My mom asked me if many people would buy the digital to analog converter boxes for their televisions. I said if they did they would continue to receive the same kind of picture they are now getting instead of the “better” picture you can get from digital. I bought a small 19” digital television at Sam’s Club for $270 with a DVD player built in. I thought I’d try the “digital” out before buying the main television for the living room. I can’t really tell that there is a lot of difference (we have cable).
But this raises some questions in my mind. What percentage of people in LEW (or more importantly to me, Lucas County) will convert to digital vs. buying a converter box? If there is a large percentage of TVs that will end up as “waste” where will we see them finally end? Will the recycling industry in this area be up to the task of recycling thousands of large TVs or will they just fill up the land-fills that much faster? Will they move at “garage” sales, and “church” sales as they have in the past?
I am holding off buying my larger unit. My current TV is a 25” analog in the living room. I can’t really have something much larger unless I hang it from my plaster wall (which I might do). But at twice the price of my current TV to “convert” I am waiting for the price to go as low as possible. I assume at some point that the price will begin to go up again as the “mass market” disappears as those who have the money make their “final” purchase until they replace it. But I am assuming that there will be more televisions going to the landfill in a more compressed space of time than we’ve seen since color TVs became the norm in the 1970s.
I meant to include this. Here is a site for getting the two coupons per household to add digital to analog converter boxes to two of your TVs, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/dtvcoupon/.
posted by oldsendbrdy on Mar 02, 2008 at 02:29:08 pm #