New Cable Ads On Digital TV Transition Aren't Exactly True

NEW CABLE ADS ON DIGITAL TV TRANSITION AREN'T EXACTLY TRUE
[SOURCE: HearUsNow, AUTHOR: Bob Williams]
[Commentary] The National Cable Television Association is rolling out an "educational" advertising campaign it says will help consumers deal with the looming transition to digital television, which is set to take place in February 2009. In a letter to Congress the cable industry makes the new ad campaign sound laudable, an industry-wide effort to make sure that folks who have old-style, analog television sets won't have their screens go dark when the switch is flipped to digital. There's a very big problem, however. The main message of the campaign -- that consumers who have cable have nothing to worry about because cable has "taken care of all that transition stuff for us" -- is not entirely true. The cable industry is now lobbying hard against a proposal that would require cable operators to send out signals in both digital and analog following the transition. The cable industry wants to send out signals in digital only. Should the industry prevail, cable-connected consumers with analog sets will have to either upgrade to more expensive digital service or pay to buy or rent a converter box in order to tune in their local, over-the-air stations.
http://www.consumersunion.org/blogs/hun/2007/09/new_cable_ads_on_digital...