On February 17, 2009, just sixteen months from now, all television transmitters in the United States will forever cease transmission of analog signals (NTSC). From then on, only televisions with modern digital tuners will function.

I’ve known about this for years but I just read about a study showing that only 4 percent of Americans even know the year of the changeover and 60 percent of Americans know nothing at all about it. What’s more, you can still purchase a shiny brand new TV that will be obsolete in 16 months and simply stop working unless you get a converter box for it. So I thought I’d do my little part to get the word out.

Here is the Federal Communications Commission web site about coming the changeover:

http://www.dtv.gov/

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