Analogue televisions to be phased out soon

Just as leaded gasoline was phased out causing people to change to unleaded gasoline cars, digital television sets will soon be replacing analogue sets.

If Vincentians are to continue viewing television in the not too distant future then they too must either discard their current television sets and buy a new one or use an adapter to convert from analogue to digital.{{more}}

The advice by technical experts to Vincentians is that if they plan to buy a television set in the next two years they should invest their money in a digital set.

So, what would happen if a consumer decided to keep their analogue set? Nothing would show. It would just be a blue, blank screen.

The Caribbean’s two largest providers of television programming have just announced the change over and the region has no choice but to change.

The United States said that the final NTSC broadcast will be made in just over two years on February 17, 2009 and the United Kingdom said they will go three years beyond the US deadline, until January 2012.

The US Congress is proposing a US$3 billion program to help consumers buy adapters that will allow existing conventional analogue televisions to receive digital broadcasts. It is yet to be determined exactly how it will affect prices here in the Caribbean and in the rest of the world.

The current system, the National Television Systems Committee (NTSC), which started in 1953, is being replaced by multi-channel broadcast programming which is filled with features for the consumer.

Not only will television be affected but also all video entertainment.