Print this article  |  E-mail this article  |  Comment on this article

Best Buy Sells Its Last Analog TV Set

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

October 17, 2007, 1:41 PM

Best Buy announced today that it has pulled all remaining analog television products from store shelves and will henceforth only sell digital tuners. The company is the first consumer electronics retailer to publicly announce its departure from the analog television business.

Congress has mandated that the FCC re-claim the wireless spectrum used for analog TV by January 2009. The spectrum is being auctioned early next year, with Verizon and Google among the interested bidders. Consumers will soon begin seeing ads on TV announcing the impending transition to digital.

"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," said senior vice president of electronics for Best Buy, Mike Vitelli.

"Customers can now be sure that any television they purchase at Best Buy will be fully compliant with the digital television transition. And for customers who aren't in the market for a new television, we can help you find the best solution to meet your needs."

While this is somewhat of an early withdrawal of analog TV sets from sale, now that the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer has pulled the products, others are likely to soon follow suit.

Add a Comment (35 Comments)

BetaNews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Name (required):

E-mail (required):

Enter Your Comment:

By DatabaseBen

edited Oct 18, 2007 - 1:27 PM

It's just another American Conspiracy. This one is likely by the FCC and BigBusiness to force Americans into watching a digitize signal encoded with a sublime overlay.

Then the zombies glued to the moronic american tv shows can be hypnotize into buying more products so that the networks can make more money from their advertisers.

You can test your will power here:

http://www.subliminalmessages.com/

"for crying out loud; bionic chick with an evil twin, vampire cop, etc... Gay actor playing a gay doctor who is in love with a straight actor playing a straight doctor who pretends to hate gay doctors but is secretly curious about the gay doctor might be more interesting"

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Oct 19, 2007 - 5:12 AM

TV tends to be moronic... however, American TV is eons ahead of all others-- so i'd hate to think what you call yours... something that likely wouldn't make it past the BN obcenity filter.

Score: 0

By imafurby

posted Oct 19, 2007 - 10:12 AM

"American TV is eons ahead of all others"

Yep, jerry Springer has proved that beyond a doubt.

Score: 0

By DatabaseBen

edited Oct 19, 2007 - 9:21 AM

I think t.v. is as entertaining according to the country.

For example I suppose that watching terrorists acts by the muslim world might be as entertaining as watching vampire cop on american t.v.

Or viewing nudity on european t.v. might be as entertaining as bored and tired housewives on american t.v.

However, I can say this. All American T.V. shows are much more entertaining when the Mute is enabled. It's amazing what one is actually seeing, when the never ending noise is muted.

Score: 0

By rsx508

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 9:28 AM

Good riddance. As for rural folk without the luxury of a digital signal: here's your opportunity to chase the American dream -- start deploying it and make your millions now.

Score: 0

By GS5

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 7:59 PM

The headline should read:

Best Buys Sells Last Analog T.V. Set To Worlds Biggest Retard.

Score: 0

By GeneralLeoFF

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 11:58 AM

Or it could read "Best Buy sells last analog TV to classic video game enthusiast".

I have personally stockpiled a few 20" CRT TV sets for just that reason. Playing Atari 2600 and NES on modern digital flat panel TVs just sucks. Plus light guns don't work.

Also the digital cut off does not apply to anything but broadcast TV. You will be able to use your old CRT TV set for cable TV for many years to come. Among other uses.

Score: 0

By GS5

edited Oct 18, 2007 - 4:25 PM

"Plus light guns don't work" LMAO

Got to love those good old 80's tech. Do you still have Duck hunt and the Cowboy Shoot em up game??? I killed more ducks and cowboys in my day that I care to mention. Quite violent games for an impressionable youth if you ask me. LOL

Score: 0

By morriscox

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 5:13 PM

My brothers and I once made a sawed-off Zapper. You could point it just about anywhere and the duck died. We would get weird results sometimes, like the duck and dog both dying, killing the duck after it had already left the screen, or killing the dog before the bird even got on the screen.

Score: 0

By GeneralLeoFF

posted Oct 19, 2007 - 8:47 AM

Duck Hunt is a great beer drinking game cuz it's dumb and unsafe to drink while really hunting.

Score: 0

By yountmj

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 12:21 PM

"I have personally stockpiled a few 20" CRT TV sets for just that reason. Playing Atari 2600 and NES on modern digital flat panel TVs just sucks. Plus light guns don't work."

Very good point.

Though, I have found some usefulness out of my Dell FP2001 LCD monitor for MAME... the 90 degree swivel, for games that used vertical orientation. It fills out the screen nicely. Another rather nice convenience of using an LCD monitor now is not having to switch back and forth between 85 Hz and 60 Hz going from normal desktop to most emulators like I used to with CRT monitors.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 9:58 PM

Tell me, what use is the added expense of a digital TV in rural areas?

Score: 0

By GS5

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 11:10 PM

Couldn't tell you, I don't live in a rural area. But I'm sure if you live in the back woods you can make do with a 50's black and white TV. But us big city folks do love our digital Plasma and LCD HDTV's.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Oct 20, 2007 - 10:34 AM

So you're saying those folks are all retards?

Score: 0

By mo_mo

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 6:26 PM

well congrad to Bestbuy to be the first retail to make the first digital move =)

Score: 0

By timatl

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 3:27 PM

it is about time considering the TV will be osbolete in 16 months(other than getting a converter). It should be illegal to sale a tv without a digital tuner at this point if the FCC will be enforcing the mandatory digital broadcast by Feb 18/19 2009.

Score: 0

By imafurby

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 3:45 PM

It should be illegal to sell a tube TV, especially at such an unrealistic price (ie dirt cheap) considering the toxic waste that it's going to create when it's done with.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 9:51 PM

I have three of them. I plan on buying at least one more before switching to flat panel.

Take that, Earth.

Score: 0

By imafurby

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 1:17 PM

You 'ol Luddite you.

Score: 0

By improvelence

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 5:59 PM

I guess we sometimes forget that we cant all afford anything we want. Take some of your money and donate it to a poor fund.

Score: 0

By Ryusennin

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 5:14 PM

Plasma and LCD screens actually waste a lot more energy than tubes, which is an ecological crime, especially in a country (the States) that is already known for its humongous energy consumption.

Score: 0

By morriscox

edited Oct 17, 2007 - 8:21 PM

Are you sure about LCDs? You might want to check your facts on that.

Score: 0

By jbaltz69

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 5:26 PM

Plasmas are hogs, not LCD. LCD TVs actually use just a little more than tube TVs.

Here is a good article about it:

http://reviews.cnet.com/...-6400401-2.html?tag=arw

Score: 0

By yountmj

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 1:00 AM

Thank you for that link. Good read.

Score: 0

By JFaust

edited Oct 17, 2007 - 2:18 PM

You will still be able you use bunny ears. The over the air signal will be digital. From what I have seen even at the same signal power it's a much better picture.

See what you can get
http://antennaweb.org

Score: 0

By bakura

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 11:19 AM

This switch to digital is really not that big a deal, even for rural people who don't have cable. They have a couple of options. Use an amplified antenna that picks up the HD channels, or get satellite TV.

I don't live in a rural area, but I ditched cable/satellite a few months ago and use an antenna to pick up the local channels in HD. They look great, and there's more of them (in my area) than I expected.

For the more rural areas, they would probably want a roof or attic mounted antenna capable of picking up HD/digital signals.

Score: 0

By GeneralLeoFF

edited Oct 17, 2007 - 2:35 PM

"bunny ears" are actually pretty useless for digital TV as they are VHF. You just need the UHF hoop part. I recommend wrapping the hoop with aluminum foil so you get a nice flat surface. I was able to pick up a couple out of range channels after doing that.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 9:49 PM

There are digital "bunny ears". Most folks don't know about 'em simply because they never look in that section. Why would they?

They're there. And amazingly, they work quite well if your area has decent coverage (which is increasing).

Score: 0

By PatrynXX

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 7:58 PM

Don't have bunny ears. Have one of those low profile amplified antenna's. Kinda looks like a figure 8. Kinda hard to wrap foil in that.

Score: 0

By khetos

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 2:10 PM

ah the good old days of crt..analog.. bunny ears.. ah

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 8:30 PM

No remotes, getting up to manually change the channel.... brings tears to my eyes...

Score: 0

By yountmj

posted Oct 18, 2007 - 12:56 AM

Heh, yep... changing the channels with knobs. Plural... one for VHF, another for UHF. Zenith FTW! :)

I wish I still had my RCA with a sonic remote.

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Oct 19, 2007 - 5:18 AM

Yeah, the Zenith Color TV commercial!!

My name is Rula Lenska... and if you can see the colors i'm wearing....

Score: 0

By PatrynXX

posted Oct 17, 2007 - 8:00 PM

This whole thing is going to add to the confusion. As I understand the FCC site for the box. TV sets sold in the last 5-10 years don't need the box. (that's the CRT's) It's the ones with the UHF/VHF nodes on the sets that won't work. Haven't seen those in ages. Last one we had died in 1990. So pulling the CRT's are a bit useless. CRT's are still the easiest on the eyes. Plasma is useless. LCD's are getting better.

Score: 0

By horsecharles

edited Oct 17, 2007 - 8:32 PM

I can actually foresee the day of eyeglass tv's... we'll all sit around together-- each watching the channel of his/her/its choice....

Score: 0

Sep 5 - 8:44 PM ET Mozilla's Aza Raskin: The journey back to Ubiquity

Sep 5 - 7:10 PM ET Red Hat buys virtualization specialist Qumranet

Sep 5 - 7:06 PM ET Analysts: Online news viewers rising as newspaper readership falls

Sep 5 - 6:55 PM ET Where does Sarah Palin stand on technology issues?

Sep 5 - 6:51 PM ET Adobe Flash to deliver NFL games in full

Sep 5 - 4:29 PM ET Exclusive beta invitation from GameTap and BetaNews

Sep 5 - 4:09 PM ET Report: OLPC buy one, give one deal returns

Sep 5 - 3:45 PM ET No ruling yet in TiVo vs. EchoStar patent case

Sep 5 - 3:37 PM ET Google Analytics starts tracking Chrome, with intriguing results

Sep 5 - 2:14 PM ET Comcast challenges FCC's authority in sanction appeal