Are Digital Tuners Coming To the Masses?

During the blitz of product announcements last week at CES, I was paying particular attention to television recording devices with digital tuners. It’s been publicized that in February of 2009, in the US, broadcasters will cease broadcasting the analog TV signal that we’ve all tuned in to since the inception of television. What’s replacing it is a new digital signal that will enable HDTV, with its higher resolution. In fact, in many urban markets, the signal is already available. The problem has been receiving it.

While all televisions over 27”, by law, have digital tuners, the other gear does not. Smaller TV’s, and home recording devices still roll on with their analog tuners. A less publicized date is March 1, 2007.

This is the day that both the smaller TV’s, and recording devices must enter the digital age. At long last, we’ll be able to purchase a home recorder with a digital tuner. (Remembering the fact that just because it is digital, this doesn’t mean it is broadcast in high definition, or recorded and played back in HDTV (which, by definition means over 500 lines of resolution, regular TV and DVD’s are 480)). Or does it?

I’ve been looking around, and I don’t see this impending wave of digital recording products on the horizon. Part of this may be that they want to sell off the existing stock. Who knows what they’ll do with it; maybe they plan to retrofit some tuners into the ol’ VCR’s on the shelf somehow. I’ve been looking on websites of popular electronics retailers, and for a deadline a month and a half away, there are no signs of these new products. Ditto for the retailers I’ve visited which are always a step behind their online brethren anyway.

I thought that perhaps there would be some product in Vegas first hand, it appears that only LG and Panasonic introduced a new digital product line. Maybe there is another product line I missed, but that still leaves the shelves kind of empty at the Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart’s across America.

I’m hypothesizing that the digital tuner, also referred to as ATSC, must be kind of an expensive part, at least until production ramps up and they make them overseas for a few pennies a piece. Looking at the new product line from Panasonic is revealing. First of all, nothing will be on the market in March, of the four products, they’re shooting for half in April, and the others in May. The better models will be able to upconvert a DVD to a 1080p signal, which is great for owners of larger screen TV’s (I should only have this “problem”…). The least expensive of the line will go for $230, and the top of the line digital combo deck will fetch a cool $380.

To save costs, LG is taking a different approach. TV viewers that acquire their signal from cable or satellite comprise around 85% of the market, as opposed to the “over the air” club. As the convertor box already converts the signal, they have no use for a digital tuner. Their plan is to sell two tiers of components: the better line with a digital tuner, and a cheaper line with no tuner. I’m not really sure how well this is going to turn out. While savvy consumers may embrace the savings, I’m guessing there will likely be a ton of returns on this gear as folks get home, unpack their shiny new recorder, only to find out that it won’t be able to record anything with subscribing to cable.

I’m on the fence as to the best time to jump on board with this. While some of the new features are quite enticing, like DivX playback, support for SD cards, and automatic titling of programs, I’m thinking to hang back for a few months. I generally try to not buy the 1st generation product (I learned my lesson with the 2x CD Recorder), and think that by next Christmas, the store shelves will be full of better products at a more reasonable price. While the government thinks that the March 1, 2007 date is the day of digital tuners, practically speaking, it will be several months later for the masses. My recommendation: don’t jump this gun, there will be plenty of time to get on the digital tuner train before 2009.

--Jonas

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atsc, combo deck, digital television, digital tuner, dvd recorder, hdtv, home theater, recording television, set top recorder, television