To follow-up on my earlier response about the critical need for an easy-to-use installation… KARE 11 in Minneapolis, St. Paul reported a 70 year-old homeowner became angry after losing his cable and not being able to install his converter box. So he shot his TV — multiple times.

” Police responded to a home in Joplin Wednesday after reports of shots being fired inside. The 70 year old homeowner was angry that he had lost his cable, and was unable to get his new DTV converter to work properly. After a brief standoff, the man was taken into custody. His wife told officers the suspect had been drinking. ” **

Could be the first of many innocent televisions losing their lives due to the digital conversion.

With no disrespect to MADD (a worthwhile organization), perhaps it’s time to start MADICB?

Gary

** source: http://www.kare11.com/news/whatsup/whatsup_article.aspx?storyid=539986&catid=333

Awesome information you have here. Thanks for sharing….

If we assume that most consumers still struggle to program the clock on their VCRs – not because of a lack of intelligence, but instead because of a continued fixation by technical developers to build products designed with engineers in mind, then I believe that the language used so far to describe what’s coming is lost on the average consumer.

Think of grandparents, parents, etc, whose technology exposure and expertise is limited. The FCC’s own language shown here: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.html is really deep in details, and language that I contend is lost on most.

Even the home page here: http://www.dtv.gov/ could be simplified to make it incredibly clear for the “average” consumer.

Wouldn’t it have been simpler to do a mass communication campaign that talked about “if you get your television from things like this (and show rabbit ears, aerial antennas, etc.”? Somehow I think if the consumer was spoken to in terms of tin foil on antennas and other “common” use cases, they might be a bit more attuned to taking action.

It will be interesting to watch, and is a great case study on effective communications. The “tests” local stations are now doing, where they will advertise selective times when they will test for all consumers, and allow people to experience what will happen in Feb and eliminate some of the guess work of “am I affected” is a good first start.

My guess is a lot of consumers are going to be caught surprised. And those that aren’t and have taken action on sourcing a converter, well let’s hope these boxes are really, really, really tested to just plug and play with very simple steps. Anything else will be a disaster.

Either way, there’s a strong chance for widespread TV outages. No TV. Nothing else to do….

I am forecasting a baby boom about November. But that’s another story….