Analog to Digital TV

[IG-88]

Since Congress, the FCC & Bush want to go to all digital TV signals I wonder if this will be a boon for us who might want to pick up some good used analog TVs for arcade use or do you all think that "Joe Public" will buy the digital tuner decoder boxes that they say will be needed to view digital TV on analog sets?

Or is it too soon to worry about it?

[jbox]

Simple:
while (Analog x-inches + HD-decoder <= Digital (x+5)-inches) {
  ; // do nothing
}

The price of the external decoders will decide everything. If they are cheap then there isn't going to be any mass exodus. If they are expensive there will be a brief deprecation while the asian markets get their butts into gear, when the price will stabilise as people start re-buying all the analog TVs going around under-priced until they end up the same again. 

Of course, this isn't even going to start until six days before the analog system shuts down, what with people being the way they are. 

[JB]

Simple:
while (Analog x-inches + HD-decoder <= Digital (x+5)-inches) {
  ; // do nothing
}

The price of the external decoders will decide everything. If they are cheap then there isn't going to be any mass exodus. If they are expensive there will be a brief deprecation while the asian markets get their butts into gear, when the price will stabilise as people start re-buying all the analog TVs going around under-priced until they end up the same again. 

Of course, this isn't even going to start until six days before the analog system shuts down, what with people being the way they are. 

Indeed. Every set sold for AT LEAST the last year should have been required to have an ATSC tuner integrated into it.
NOT "the top-end sets have to have digital inputs so that you can add one after the NTSC broadcasts go offline."