Greetings. A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled that all but the smallest televisions, plus other consumer video equipment, must include tuners for digital television by July 2007. Current law hopes to shut off conventional analog TV transmissions in December 2006, meaning that, in theory, all non-digital televisions in the U.S. would become obsolete after that date.

In practice, nobody really believes that the 2006 cutoff date will be met. But why the big push for digital TV by Congress? The answer is simple -- money. Budget projections plan for a windfall to be generated through the auction of the existing analog spectrum that would be vacated by existing TV broadcasters. The longer the analog system stays up, the longer the money is delayed.

Of course, consumers were never asked how they felt about being forced to buy all new televisions to replace the analog sets that mostly worked just fine. But think of the benefits -- quality programming like "Gilligan's Island" reruns via digital over-the-air broadcasting. Ain't technology grand?

--Lauren--