Channel zero

The wonderful world of high-definition digital television flickered into view last Sunday with ABC’s “Wonderful World of Disney” broadcast of “101 Dalmatians.” This Sunday, CBS joins in with a couple of pro football games.

These events are of little concern to the typical American because: a) few local broadcasters have the $10 million and up it will take to buy the equipment and to build the towers needed for the conversion from fuzzy old analog to the perfect 0-and-1 technology of digital; b) few people are so lacking in common sense as to shell out $7,000 and up for something, that in the end, is just a TV.

This month was supposed to be the month when HDTV started to take over. Digital broadcasts were going to be zipping through the ether, the new-fangled sets were going to be flying off the shelves in a pre-Christmas shopping frenzy, the furious disposal of the old-fangled was going to spark a national solid-waste crisis. At least that’s what the electronics, broadcast and cable industries said.

It hasn’t happened and it’s unlikely to because the industries have been so preoccupied with pitching this utopia that they forgot that this also was to be the month they would sort out all the annoying little details that threaten to make this conversion to digital a consumer shafting of historic proportions.

It was just last spring that the Senate Commerce Committee gave the industries an autumn deadline for resolving things such as: uncertainty over whether cable will carry digital broadcasts or whether they will dump the networks altogether; an impasse regarding the establishment of industry-wide equipment compatibility standards so another Betamax debacle can be avoided; questions of serious interference problems (a small hill, a tree or the neighbor’s garage can block digital reception altogether); doubts about the ability, or willingness, of the electronics manufacturers to build an inexpensive converter box so existing analog TVs, VCRs and camcorders can be used after the digital conversion.

None of it has been resolved. Instead, as the three industries continue to push digital as a boon to mankind, more worries keep popping up. Many economists now say broadcasters in medium and small markets never will be able to recoup the conversion costs. The interference problems seem to be far greater than first thought. Initial estimates that the new sets will drop in price to $1,000 or so in the first couple of years have been upgraded to a decade. Those converter boxes have yet to be built.

So when Congress reconvenes, it should pull the plug. Not on the conversion to digital itself, but on the unrealistic timetable it set in 1996. It should remember, in addition to the technological promises, how the 2006 date for a completely Digital America came to be: The auction of channels made available after the conversion was going to generate about $50 billion to help balance the budget. The last few frequency auctions haven’t done nearly that well. The wireless industry, in fact, is so overbuilt that several of the winning bidders are now in bankruptcy.

As for the electronics, cable and broadcast industries, they should get back to work and let the public know when they’re ready to offer something not so heavy on the zeroes.