On Sun, 1 Feb 2009 04:29:43 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Jan 31, 10:17*pm, mm wrote:
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:20:25 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Jan 31, 2:05*pm, "Ray" wrote:
Our little cheapo 5" screen TV that we use in the kitchen is doomed whenever
TV makes its conversion -- in June now, I believe. Obviously we won't get a
$100 converter box for a $15 TV set.

But I just noticed one of the discount stores has on sale a Prism digital

If it says digital on it, that should mean that it's digital. * And it
probably does, but read the box carefully, plug it in when you get
home and make sure it gets digital stations.

LCD TV. with a 7" screen. My question is whether this one would also require
a converter box -- or how could I tell.

It does have a retractable antenna, if that means anything.

All TVs sold in the US now have to have an ATSC DTV tuner built-in.

Not true. *But they do have to be labeled if they won't receive
digital.



So says you. The FCC says otherwise:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...mz1b5bray.html

But this isn't the FCC, it's signon sandiego.

"March 5, 2007

Many Americans don't understand digital TV, but they no longer can buy
the old analog technology it replaces,

Maybe it's even illegal to sell it, but it's still for sale.

thanks to a federal mandate
that recently kicked in.

All new television sets designed to receive over-the-air signals must
now contain a tuner capable of receiving digital broadcasts, not just
the old-style analog signals we have relied on for the past half-
century.

The March 1 mandate covers smaller sets, the last bastion of all-
analog technology. "

Well, somehow it's wrong. Even if for the sake of argument it is
illegal to sell analog sets, they are still selling them.

So, as I stated, for about 2 years now, ALL TVs manufactured for sale

This might be true, but in the first post you said "All tv's sold in
the US". A big difference. Who knows how big the unsold inventory
of analog tv's is.

in the USA must have an ATSC tuner. Yeah, you might find some TV
somewhere that was built prior to Mar 2007, but the chances of that
are small, unless it's some refurbished piece of crap.

He said he was shopping at a discount house. (And I'm pretty sure
the ones I saw were also at Target, like Salty says. Maybe they bought
a big bunch of them somewhere. There are loads of seconds, odd-lots,
unsold lots, leftovers, of all sorts of things. Certain stores
specialize in them (although often mixing them with cheap shlock that
isn't a bargain), and others sell them sometimes.)

I don't understand why this question even needs to be asked. All one
has to do is read the box.

The problem with that is that box writers are very good at being
misleading. Do you remember when iiuc lots of tvs were called
cable-compatible, even though they still required a cable box to
receive stations. IIUC, all tvs including the ones from the 1950's
were cable-compatible by that standard.

I wanted some food that didn't need refrigeration and saw that
Bumblebee Tuna had bags like that. One of their 3 similar packages
showed something wrapped up in what looked like baloney, but might
have been made out of tuna. I thought that might be a "serving
suggestion", so I looked further and the bag said "wraps". So I
bought it. I haven't opened the bag yet, but now I see the words are
in a circle, with a big banner in the middlle separating "Good for"
from "Wraps". So it's just the same chopped tuna fish with a
different flavor from the other two bags. And the other two were
just as suitable for wraps. It's only $1.50, but I have to remember
to bring a fork and not think I can hold it by a wrapper that it
doesnt have.






The requirement began with the largest TVs quite a few years ago and
included even the smallest for maybe the last 2 years or so.

Absolutely not. *I've seen non-digital tvs up to 15 inches in the
stores this year. *They were however labeled that they would require a
converter or something to receive digital signals.

These tvs still work with converters, cable, and satellite. *That's
the vast majority of America. *Let the manufacturers change over their
production as they see fit. *Just don't mislead consumers.