Audio Video News

Retailers are not giving consumers accurate information about the transition to digital television, according to a report issued by U.S. PIRG, the federation of state-based Public Interest Research Groups.

The consumer-activist organization sent secret shoppers to Best Buy, Circuit City, RadioShack, Target, and Wal-Mart, a total of 132 stores in more than a dozen states. Their findings: Store staff are "largely uninformed and are not adequately preparing consumers" for the transition. The majority of them knew little about the set-top boxes that will convert digital signals for analog sets, or the federal program that subsidizes the boxes. Nearly half could not say when analog broadcasting will end, even though the deadline--February 17, 2009--is now less than a year away.

See the report (PDF) and coverage in TWICE.

Interestingly enough, consumers themselves are more DTV-savvy than the hapless clerks at Best Buy. More than half of American households already own a DTV, according to Gary Shapiro, head guy of the Consumer Electronics Association. And the percentage of consumers familiar with the DTV transition hit a healthy 74 percent in 2007, up from a less encouraging 41 percent just a year prior.

So it is the civic duty of all you well-informed consumers to march into your local Wal-Mart and say to the nearest salesthing, I need to have a word with you about something....