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3.5M Americans Still Unprepared for DTV Switch

by Terrence O'Brien on May 4, 2009 at 06:05 PM

First, the good news. The number of people still unprepared for the DTV switchover is continuing to fall. The bad news? The number of households that will be unable to watch TV on June 12th still sits at about 3.5 million.

That number is down from the roughly four million who were unprepared at the end of March, according to the most recent Nielsen survey. But, with only a month and a half to go, even if the rate of DTV upgrades doubled, we'd still be left with over a million people sans TV when the switch took place (though there are worse things than not being able to watch TV).

Interestingly enough, older households are better prepared than younger ones. Only 1.7-percent of households "over 55" are still stuck with analog-only broadcasts, while 5.7-percent of those "under 35" will be unable to watch TV next month. (We're not exactly sure how you can calculate a household's age, but we'll go with it.)

Is your television ready for the digital TV switchover?
Yes300 (80.0%)
No52 (13.9%)
I'm not sure.23 (6.1%)


With the percentage of U.S. homes that haven't gotten their act together sitting at 3.1-percent, the government is making one last push to encourage people to get converter boxes. But, come June 12th, Uncle Sam will just have to accept that some will be left in the dark. [From: Silicon Alley Insider]

Best HDTVs Under $1000

Tags: analog-to-digital switch, Analog-to-digitalSwitch, dtv, dtv transition, DtvTransition, hdtv, top

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