Arlington, Va. — The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has called on the broadcast industry to continue to help educate consumers about DTV.
CEA was responding to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) request for information on television viewers who rely exclusively on over-the-air (OTA) broadcasting.
In a filing with the FCC, CEA supported the broadcast industry’s comments regarding the need for “sustained, ubiquitous promotion and education about digital television (DTV), on the part of all industries.”
“No other industry can reach OTA viewers with the same precision or better emphasize the importance of free OTA broadcasting,” CEA stated. “After all, these are broadcasters promoting the availability of broadcasting.”
CEA’s reply comments addressed what it called the “incorrect assumption that televisions not connected to multichannel video are used exclusively for OTA broadcast television.” CEA noted that while 32 percent of cable and/or satellite households have at least one television not connected to a subscription service, 75 percent of these households reserve at least one television exclusively for use with a VCR, video game system or DVD player.
Based on current sales, CEA said it expects that by 2010 more than 90 million DTV sets will reside in American homes, and well over 85 percent of American homes will contain sets with DTV tuners.
