Monday January 26, 2009 – Myra Moore
With the “date certain” for ending analog terrestrial TV transmissions officially uncertain, the person in charge of inventory management for an electronics retailer or a converter-box maker is probably flipping a coin to decide whether or not to order or to make more digital-to-analog converter boxes.
Those inventory managers may have to wait until Congress votes on pending bills that specify the analog TV shut-off date be moved from February 17 to June 12 to know if they made the right decision. The good news is that many retailers prepared for the expected high demand for boxes in January and February by stocking up in the fourth quarter of 2008. The bad news is that theNTIA announced on January 5 that the converter box coupon program had been exhausted at that time and that consumers would be placed on a waiting list as more coupons become available.
Digital Tech Consulting (DTC), which has been conducting research on the digital-to-analog converter-box sales for nine months, recently completed work on estimating fourth quarter shipments of converter boxes and found that retailers are well prepared for expected demand.
Of course, the estimated existence of 9 million boxes in the pipeline doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not all the consumers who want to buy them will be able to do so with a coupon (DTC’s research finds that nearly 4 million boxes have been purchased without coupons). We don’t know if the NTIA coupon availability problem can be solved within the nearly three weeks before analog TV transmissions are scheduled to end, but if it can be, there should be plenty of boxes for which those coupons can be redeemed.
Source: DTC
