ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997                  TAG: 9704040039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

FCC VOTES TO START 9-YEAR SWITCH TO DIGITAL TV NEW SETS WILL INITIALLY COST $5,000 - BUT WHAT PICTURES!

When the process is over, you'll have to have either a new TV or a converter that lets your analog set receive the new signals.

Pricey digital TVs with movie-quality pictures will start popping up in American stores by Christmas 1998. People won't have to immediately junk their analog TV sets and VCRs. But after nine years, they'll either have to buy new ones or $100 converters.

The changes are coming under a Federal Communications Commission plan, approved 4-0 Thursday, to implement the biggest advance in broadcasting since color in the 1950s: digital television.

While the new wide-screen sets will have better picture and audio, a ``converted'' digital signal fed to today's analog set will produce no better picture and audio than the analog set already provides.

And get ready for sticker shock: Initially, the digital TV sets are expected to cost around $5,000 - up from earlier estimates of $2,000, says Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association. Digital VCRs will sell for well above $500.

But if the devices sell as briskly as VCRs did when they debuted, those prices should come down quickly.

Manufacturers predict the new sets will sell like hot cakes. They're estimating up to 20 percent of all TV households will have them in six years. VCRs, one of the best-selling consumer electronic products ever, took nine years to get 20 percent penetration. Pete Bevacqua thinks he may be one of the first to buy. ``I would have to see if the difference was worth it, but ... it seems like maybe it would be,'' said the 25-year-old law student, shopping at a suburban Virginia mall. He's a big fan of TV, and picture quality is important to him.

But Marie Farmer, of Temple Hills, Md., thinks $2,000 - let alone $5,000 - is too much, and sees no reason for the switch.

``I'm enjoying TV the way it is,'' said the 41-year-old postal worker. ``I don't see any difference.''

Even if they buy new sets, most of the nation's nearly 68 million cable TV subscribers will have to use their TV's rabbit ears or rooftop antenna to receive digital signals, cable officials say.

Tele-Communications Inc.'s system in Hartford, Conn., is now the only cable operator in the country that has gone digital. More cable systems are getting ready, but until they do, viewers will have to rely on antennas. The FCC will leave it up to stations to decide whether to move to an even better form of digital, called high-definition television. Many will, predicts Eddie Fritts, president of the National Association of Broadcasters.

``The dazzlement is real. It's genuine,'' Fritts said.

With the digital technology, TV stations could cram more services into their airwaves space. For example, they could offer sports scores to laptop computer users or establish separate pay-for-view sports channels. But the FCC will require them to continue free TV service.

Upon approving the plan, the FCC immediately began issuing digital broadcast licenses to every TV station.

During the nine-year conversion to digital, broadcasters will transmit programs over two channels: their existing analog and a digital channel they'll get free from the government. That way, existing sets will not become useless immediately.

After nine years, the current, analog broadcast TV system will die, and viewers will either have to buy digital TVs and VCRs or buy set-top converters to let analog sets receive the new signals.

The FCC is requiring some TV stations to begin airing some digital shows within two years - before the switch to digital is complete. That would give early digital-TV buyers something to watch and manufacturers an incentive to build digital devices.

When the switch is complete, broadcasters will surrender their analog channels, which will be auctioned by the government for nonbroadcast uses such as mobile phone, two-way paging and wireless Internet access.

LENGTH: Medium:   81 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  ASSOCIATED PRESS. Gus Spencer, a project leader, is 
          shown in silhouette before a prototype flat-screen digital TV at 
          Phillips Consumer Electronics headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn. 
          color.