Bigger things at work here
I have read the reports of incompatibility, and burn in, and upgrades, etc.
I would like to say that in my house, I have four sets, two of which are over 10 years old, and one over 20. They all look pretty good.
I have not had an issue with the newer technologies, as most sets made have some form of input connection, be it Video Inputs, or just an antenna connection. I am running for pay digital TV called DirectTV, but there is in many areas free digital feeds of the standard over the air tranmissions. Where the pain for the consumer will be is paying for those HDTV tuners. Right now, most are $500 or more, and they really should be no more than a cheap DVD player or VCR, which is around $50.
The comment of the burn is is really false, since there are options in the tuners to take 16X9 material and zoom in to make it full screen, and most material today is still 4X3. Until we throw out all old episodes of Hogan's Heros, and AbFab, I doubt a lot of this will change.
The real reasoning here that the government wants HDTV to take off is money. You see, right now, over the air analogue transmissions take 6 MHz of air space for tranmission, while the exact same program in HDTV ( 480 p/i ) takes only 1 MHz. This gives the television channels the opportunity to have upto 6 subchannels with other programming ( read : six times the commercials, and perhaps six times the revenues ), or gives them the opportunity to sub-lease off the bandwidth for other uses.
Furthermore since there is much bandwidth needed for newer technologies, the government can assign a fewer number of channels to the stations out there, and also sell of the airwaves to compaies for cell phones, two way radio, etc. Much of this has happened. How many people out there still have a TV with 83 channels?
So you see, the consumer really isn't part of this equation. The government and the broadcast industry trust that people will buy cheap set-top boxes for existing sets, and except being forced into paying more for new sets with this feature, in hopes of increasing profits by the multitudes. They just need to twist a few arms to do it.
Feel free to correct any mis-statements here, or complain if this idea really sucks!! ( But I get most of my info from a trade mag called Broadcast Engineering, so I think I am somewhat on the mark. )
Max.
