The right to life, liberty and high-definition TV?

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The right to life, liberty and high-definition TV?

If you're anything like us, your only New Year's resolution for this particular ride around the sun is to sign up for a converter box coupon in preparation for the 2009 digital TV transition -- even if, also like us, your only remaining analog set is gathering dust next to your laserdisc player in the basement. Still, a bargain is a bargain, so $40 off a product or products that we don't really need was more than enough motivation to race over to the official sign-up page only minutes after it went live.

Bad reception for HDTV subsidies

Ed Feulner/The Heritage Foundation

Anyone who wants to keep watching TV the old-fashioned way will need to buy a new set or plug in a converter box. And here's where Congress comes in. In 2005 lawmakers agreed to pay at least $990 million to subsidize the cost of converter boxes. They were even prepared to spend as much as $1.5 billion. That would be the same as every household kicking in $13 in taxes to help a handful of people buy converter boxes. This is absurd. Where's the compelling national interest to justify government subsidies for high-tech entertainment equipment?

Let's get started on HDTV

Mark Lloyd/Center for American Progress

The biggest problem with the transition to digital television in the United States is that the Federal Communications Commission under the Bush administration has locked the public out of the process of determining what those benefits might be. What's more, yesteryear's Republican-controlled Congress set the rules regarding this transition. Thus the public interest obligations of digital broadcasters remain undefined and insufficient money has been set aside for the digital conversion.