Fresh coupons are on the way to the millions of people waiting to purchase digital converter boxes.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration hopes to eliminate the wait list for coupons, currently 2.3 million-strong, in two and a half weeks, according to the AP.
Drawing from newly-restored federal funding, the coupons are good for $40 off a box that converts analog over the air signals to digital ones. Most HDTVs and some analog TVs have digital, or ATSC, tuners built-in, so the boxes are needed mostly by owners of older, non-flat televisions.
The NTIA reached its spending limit in January, but was still sending out coupons to people who let the 90-day usage window expire. Now that the administration has fresh funds from an economic stimulus package, coupons are rolling out once more. People with expired coupons can still apply for new ones.
That's all well and good now that there's enough money to go around, but perhaps the government should've taken a tougher tack against people who ordered coupons and failed to use them by booting them to the end of the line. Maybe such an effort would've been too much trouble, but it doesn't seem fair to make other people wait. The AP story doesn't say how many new sign-ups will be accepted after the wait list is thinned out.
Roughly 36 percent of U.S. television stations have already gone digital, jumping ahead of the June 12 deadline. After 400 stations switched off their analog signals in mid-February, the Wall Street Journal reported a spike in DTV converter purchases.
