Alert! Your analog television will no longer work after February 17, 2009. The federal government passed the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act law in 2005 in Oder to free up the analog air waves for emergency system broadcasts as well as other usages. The only way you will be able to use your analog TVs after this date is to purchase an HDTV converter.

The new television broadcast standard will be high definition, better know as HDTV. To properly receive the new broadcast standard you will need two essential items. First you will need an HDTV ready television set. Preferably with a built-in HD TV tuner...

Your HDTV will need to be capable of displaying at least 720 pixels (Vertical) and 1280 pixels (horizontal). This is the standard for the basic HDTV experience. In order to receive the HDTV signal for free, you will also need a roof-top HDTV antenna (Just when you though we got rid of those darn things). The roof-top antenna is needed to receive the line-of-sight broadcast of the HDTV signal. Most cable and satellite service providers are converting customers over to cable boxes with built-in HDTV tuners but their HDTV channels are available at an additional cost.

Retailers like Best Buy are already in the process of phasing out inventory of analog televisions and HDTV manufacturers are busy developing smaller HDTV displays to fill their void.