The Consumer Electronics Association reports that DTV products are in 9.5 million U.S. households.
In comments filed for the FCC's video competition inquiry, the CEA reported that through May 2004, more than 11 million individual DTV products (defined as digital-ready monitors or receivers) have been sold to consumers, amounting to an investment of more than $20 billion. The association said that, based on its factory to dealer shipment data, 9.5 million TV households have at least one DTV set or monitor. Of those sets, CEA says 1.3 million products are capable of receiving an over the air DTV signal, adding that it expects OTA penetration to accelerate with the implementation of the FCC's DTV tuner mandate.
Hoping to get more industry players on the DTV promotion bandwagon, CEA urged broadcasters and programmers to make more of an effort to promote digital television suggesting that they air public service announcements to promote DTV particularly on their analog service. It also urged broadcasters to maximize their DTV signals and called on the cable industry to support digital cable ready DTV sets by keeping "adequate stocks" of CableCARDs on hand for subscribers.
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