As of Feb. 17, 2009, the federal government has ordered the shutting down of all U.S. analog television broadcasting signals (a standard since the 1950s), to be replaced by a digital-only signal.

The necessity of this move is dubious, since both types of signals have been simultaneously broadcast for years. But the impact is clear. Everyone who currently receives a broadcast signal over the airwaves must either buy a new digital high-definition television (an HDTV starts at about $400), or buy a $50 to $70 converter box, for which the government will rebate $40. Otherwise your old analog TV goes black.

THE BIG LOSER

The movers and shakers behind this bill are not consumers (who never clamored for HDTV), but the consumer electronics industry, whose sales will be boosted by the law.

Conservative commentator George Will calls the bipartisan HDTV legislation "the no couch potato left behind" bill, and sees it as a noxious government entitlement program. Liberals question potentially undemocratic federal plans to sell off valuable analog public airwaves to private telecommunications companies.

The biggest loser in the great HDTV switch-over, however, could be our environment. Solid-waste managers worry that consumers will opt for HDTV en masse, consigning perfectly good analog TVs to the U.S. waste stream. Eighty to 200 million televisions could be discarded over the next 30 months, says John Shegerian, CEO of Electronic Recyclers International, a leading electronics waste recycler. Worse, he says, there's no federal plan to recycle those sets, even though "almost everything in those TVs could be recycled.

"With all the new technology that keeps making our existing devices obsolete, we are in the midst of an ongoing tsunami of electronic waste," says Shegerian. "With the federally mandated date for full conversion to HDTV looming, we can only expect the accumulation of unwanted old electronics to go through the roof."

MOVING WASTE ELSEWHERE