Low-power stations fail to block DTV converters

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC has turned down a request from the Community Broadcasters Association (CBA), a trade association for LPTV operators, to order the FCC to ban DTV converter boxes that don’t pass through analog signals. LPTV stations and translators are not required to go digital when all full-power stations shut off their analog signals and go digital only next February. The CBA had argued that DTV converter boxes that receive only digital signals will be a death sentence for analog LPTV stations. Many of the converter boxes already sold will block analog signals, but new models being offered now by some manufacturers have an analog pass-through feature.

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