Japanese government to provide poor households with free digital TV tuners

Analog television broadcasting will end in Japan on July 24, 2011, and those who haven’t bought new digital sets or digital tuners will be unable to watch television! This could create a problem for those that are too poor to afford the upgrade, so the Japanese government has announced plans to distribute free digital TV tuners to about 1 million households on welfare:

The committee also considered relief measures for about 1.4 million households exempted from paying viewing fees to Japan Broadcasting Corp. (N-H-K), about 8.4 million households consisting only of elderly people, and about 6 million households with disabled members.

The committee also discussed ways to provide the aid, including cash distributions, free TV tuners and vouchers.

In the end, the committee decided to put priority on households on welfare and distribute TV tuners.

The communications ministry has called on consumer electronics makers to come up with digital TV tuners priced as low as 5,000 yen.

Currently, mainstay products cost around 20,000 yen.

If the government distributes those models at retail prices, the costs will inflate to 21.4 billion yen.

Digital TV is already available in most urban areas of Japan, but according to a survey posted today on What Japan Thinks, about 75% of Japanese households still use non-digital televisions (this figure includes households that also own digital televisions).