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. (NHK), 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).
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Wow! The Japanese are so to the future!
I wanna live there now!
The US has been doing a similar thing in order to get people prepared for the switch to Digital broadcasting in 2009. They have been mailing $40 vouchers to everyone who applies.
Also, you can get a cheap tuner for about $50 so I’m not sure where they are getting that 20,000 yen price from. It could be that tuners here are more expensive, but I find that kind of strange.
with kids in school i will definitely be too poor to afford the upgrade. what are they going to do about that? i think 20,000 is way overpriced. where do they get these numbers?
Other important bit of news in there is that some poor people are exempt from paying the NHK guy.
When I was between jobs the fucking lying NHK guy said there were no exemptions. Bastard!
Wonder if I can get a refund for the payments I made during that time.
In other news, poor family of five die hungry but entertained.
I just thank the lord that we are still able to get the opiate to the masses in these trying times.
This is great for English teachers!
By 2011 digital tuners will be built in into every new TV and standalone tuners will cost 5000¥.