If you recall we recently praised the promise of better HD displays with sets using the organic LED (OLED) technology. It turns out that the accolades may be a bit premature for at least one manufacturer. Tests by an independent research firm called DisplaySearch have revealed that the Sony XEL-1 model has some problems.

There is noticeable degradation of brightness after about 1000 hours of use. This projects to losing about half of the original quality by 17,000 hours which is about five years of typical use. Sony says that the brightness issue has been addressed in its latest version of the TV.

Given the current high cost of the technology, it’s pretty safe to assume that these won’t be finding their way into local family rooms anytime soon.

If you’re looking for more digital television answers, you might want to check out the DTV Trekker, a traveling road show sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters. The purpose is to raise public awareness about the coming transition to digital.

There will be information booths, demonstrations of digital vs. analog television, educational handouts and prizes. The Trekker will be at the Wal-Mart store, 5033 Transit Road in Clarence, NY from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, Monday, May 19th.

As always, you can get great information at the NAB site http://dtvanswers.com. Hope to see you there.

In a full scale test of Digital Television readiness, it was announced recently that the Wilmington, North Carolina market will make an early transition to all digital TV. The analog shutdown will occur on September 8, 2008 instead of next February. The only circumstance that would prevent the early cutover would be weather. September is in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Wilmington is one of many markets where all stations are on their final channel and at full power. The area is heavily promoting the coming DTV transition so the public should be totally aware of the coming changes.

One aspect of the early transition will be to reveal any unforeseen problems in the cutover. We will all be watching closely to see how it goes in Wilmington.

We are hearing from a lot of viewers lately who are having difficulties receiving WIVB or WNLO with their new DTV converter boxes. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Depending on your proximity to our transmitter towers, you may get away with an indoor antenna but in a lot of cases you’ll need to install an outdoor one. Obviously, if you live in the city or immediate suburbs, an indoor antenna will most likely suffice. The farther you get from our towers, however, the more likely you’ll need an outdoor antenna. An antenna professional can help with this.

I’ll pass along an interesting story. I had a viewer call recently where the caller had trouble receiving WIVB-DT with an indoor antenna in an area where reception should have been solid. I went down the list of likely remedies but nothing worked. I finally handed off the call to our transmitter engineer and he discovered that the caller lived in an aluminum sided house with a steel roof. There was no way the over-the-air signal could penetrate that kind of shield!

The moral here is to be aware of what you are trying to achieve. If you’re 30 miles or more away from the transmitter an indoor antenna may not work well enough.

At least one television manufacturer has announced some interesting features in upcoming high definition models.

LG is equipping some future models with a built-in DivX player and a hard disk to use in time-shifting.

The DivX feature will play back legally encoded movies through a USB port making it handy to plug in a thumb drive and enjoy a movie.

The 80 Gigabyte hard drive will allow for time-shifting programs and also backing up recorded material via the USB port.

Look for more unique features popping up in future HDTV sets.

We're hearing from a lot of viewers these days who have already obtained their digital set-top converters. If this is any indication of nationwide activity, the coupons are going fast.

If you are planning to apply for a coupon, don't wait too long. Remember it takes at least a month to receive the coupons and then you have 90 days to redeem them.

Get help and apply online for your coupon here: https://www.dtv2009.gov/ or call 1-888-DTV-2009.

Multichannel News is reporting an upswing in HDTV sales.

It’s said that 5.5 million households have purchased their first HD set in December and January, during the 2007-2008 holiday and Super Bowl season. An online survey says that 28 million households in the US now own at least one HDTV set. Also more than 3 million homes have added a second HD set bringing the total of homes that have 2 or more HDTV’s to about 10 million.

Frank N. Magid Associates, who conducted the survey, credits falling prices and the coming digital transition for the surge in sales.

Another tidbit: 4 out of 10 current HDTV owners plan to purchase an additional HD set in the next year.

It seems I’m always the last to find these things out, and you may already know this, but it was announced at the CBS Engineering meeting here in Las Vegas that the fall 2008 season of Survivor, CBS’s hugely popular reality show, will be shot in high definition. It’s just another reason to look into a digital solution, whether it be a new HD set or the digital set-top converter box.

Several of the nation’s largest retailers were hit with heavy fines last week for improperly labeling analog sets that needed converters to operate after February 17th of 2007.

In total, the FCC stung some big retailers with fines totaling about $3.9 million. They also fined other companies around $2.7 million for failure to comply with other digital TV rules, such as importing or shipping analog-only TV sets across state lines and blocking technologies such as the V-chip.

The FCC established rules for retailers last May in order to protect consumers. Units sold after May of 2007 must have a warning label if they are analog-only devices that would require a converter next year.

Please be careful if purchasing a new, non-HD set. As we said before, if the box doesn’t state that it has an ATSC tuner, it won’t be usable after next February without a converter.

The official FCC notice can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/68zvyx. (Requires pdf viewer.)

If there was ever any doubt about the future of digital television, it was certainly dispelled here in Las Vegas. We saw very little in the way of standard definition equipment on display. It was high definition everywhere you looked.

Great strides are being made from our end of things – the broadcast side. Cameras and lenses are improving, effects boxes are more dazzling, even virtual news sets are exceedingly convincing.

There was even some gimmickry in the form of 3D high definition displays. You didn’t use your father’s 3D glasses (the old red and green ones) to watch, though, what you put on was a pair of high tech polarized lenses and the effect was very convincing, though somewhat lacking in definition. Still, it was startling to see an arrow coming toward you, or a fish swimming seemingly inches away from your face.

Bottom line is that high definition is not a curiosity any more. It’s being embraced by the networks and becoming more commonplace in the local station. It's the future and promise of digital television.