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.)