This would be an easier story to understand if one were to substitute "Brazilian" for "Canadian." As it is, it's tough to believe that "as many as 878,000 Canadian households are not prepared for the country's impending switch to digital television."
But that's the word from the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as it prepares the country for the ultimate shift from analog to digital on Aug. 31, 2011. Perhaps because the country's broadcasters don't cling as tightly to their spectrum as their U.S. counterparts, stories from up north also suggest "some local stations may not decide to convert to digital, instead relying solely on cable and satellite companies."
Broadcasters who do convert--and probably even those who don't--"are expected to actively participate in the creation and implementation of a national consumer education program" that should start no later than March 2011, the CRTC maintained.
The best education program, of course, might be to study and then try to avoid the pitfalls that U.S. viewers went through when multiple delays resulted in what the Canadian press believes was a transition that went "relatively smoothly" in 2009.
For more:
- see this story
- and this story
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DTV transition getting dicey
It's official: DTV transition delayed to June 12