From www.digitimes.com :

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reportedly passed a new regulation in August, requiring digital tuners to be installed into 50% and 100% of 36-inch and larger TVs by July 1 of 2004 and July 1 of 2005 respectively and into all 13-inch and larger TVs by July 1 of 2007.

Industry people predict that this decision will create a market demand for 30 million digital TVs (DTVs), valued at US$75 billion, over the next five years, and will be a boost to the DTV marketing plans of Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, according to the Korea Economic Daily.

Aiming to become the top DTV producer by 2005, Samsung plans to spend US$300 million on its DTV marketing campaign. The company will soon launch 40-inch and other LCD TVs.

LG has allocated a budget of US$200 million to market its DTVs up to 2006. The company has scheduled to launch a 50-inch PDP TV and a 60-inch rear-projection TV in the second half. The company also plans to invest US$90 million to increase its Reynosa, Mexico- based DTV factory’s production lines from three to twelve by 2005, boosting its annual capacity from 500,000 units to three million units.

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In other words .. you MUST buy a HDTV or you won't be able to watch the broadcasts at all. Fortunately we have some time to stack up old dvd's , vhs tapes and stuff , but these will become "grandpa" items quite quickly

If there is no market , just create one..

Although I quite like HDTV (standard PAL/NTSC/Secam resulution really sucks nowadays) this way of pushing is really "scary". They are creating a need, and that's bad. But... it's proven that it works: they did the same with DVD!

Not really , you still can rent , buy and copy VHS if you want to.

So much for free will

Wanna set up a company that makes cheap 12 inch tv's ?