And now, a short collection of stories to give you another thing to worry about: your health and well being as a TV owner. It seems that the DTV transition may have some unintended consequences.

The U.S. government may have an ulterior motive behind the switch to digital television. Undisclosed sources claim that any television set manufactured after 1995 has the capability not only to receive a broadcast signal, but also to send one. Now, Internet videos purportedly show a spy camera and a microphone hidden inside a "typical" digital TV converter box purchased at retail. Explanations claim that such devices are "part of a government and industry surveillance program that is undoubtedly connected to the forced digital TV switchover being rolled out in the UK and US." While it’s not clear how such monitoring gets back to those collecting the information, it’s clear from Internet blogs that many people believe such spying to be possible and even true.

In an unrelated story that supports the notion that watching TV can incite violence, police responded to a home in Joplin, Missouri last week, after reports of shots being fired inside. According to KARE-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the 70-year-old homeowner was angry that he had lost his cable, and was unable to get his new DTV converter to work properly. He responded by showering his TV with bullets. After a brief standoff, the man was taken into custody, and was charged with unlawful use of a firearm. No word so far on the condition (or brands) of the TV or converter box.

Years ago, when the ATSC system was being developed, a debate raged over the merits of interlaced scanning, as compared to progressive. Most broadcasters favored the support of interlaced scan, mostly for legacy reasons pertaining to the huge embedded base of interlaced-video equipment. Others, most notably in the computer and software camps, favored progressive scan, due to its apparent advantages when displaying text and graphics. One particularly vocal opponent of interlace supported their position by claiming that its continued use would lead to an increase of incidences of AIDS. The reasoning was that, because interlace makes text harder to read, public-service announcements and information regarding protection from the disease would be lost to huge swaths of the population.

Now, to come back to planet earth (or, for those that need an explanation)… The spy-camera story is a hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy advocate trying to plug an equally absurd so-called "documentary" about Barack Obama; alcohol may have been involved in the gun-wielding "man-bites-dog" incident; and as far as AIDS and interlaced goes, well, you can figure that one out.

In fact, a story did surface last year that Comcast was considering putting cameras into set top boxes. According to a company spokesperson, the idea of using cameras emerged from a hallway conversation at a conference, but the application was a camera-based gesture recognition device in no way designed to be - or capable of - monitoring a user’s living room. These technologies are being explored to allow simple navigation on a television set just as the Wii provides gesture-based interactivity.

What other conspiracies are being cooked up? Apparently, the possibility of subliminal advertising has returned to the blogosphere. What’s next? - agc

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