Visit any electronics shop and you cannot escape reminders that in July 2011, Japan will end analog TV broadcasts and switch over to digital. After that time, existing analog TV sets will require adapters, but over the next 2 1/2 years most people are expected to discard their set for a digital model.

The 50-year-old NTSC analog technology currently in use is actually quite good, and while digital may offer some improvements in terms of viewing quality, the rationale for the switch-over concerns bandwidth allocation —-which will free up more channels — and not image quality per se.

And there's the rub: I suppose millions of Japanese agree with me that it will be bad enough to lose a perfectly serviceable CRT TV to this enforced obsolescence; but what I really find objectionable is that this will almost certainly be a case of old wine in new wineskins, in that the "new" technology will afford no real improvement in the quality, content or variety of TV programming.