Care to speculate on what lies beneath the edict, all analog television shall be digital come Feb' 09?

Surely DTV must be more important than trite things like hunger, homelessness, despotism, unemployment, stock manipulation, underemployment, poncey bonds, torture, abolishment of civil Liberties, habeus corpus...

Otherwise there would be edicts addressing the more trite issues.

Analog television has been a compromised technology ever since color TV was introduced. The FCC demanded that whatever system was approved would have to work with older black & white sets. For this reason it was not possible to design an optimal color system. Hardly anyone watches TV on a B&W set anymore and certainly no station broadcasts a purely B&W signal so that need no longer exists. Meanwhile we have gotten used to high quality images on our computer screens and digital technology has made it possible to watch cable and satellite programs and HD disks. So it made some sort of sense to bring broadcast TV up to speed. The networks and local stations are in enough trouble as it is with all the competition from those other sources. If something wasn't done to upgrade the broadcast signal the great mass of viewers might just stop watching them altogether. I think the government subsidized converter boxes are a good solution for people who don't want to or can't buy a digital TV right now. In a few years those old TVs will all be replaced as they wear out.

What is going to be interesting is who gets the use of the old TV broadcast spectrum. Will it go for purposes that are a real benefit to society? Will the government get a good price for the licenses or will the taxpayers get shafted by another government giveaway?

the official story is that DTV signals take up less space (even with higher quality) on the spectrum of broadcast than their analog counterparts, leaving room for expanding emergency communication frequencies for police and firefighters, etc. the technology has been available for years, but it's such a massive change that most people don't care about that it's taken an act of congress to push through. the deadline has been pushed back over and over; this was originally put forth in the telecommunications act of '96 (which, incidentally, was a lobbyist's dream).

the switch to digital isn't the swindle, the converter box coupons are. they've inflated the price of the boxes, and they might run out before the switch even happens.

it is my opinion that it is just a sign of the times, an upgrade related to new technology,

or perhaps, as you imply, Are they hiding something by blocking out analog service? good question.

There may be a good reason your path is less traveled.