Static continues for digital television.

As digital television broadcasting approaches its first anniversary in the United States, yet another tussle over technical standards is raising questions over whether it will ever get off the ground. This week, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 58 television stations reaching about 24 percent of U.S. homes with televisions, submitted a petition to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would effectively make current DTV equipment, including expensive DTV sets, obsolete if adopted. Sinclair asked the commission to allow broadcasters to transmit DTV signals using a technology in widespread use in Europe. Since that technology is different from the one broadcasters started using in November of 1998, DTV_s official rollout, the small group of consumers who laid out money for sets costing upwards of $5,000 last year would have to buy new equipment to receive programming. Sinclair said there_s good reason to change the standards in midstream, though. The company discovered during real-world tests conducted at 40 sites in Baltimore, Maryland, that DTV sets have a hard time receiving signals in urban areas dense with high-rises and on the fringes of reception areas.