I stepped out of the Las Vegas Convention Center yesterday to recover from the brilliant glare of the gazillion TVs on display inside — only to run into another set of boxes on the sidewalk. Okay, they weren’t regular old TVs, but humans wearing black boxes over their heads.

Their heads emblazoned with the logos of TV companies, these “TV zombies” were out on the street taking a break from their first CES protest. Jeffrey Jacoby, one of the zombies, explained that they were members of the Electronics Takeback Coalition, which was demonstrating against the poor gadget recycling practices of consumer electronics manufacturers like LG, Toshiba, Sony and others.

“We’re calling on manufacturers of TVs at CES to take back old products and keep toxic e-waste from coming to haunt us,” said Jacoby, who was dressed in rags and had on white face paint. The Dallas resident works for an environmental non-profit group and came to Vegas along with nearly 40 other people, just to protest.

Earlier in the day, the group organized a press conference and an official 25-zombie demonstration. (You can watch the TV zombies in action in this “Revenge of the Return of the Undead Toxic Televisions” video here.) They’re campaigning for a national recycling program from TV manufacturers ahead of the Feb 17, 2009 digital TV transition,  when “millions of (analog) TVs will become obsolete,” according to the website.

Maybe it’ll be a less uphill task this year to convince CES exhibitors that taking back old TVs isn’t such a bad thing, given how much they’re touting their new energy-saving TVs, recyclable packaging and general all-round environmental friendliness.

Everyone wants to save money in these troubled economic times. For those of you craving a flat-panel TV, Bernstein Research suggests you might be able to afford a “nice” LCD model if you cancel your cable bill and utilize free Web video sites like Hulu.com for a year.

In the report “The Nouveau Broke - Hitchhiker’s Guide to a Free LCD TV,” analyst Jeff Evenson says IP video will eventually account for at least 80 percent of all video viewed globally as college students, recent graduates, and young adults — equipped with computers and broadband Internet — find cable less necessary.

The economic crisis could accelerate Web video adoption, he writes:

Some consumers may decide to reduce expenses by canceling video subscriptions (e.g., cable) and viewing content over the Internet … we conclude that making the switch could easily pay for a “nice” LCD TV in under a year if consumers utilize advertising-supported content and 3 years with reasonable use of “for fee” downloads.

Using the simplest option of buying a 32″ HD LCD TV using only free IP Video content, the payback period is 6 months and the consumer would save $1,300 over a three year period

With many top-rated network TV shows now available for free online, plus the likes of Netflix, Evenson says the cost of buying an LCD TV, a box to connect it to your computer, and content, is now less than the cost of basic cable packages.

As for where you can find your favorite shows online? Bernstein provides this table:

Keep an eye on

• Sumner Redstone recently proposed to sell National Amusements’ 1,500-screen theater chain to help pay off debt, but it may not be enough to placate his bankers because there’s no agreement on what the theaters are worth (New York Times)
• Blockbuster said it will roll out a new digital media player that brings fewer, but more recent titles from the Internet to consumers’ televisions than a six-month old offering from rival Netflix (Reuters)
• Warner Music Group’s quarterly earnings beat Wall Street estimates but the company said results in early fiscal 2009 may look worse than later in the year due to its music release schedule and the global economy (Reuters)
• New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, founded by actor Robert De Niro after the Sept 11 attacks, plans to stage a new festival in Qatar next year (Reuters)

(Photo: A worker cleans parts of the Samsung exhibition stand at the International Funkaustellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin, 27 August 2008. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)

WASHINGTON - It is about six months until the United States faces a seismic event that potentially rivals the Y2K scare eight years ago — the digital television transition which could switch off millions of old television sets.

The television industry and government officials are doing a lot to warn consumers that if they don’t have a new television that can pick up the new, crisper pictures, don’t buy a digital-to-analog converter box or don’t have a subscription service like cable, they could be in the dark come Feb. 18, 2009.

So that would lead one to believe that the Consumer Electronics Association, whose mission in life is to hawk all those new fangled gizmos to consumers, would be on the road talking up the beautiful (and expensive) digital television sets its members want to sell.

But instead of warning about the looming deadline that could mean millions of televisions going dark, strangely, the CEA has set out on a different kind of bus tour this summer — promoting free trade (and of course never mind that gasoline is still hovering around $4 a gallon).

Free trade you ask? Well, it certainly left us scratching our heads, since the Democratic-controlled Congress has pretty much made it clear no free trade agreements will likely pass this year (Colombia, Panama and South Korea are pending) despite constant pressure from President George W. Bush.

The bus is going through 28 states over the next few  weeks and it will also make appearances at the two presidential nominating conventions in late August and early September.

A spokesman for CEA, Jason Oxman, said they were challenged by congressional leaders to mount an education effort and how trade was a “bright spot” in the faltering economy. He also said the United States had already cut tariffs on Colombian products entering the country but U.S. goods still faced barriers entering that country.

“We are responding with a nationwide, grassroots educational tour that highlights free trade’s vital role in the U.S. economy and job creation, as 16 percent of the 4.4 million Americans who work in the CE industry owe their jobs to free trade,” he said.

As for the digital transition, Oxman said “Our consumer education work with our industry and government partners is active and widespread.”

(Photo: Reuters)