Nine months to go before the U.S. gives birth to an all-digital television landscape, and a new report from Nielsen shows the patient may be having some labor pains.

As reported by the New York Times’ Brian Stelter, Nielsen Media Research’s findings on the state of DTV readiness show that 25 million “unprepared” households have at least one TV that will go dark after February 17, 2009, the date all TV stations stop sending out analog signals and switch to digital. “Completely unready” are the words used to describe 10 million of those 25 million homes; that is, all the TV’s in their homes – if they have more than one TV – get their signals via antenna. That’s 17 percent of all prime-time viewing. Nielsen says that African-American and Hispanic households will bear the brunt of the lost signals.

The Consumer Electronics Association, the trade group that represents most of the companies manufacturing TV’s, has begun its DTV educational campaign. For the CEA, it’s all about context. CEA spokesman Jason Oxman told me in an email response that Nielsen is counting as unprepared homes that do have some kind of digital cable or satellite access. “Put another way, if there is even one TV in a cable/satellite household that is not plugged into the service (for example, it is used to watch DVDs or play video games), Nielsen counts that household as unprepared,” Oxman says. “For the 86 percent of US households that subscribe to cable or satellite, the DTV transition does not impact their ability to watch TV.”

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), over 50 percent (approximately 57 million) of American households now own a digital TV. Figures are based on market and research data from the manufacturers of television and consumer electronics that compose the association as well as consumer research. Revenue for digital TV sales is expected to grow more »