TV Dinners Make Digital Comeback

In 1953, the Swanson Company introduced Americans to the TV Dinner. Since that time millions of little aluminum foil trays of chicken, peas and mashed potatoes the consistency of Play-Doh™ have been baked in ovens all over this country. This not only has contributed to landfill problems with all that aluminum going into the garbage, it has wasted energy, since traditional ovens are used to cook these dinners.

Well, the TV dinner has gone digital and the environment will be better for it.There is a new high tech start up company in the Silicon Valley that will introduce a line of TV dinners this week. They promise that the dinners will be both nutritious and environmentally friendly.

The company, DigiEaT Systems (http://www.dietsyst.com/com) is partnering with several TV makers to take advantage of a little known byproduct of the new digital over-the-air broadcasting.Most people don’t realize that over-the-air broadcasting makes use of high frequency radio waves. These microwaves are the same waves that are concentrated in the microwave oven in your kitchen. Concentrating these waves on your popcorn or your TV dinner makes them heat up and cook very efficiently.

DIgiEaT has contracted with LG, the world’s largest Digital TV manufacturer, to develop a TV set that has a special slot into which you can insert the new TV dinners. Gone is the aluminum foil packaging since this would disrupt the flow of microwaves. Instead, all packaging is made of the recycled paper from "TV Guide Magazines" making them very environmentally friendly. Once inserted into the TV, the user will select the cooking time by changing the channel number on the tuner. The higher the channel number selected the faster the dinner will cook. Since it takes more power to transmit video on Channel 48 than it does for Channel 9, these dinners will certainly be popular with Public TV viewers and may even attract new ones to CET/PBS.

DigiEaT and LG plan to have dinners and compatible TVs in stores on April 1st.