FCC Mandates Digital Tuners 494
Gekko writes "The FCC has caved to pressures and has rolled back their mandate to requiring HDTV to 2007." A follow-up to this article: looks like the answer is "yes", although an extra year's delay has been added. Cherish your analog televisions, they will be collector's items. Update: 08/08 20:38 GMT by M : Declan McCullagh notes that there was also a vote on the broadcast flag concept to prevent copying of digital television - a set of draft regulations will be released next week.
Free Market? What Free Market? (Score:5, Insightful)
cherish my what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, and bad (Score:2, Insightful)
I do wonder about the propriety of it, though. Is it really the function of government to force the adoption of certain technologies? Shouldn't market forces prevail?
I suppose there are plenty of precedents for government interference, so I shouldn't worry about this.
Somebody tell me to shut up.
Why a mandate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot doesn't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Digital TV isn't necessarily HDTV. Make sure you understand this point.
My dear old dad vs. digital television (Score:5, Insightful)
He asked me: "When did we, the public, without which public television would not exist, vote that we wanted to move to digital television? How is it in the public interest to move public programming to a new standard for which most people don't have televisions and which will eventually necessitate the the purchase of a new set?"
Good questions, and he's starting to understand some of what is going on in the name of progress that is starting to encroach on the public good that he, and really all of us, are used to.
The nightmare scenario for him, of course, would be that he couldn't be able to time-shift News Hour [pbs.org], Washington Week [pbs.org], and The McLaughlin Group [mclaughlin.com] because of digital no-record flags. He tells me that the majority of the TV he watches is recorded with only a small portion being live.
Of course, my dad also says that the problem with TV isn't that there is too little good stuff to watch, but rather that there is really too much. He loves his TV.
Re:Why a mandate? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is only one reason: Money. They can use the extra bandwidth which is freed-up by the switchoff of the analogue TV to licence for other uses.
Once they sell the airwaves, your tv is illegal (Score:1, Insightful)
Someone somewhere will say that broadcasting their cellular network on channel 6 is "encrypted" because people aren't supposed to have receivers for channel six. Your analog TV is a circumvention technology and you'll go to jail for having it. EVEN if it ISN'T PLUGGED IN.
That's the future fud or not.
but, it should make for some fun hacking.
Re:One point (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on your definition of "able to receive".
If there's a broadcaster with digital transmission in the right range, you may be classified as "able to receive". What? You don't have a digital capable TV? Not their problem.
The reality is that people are still buying televisions, and at a good clip. TVs wear out sooner or later, and even a minor repair often costs more than a new set.
And before people whine and cry that this is just a big ploy to make everyone buy new TVs, remember that it was the manufacturer's association that was trying to block this. Yup. That's right. The people who you'd have to buy a new TV from were trying to prevent you from having to buy a new TV. I don't get it either.
Oh, and their estimate of $250 additional cost is a load of crap. Yes, it would cost that much (or more) today, because of supply and demand. This very same organization complained that IEEE-1394 should not be made the digital connection standard for TVs because it would raise the cost of TVs $100 per connector. Yes. IEEE-1394, aka Firewire. You know, that connector you have 2 of on your new $80 motherboard? In addition to about 20 other connectors?
digital radio (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't they mandate digital radion, it's been arround a hell of a lot longer than T.V.
Oh i remember, they want to sell the air again.
Re:What are the odds (Score:3, Insightful)
So, I have to wonder - what benefit do I really get out of upgrading? Sure, some electronics store gets a few hundred bucks of my money, RIAA is protected until the next big thing comes along, but what's in this for me?
Is there a federal buyback program on analog TV's? Will it clear up back pain and skin problems? What?
Re:Free Market? What Free Market? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a libertarian, I can name only a few areas where the gov't has a legitimate function. Regulating the common radio spectrum is one of them.
This isn't about regulating the radio spectrum, it's about regulating the sale of devices which happen to use the radio spectrum. Further, what right does the federal government have to regulate intrastate use of the radio spectrum? These televisions could still be used for reception of low-power stations which do not interfere with those in other states.
You're being naive. (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as hell am not. This would lead to a classic "tragedy of the commons" situation, where everyone would stamp all over everyone else's transmissions, so that noone would get any use out of radio transmission. Kiss your cellphone goodbye. Kiss the radios in your police cars and ambulances and airplanes goodbye.
Secondly, regulation of transmission keeps devices from interfering with each other. It's quite possible to broadcast a signal that will prevent your cable TV from working properly, for instance. It's quite possible to broadcast a signal that will kill someone with a pacemaker. But the current regulations prevent this.
And if you deregulate everything, they'll somehow be less able to do that?
Anarchy on the airwaves would be about as bad as real anarchy in real life, i.e. get ready for someone to kick the shit out of you.
Jon Acheson
Not easy in this case... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a few of the players:
The FCC, which wants to reauction the existing licenses for lots of bucks
The military, the EU, the FCC, and others who desperately want to grab some of the VHF station bandwidth
The existing cell phone companies, who don't want any new bandwidth to become available
The remaining cell phone dreamers, who want more bandwidth so they can pay billions for it
The content providers, who want to use the move to digital to impose copy protection
The hardware mfgs, who are deeply conflicted: they would love to sell everyone a new TV (at least as of the 1990 census, 98% of US households had a TV while 94% had flush toilets), but who don't really want to get involved with copy protection and who are afraid everyone will just stop buying for a while
And finally, the consumer/voter, who watches 60 hours a week of TV and who may not care much about school taxes or world peace, but who WILL get off his butt and vote any congressman who interrupts his TV watching out of office so fast the Capitol will be smoking.A big, big fight with everyone being both a good guy and a bad guy. What fun!
sPh
Re:One point (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe that's what the manufacturer's association is wary of...
Re:Why a mandate? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can buy whatever TV you want. You can purchase a vintage 1970 Zenith 15" floor console and set it up. You can purchase a 1985 "cable-ready" setup and use it. You can purchase a 2000 flat screen plasma display. Heck, if you want to buy an Etch-A-Sketch and mount it on the wall (Ohh, it's so thin!) and call it TV and there's *NOTHING* that anyone can or would do to you.
What the government *CAN* do however, is tell the broadcasters that service your area to turn off the signal that your "legacy" systems require to tune "off the air" programming.
Does this mean that your old TV is now landfill fodder? Maybe. You see, this only applies to "off the air" programming. Your local cable company will still be able to offer "legacy" cable service if they want. Of course, you will have to do some tricks to get that old Zenith working on cable, and don't get me started on the hacking needed to get that Etch-A-Sketch to be "Cable-Ready"...
Re:One point (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the FCC knows that any TV can view DTV signals with a converter -- they even put it in their FAQ [fcc.gov] but no one is going to buy a $200 piece of equipment to see what they are already watching down converted from DTV to analog. This also ignores whatever equipment people would need to actually recieve the DTV signal in the first place.
So, the FCC knows people aren't going to invest in the equipment until the analog signal goes away. And the analog signal won't go away until people have the equipment. The FCC has no choice but what they are doing. The only other alternatives would be to force consumers to buy converters (or give them away). The FCC already forced broadcasters to send the DTV signal, and they won't send both signals forever.
It will still take a long while for the tuners to get up tp the 85% level (even though that represents households and not sets) and I predict that number will eventually be lowered. Doing it this way will take much longer than the FCC originaly hoped, since it will first start with large TV's and then gradually all TV's, but it will happen eventually. And once the analog signal is turned off the number will climb rapidly. You can say now that you just won't buy a new TV, but eventually you'll need a DTV tuner to see anything at all. Much like the V-chip, DTV is something you will eventually have whether you want it or not.
What's the big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not HDTV.
This is not Cable TV.
This is not Satellite TV.
This is OTA broadcasts. Digital transmissions will use much less bandwith than the current analog ones, the govn't really has a good reason to push this!
But then again, you guys still use your inches and feet so I guess you're just stubborn like that. (joking.. joking.. I swear!)