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.
Digital Tuners (Score:2, Interesting)
I have been putting off the purchase of a new TV exactly for this reason, I don't want to screw around with an external tuner. Put it in the TV.
One problem (Score:4, Interesting)
If I want to watch TV in the future I will need a digital telvision, since by 2007 that will be all that they are selling. Which I don't mind so much since picture quality will be higher and it will hopefully cost less than a digital tv does now.
My concern is whether or not old analog devices will plug into a new digital tv. Will the new tvs have RCA in/out, coax? Or only digital plugs. How am I supposed to plug my NES/Atari/VCR/ into this television since they only have analog out? The only things with digital out are DVD players with S-Video or component out (those are digital right?) and modern game consoles with the same.
Anybody know?
What are the odds (Score:4, Interesting)
People are going to be pissed if they have to spend big bucks on a new tv. Especially if they bought one just a year or two earlier. Talk about riots in the streets.
Of course, you can't control copying on an analog product.
I just might not get a new tv as it is. I would gladly participate in a class action suit if they force me to replace a TV that would normally last ten or 20 years as it was. never mind the VCRs
no word on broadcast flags? (Score:2, Interesting)
Current Digital Tuners (Score:4, Interesting)
What is the effect of a broadcast flag on digital tuners that are currently on the market? Do they bypass the flag? Will they not work? Will they somehow recognize and follow the flag?
Given that the flag issues is not yet worked out, and we're now mandating the digital tuners, are we designing a great big hole in the system or are we requiring millions of people to buy equipment that will be obsolete in just a couple of years?
hmm - is the reason the broadcasters and content guys are pushing the integrated tuner because they know that means when the old pre-flag set wear out, those tuners will be gone?
Also - can't manufacturers get around this by calling their sets "monitors" and not televisions. In the old days a "monitor" was a tunerless tv, and with advent of hdtv resolutions/capabilities, the dividing line between the newer meaning of (computer) monitor and tuner-less TV essentially disappears.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why a mandate? Easy answer (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite simple really, they are owned by the big entertainment companies. The entertainment companies are the ones who want this, so they can put DRM in the framework and force it on all of their evil, pirating, unethical customers.
But I am guessing that they'll have to find some way to ease this into the customer's butts, cause it won't go over at all if they try to cram it in all at once.
Fear the Digital Age - Rising Dark Age Looms - (Score:2, Interesting)
Under the DMCA analog transmissions (i.e. non-digital, verbal, print, etc.) are covered under the anti-curcumvention clause. This in effect can make it illegal to discuss a topic. Here is how:
I make a product called the Widget Foobar 3K (3000 calories). It is a potentially dangerous form of addictive candy with sharp edges and big pointy teeth. With digital television (Which is encrypted btw) I broadcast a commerical.
Pan 3 hours after the launch and 10 kids die (This is an absurd but clear way to describe this) from the WF3K. I as a parent or survivor want to warn the world so I hope on
Because the commerical is digital and encrypted I cannot use ANY content that was encrypted. So I cannot say the name of the product (That is encrypted information via the TV) which hampers the fact that I cannot describe the item (Any information that is in the encrypted broadcast is covered via the DMCA) and I am unable to warn parents, who for some odd reason, were unaware that eating razor sharp candy with 3000 calories might be bad for your child.
Knowing I cannot write about it I decide to run out in the street and shout about it. Sorry, verbal communication is catagoized as AN ANALOG transmission over public airwaves, again covered by the DMCA.
This is an extreme case (In fact virtually impossible, exaggerated to illustrate the mechanism of the censorship.) Now here is the very likely and REAL impact.
--- Begin Reality Check Version 4.0 ---
--Checking Human RAM
--(Barring Mental Illness this will return OK)
--Memory Check Complete, Forgot FirstKiss.Mem
--Attempting to reclaim FirstKiss.Mem
--File FirstKiss.Mem has file error type: WASDRUNK
--Unable to Recover.
--Memory Check: OK (.0000000000000001% tests bad)
--- Reality Check Version 4.0 Complete ---
--- Loading Reality OS ---
Ok here is the real solution.
You are a book publisher publishing classical literature. Sales are down thanks to Project Gutenberg. You decide to complete by making a digital version of Hamlet (for example.) The attempt fails as Gutenberg is free and you $1.00 copy of Hamlet is a buck to high.
Now you get nasty and evil. Perhaps your parents didn't love you enough. Who cares. You decide to use the DMCA to crush PG. How you ask? Simple.
You make a crap-tacular encryption system to encode your EBook. Done.
You Publish your Ebook and sell it. (Few Buy of course.)
Under the DMCA the circumvention of an Encryption scheme is a violation. (Check the law, it doesn't mention anything about the content, just the encryption itself.) Covered under this encryption is Analog transmission (i.e. Recording digital TV with a camcorder by pointing the camcorder at the T.V screen) is a violation. Just as reciting Stephen King's "Pet Cemetary" in public word for word is a copyright infringment.
Now suddenly PG is violating the DMCA! How? By providing an unencrypted version of the same text. There isn't a copyright infringment, merely a DMCA violation. No Mr. Ebook publisher can charge $200 per page to read Hamlet (which no person can afford, effectivly banning the book) and no person living under DMCA juridiction can publish their own version (as it would contain data within the encrypted version of the book.)
Now PG gets sues into obscurity and the book publisher has found a whole new level of book banning. Don't like someone's review? Digitally run an ad on HDTV with all the specs, the independant reviews cannot mention ANY of the data contained in the transmission as it would violate the DMCA (How about pictures... I wonder if they took a picture of you and broadcast it, would further pictures of yourself be a violation? Creepy...) We are NOT talking about copyright, fair use, etc. We are looking at the DMCA at an entity of it's own.
Why burn books when you can Hijack them? Think I am a few donuts short of a baker's dozen, probably. But I tend to plan for "Worse Case" scenarios (That is part of my job) and this has way too much danger to turn into a nightmare of a Ray Bradbury book.. (Can you guess which one?)
Think of the capacity for social enginneering! Contol the information and you will control the world.
Knowledge is power they say, and the wicked crave power, and let me ask you this: Those who are wicked and powerful, do they like to share power?
The answer is... Spectrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Broadcasters have two options going digital: Higher quality, same channel bandwidth. Or current quality, something like 1/4 channel bandwidth.
Color TV was a better signal in the same bandwidth, and had a lot to offer for the consumer. Full res HDTV is the closest analog to this, but offers less to the consumer.
When FM started there was plenty of spectrum in the broadcast band - In fact, the FCC gave broadcasters excessively wide channel spacings. (Needed for technical reasons at the time, no longer necessary. This is being taken advantage of by current standards proposed for digital radio broadcasting that have both the old analog signal AND the digital signal occupying the same channel.) FM also offered a lot for the consumer.
The problem with standard-res low-bandwidth TV is that it offers very little of visible benefit to the consumer. The beneficiaries are the broadcasters (Theoretically they can broadcast 4 standard-def streams in the bandwidth they are already licensed for), and later the consumers, although indirectly. As someone pointed out in the recent Sprint/2.5G/3G cellular thread, the main thing holding back 3G is spectrum. Care to take a guess where some of that spectrum was supposed to come from??? Yup, bandwidth freed up by moving TV broadcasts to digital.
Cellular as an example (Score:4, Interesting)
Which means, that in the city, I always get my text messaging and the like, but in some areas (out in the woods) it's typical to have analog-only service. Not only does this not bother me, I appreciate having some service over none.
Why can't they do this with televisions? Put a tuner in their that will work with both types of channels? If the FCC simply required that all new TVs were "dual mode tuner" TVs, rollout of HDTV would be *ALOT* less painful!
I'd imagine that the analog tuner circuitry would quickly drop to a single $3 chip...
Re:Great. Shit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, that still isn't going to change the fact that broadcasters are rapidly becoming irrelevant, with most homes opting for cable or satellite signal delivery. Heck, a lot of folks are buying big HD-ready RPTVs just to have a higher quality (widescreen, progressive-scan) monitor for their DVD collection. With mandatory tuners adding to the price, this market might dry up quickly.
On the "glass is half full" side, maybe the tuners will get cheaper once they're in all the TVs.
You'll appreciate it in the end... (Score:1, Interesting)
The last VHF TV transmitter in the U.K. was turned off in 1984, and now we've got the benefit of a totally UHF system. It's great, it really is, I think at one point in time we were the only country that was UHF. Equipment is cheaper as a result. Aerial installations are simpler.
The only negative effect is that some people, (mostly in Wales, and Scotland), can't get TV anymore, (the band I and III signals survived better in the hilly terrain), and that is especially a problem in the Welsh valleys, where satellite isn't an option, but for the most part, the move to UHF only has been excellent.
Also, it makes DXing on the VHF bands easier, because there isn't any interference
Re:Free Market? What Free Market? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:cherish my what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Kinda like CDs. Prerecorded CDs *still* cost more than tapes, and the prices of the CD player and a single CD are getting *very* close. (You can get a CD player for $20 on special).
How we're doing this in Finland (Score:2, Interesting)
A small amount of people have already bought digital tv's but the deadline is too soon for the majority of people. Digital tellies are currently too expensive for the average John Doe and neither are the commercial tv channels interested in providing anything special for those who're watching the programmes digitally (since nobody has the equipment for them).
Spectrum == $$$ (Score:2, Interesting)
The most important reason is that when the analog space is vacated, this will allow the FCC to auction the spectrum for billions of dollars. When have you ever seen the governement walking away from billions of "free money"?
It's almost comical to see the FCC and the CEA to dance around this issue. Think about it: only 10 to 20% of all Americans get their TV via OTA antennas. Why is this mandate only focused on digital OTA? If the FCC were honest about their motives, they would be focusing thier attention on Cable Set-Top-Boxen.
When equipment hits real consumers - issues arise (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure there are going to be boxes (like digital cable boxes now) that allow you to watch the new content on an older TV.
But in systems now, most people have cable installers hook up even the simple boxes we have today. Are people going to want to hire someone to install a box for broadcast, even assuming they can afford the box?
Also, I can already see the worst issue - macrovision. I'm sure all of these digital recievers will support macrovision, and when people hook the boxes up to old VCR's (which they will do in droves, don't tell me PVR's will even have a 20% penetration by 2006) they are going to get bad pictures and return the boxes.
I've already seen a preview of this in action - recently I was in a target and a wal-mart on two seperate occasions returning something, and each time there was a person ahead of me exchanging a game console for a brand new one "because the picture was all messed up watching DVD's". I explained to the people each time what Macrovision was and that they had to run the signal straight to the TV, but it really made me wonder how many perfectly good consoles get returned TODAY because of macrovision, much less a future box that everyone in the US will need to watch TV.
I have no idea what happens when every TV junkie in the US gets mad at government, but it will sure be interesting to find out. I expect major firefighting efforts from the government on this issue.
Re:Clearer and prettier pictures... for what? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.feldoncentral.com/hdtv/ [feldoncentral.com]
There are lots of great examples. It's just a still picture -- true video, of course, will be much nicer.
Re:One point (Score:2, Interesting)
The consumer:
Buys a new T.V., pays extra for something that makes it incompatible with his VCRs, DVD players, camcorders...
Buys new DVDs VCRs, camcorders...
Subscribes to cable or satellite because their new T.V. can no longer pick up the chicago station.
If on Satellite, adds a few $ per month to get the local stations.
Pays the environmental disposal fee to get rid of the old T.V. when it is obsoleted.
Hollywood and the Manufacturers:
Have another method of distributing the same movie already sold in Betamax, VHS, Laserdisk, DVD.
No longer worries about the analog copy protection hole .
Can sell you a new T.V., VCR, DVD player, Game Console, Camcorder and accessories.
I'm not a total luddite, I think we should convert to analog gradually on the consumers terms. Mandate full conversion 2 years after we go metric.