FCC Considers Mandating HDTV Copy Protection

HeavenlyWhistler writes "The Washington Post reports that the FCC will make a ruling this month on whether or not to mandate that all HDTV receivers implement copy protection when a 'broadcast flag' is detected in the received television signal. Movie and TV studios are pushing for this in an attempt to limit consumers' home-recording rights. An October 8 article states that CBS, under orders from Viacom CEO Mel Karmazin, has threatened to stop all HDTV broadcasts unless the broadcast flag is approved. While the comment period on the proposal (Docket 02-230) is over, the FCC web site will still let you submit comments. The EFF also discusses this issue."

Re:These people really don't get it.

[mpe]

Incidentally, there would be substantially less file swapping going on of TV shows if the networks made them available on DVD or electronically.

As well as episodes being broadcast everywhere at the same time (or at least within 24-36 hours). Thing is that US broadcasters would have to start following the rest of the world and broadcast series in order.

I'd love to be able to go FOX and buy the episode of the Futurama I missed the other night for a reasonable - considering it was free on the air price.

Region 1 tends to be last for getting TV series on DVD. Especially those originally produced for the North American market. Because US broadcasters have a well organised system for repeat showings, the rest of the world's broadcasters do not.

Who is going to lose more on this?

[ultrapenguin]

HDTV has always been a "slow moving" process. Stations were given a frequency range to use for HD, and given a requirement of something like broadcast at least 30+ hours of HD content.

But nobody cared. STB's required to receive it back then (and still) too expensive for casual home user. Sales of analog TVs still outnumber those of HDTV-capable TV sets.

And now, they are going to make it even more difficult for people to enjoy this new-and-expensive technology? If anything, to increase HDTV adoption they should make the units cheaper, and allow people to do more with this new technology than they could do with their old analog equipment.

For new technology like this to catch on, people need incentives to use it, not more limitations compared to old technology. If I was in the market for a HDTV set now, I wouldn't buy it if I found out that my use of it would be restricted to only watching it, and not being allowed to timeshift/record what I wanted.

Oh, and on the topic of copy protection, the copy protection, the bits these people are talking about are most likely the DTCP_descriptor bits, described in detail at http://www.dtcp.com/data/info_dtcp_v1_12_20010711. pdf from your friends at DTLA - The group which digital/HDTV people will learn to hate real soon now. In short, it talks about adding a special descriptor to the mpeg2ts streams which deals with things like copyonce/copymany/copynever, and also things like retention, how long a show can exist in recorded format on a DVR/PVR unit.

Retention_State_Indicator Retention Time
000 Forever
001 1 week
010 2 days
011 1 day
100 12 hours
101 6 hours
110 3 hours
111 90 minutes
^ yes, sometimes they won't even let you have it for more than 90 minutes :(

Re:Why do any recording at all?

[CastrTroy]

Actually, i saw a documentary on this once. What happens, is they do normalize the sound. The problem is, is that the advertisers know this, and make every sound in the commercial at maximum volume. This gives the illusion that it's louder, without actually being louder per se.

Think about the loudest sound in the TV show you're watching, like a bomb exploding, or when the characters yell at eachother. Now imagine the entire show that loud. Just like a commercial, isn't it.