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."

Wont change a thing

[DaHat]

I've spent the last 6 months working with professional and broadcast level digital tv encoders and decoders, even writing a fair amount of software on both sides. This flag is pretty pointless, and is often a laugh when discussed at work.

With the hardware we build and work with, the sort which a broadcaster would use to both create and monitor their transport stream, the ability is needed to record and play back at will, thus, such a flag would pretty much be ignored by our systems if implemented. Besides, if you end up modifying the ATSC standard, in order to prevent breaking all previous encoders/decoders on the market, you would need to make such modifications to portions of the stream which are unused, and existing off the shelf parts would ignore such a modification. Thus, the protection starts off ineffective.

Even after the existing non compliant decoders/recorders/etc on the market are retired to due age or death, newer hardware which ignores such protections would still be available, you'd just have to pay a fair amount.

What's on my Christmas list this year? A DTV decoder as well as a recorder/player unit, cost for both? About 15k. As sad is it is to ask, how important is your right to copy to you? Is it work 15 thousand dollars?

Re:Good (Good? BS!!!)

[hermango]

Considering the fact that I have a lot of stuff that I record during the day to scan through at night and that if I can't record stuff then I won't ever see it at all and that I've been doing this for years, what is it now that has their drawers kinked? Well, exactly what it is is pay-per-view, total control, forever and ever, which is what they've been trying to get since the VCR was invented. So CBS is going to stop transmitting in HDTV, let them! Matter of fact, let them ALL stop transmitting in HDTV! Then watch as the Congress, after being attacked by a few million of the voters, tells CBS to transmit in HDTV or go out of business! If they can't provide an HDTV signal, then the stations that are affiliated with CBS can't transmit the signal, hence zero revenue for CBS and ASL of pissed-off viewers! They want hard-ball, then they'll get hard-ball!

What it is really about..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is about advertising, With advertisements increasing more and more people are using their VCRs and TVio sets to skip over the adds. Why should I watch a programmed one hour time slot when I can see it in 30 minutes or less?

I don't think the advertising networks have realised it, but they have hit market saturation with advertising. For example, I now get the majority of my news from the internet. It is faster and more condensed as I don't have to wait 5 minutes to hear what I want or a droids opinioon as filler.

For many of us, this is why we do not yet own DVDs or HDTV... you only wonder if for a premium price your paying to have them control your viewing habits...

A constructive move would be to pay for a specific show, no advertising and low rates. This way the 140 channels on my 150 channel cable feed could go dead.

Re:Why do any recording at all?

[BenjyD]

Why do people even bother watching TV with that many adverts? 22 minutes per hour is insane. I find the 7.5 minutes allowed here (UK, terrestrial stations) annoying enough.
If people are prepared to put up with that much crap to watch tv, maybe they'll just accept not being able to record it too.

Nailing the HDTV coffin

[Lumpy]

Oh yeah, this is a smart move.

Although, HDTV was doomed from the start with the FCC screwing up the formats, allocations, basically every aspect.

and now with cable companies rolling out HD in a very lame way by only supplying massively compressed channels effectively removing any advantages fo HDTV. Anyone that buys a $13,000.00 HD Plasma TV should be insanely pissed when they get home and get a slightly better but widescreen version of regular TV from that cable provider.

I recently researched HDTV. the cable channels look just like the regular channels but with more visible artifacts. off air RARELY transmits anything but regualr DTV.. very VERY little HD content is broadcast. and there is no such thing as a HDTV DVD... so I would have been better off with the $2500.00 Daewoo Enhanced DTV.

Now they want to make it 100% impossible for me to record the programming... Nice.. no Tivo,no DVHS, no way of timeshifting because of one thing..... Greed.

Re:These people really don't get it.

[Safety Cap]

If anything, the media should be embedding advertising and so on so they can sell commercial time on the traded files.

That is a possibility, but the sad fact of the matter is that advertising doesn't work...at least not to the effect that advertising companies (adcos) think it does.

The failure of banner ads elucidates this: for the first time, ever, adcos were able to analyse the actual impact of ads. Where people paying enough attention to the ads to click through? What they found was that the click through rate is/was abysmally low. So instead of figuring out how to make the ads more appealing (IMHO the BMW "tiny films" was a fluke), they tried stupider things (pop-under, flash obtrusive, more flashing/blinking/beeping), and generally gave up. It is much easier to rent space on the billboard or TV sop and lie about how much impact that advert has than actually admit that you are gouging your customers and they are getting almost nothing in return.

Embedding advertising *may* raise brand awareness, but if you're Coka-Cola or Pepsi then you don't really need brand awareness, do you? Embedded adverts will not generate sales.

Re:And the 'tax'..

[TiggsPanther]

Or, to put it another way...

Most people who pay for Cable/Satellite do so to get the programs they want, usually due to them not being catered for by the BBC.
So not only are you paying your monthly subscription fees to your Cable Company, you're legally required to pay the BBC for all the channels that don't have anything you want.