FCC Speeds Up Digital TV Signal Deadlines 423
sbinning writes "The FCC, in a 4-0 vote decided that all medium-sized televisions, screens between 25 and 36 inches in diagonal, must be able to receive both digital and traditional analog signals by March 1. This is four months earlier than the commission had decreed three years ago. Now if they just mandate more intelligent programming."
I never did understand... (Score:4, Interesting)
Faster (Score:4, Interesting)
If you dont know digital sets are able to recieve special content like the name of the program all off the air.
Powell's power move (Score:2, Interesting)
What percentage does the switchover apply to? (Score:4, Interesting)
So of the 10% getting their television over the air, I'd sure guess that a large percentage who aren't interested in cable or satellite also aren't buying new fancy TVs every couple of years. Their choices are probably going to be buy a new TV or switch to satellite or cable and continue to use their old TV.
So is it only a portion of the 10% that would be affected when the big switch happens?
Re:Say goodbye to $200 32" sets (Score:3, Interesting)
I should reiterate, since
A digital tuner is cheaper than an analog one. Once the analog yoke is thrown completely, it should shave a few bucks off production costs, and since there's healthy competition in the field, it should translate to lower prices on the shelves.
Re:I never did understand... (Score:0, Interesting)
It's good that they're speeding this up and staying hard on it. If they don't, we'll just keep saying "give it a little more time, give it a little more time," until Kingdom come.
Which is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now we have the FCC mandating that TVs must provide digital reception as well as analog. What am I missing here?
I can't say I disagree with either decision, but there seems to be some level of conflict between the two activities here.
Re:Powell's power move (Score:3, Interesting)
What they should be imposing (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
What is the main reason that people in the US watch broadcast TV? Because they can't afford cable or satellite.
After the switch people are going to be unable to get any television at all unless they fork over hundreds of dollars for a new digital set.
My favorite part (Score:4, Interesting)
But we do have an option, since so far the FCC hasn't ruled that every home is required to have a TV.
Re:Year? HDTV Info (Score:3, Interesting)
There's not too much to criticize. Everyone knows it's an inevitable step in the right direction.
You can complain about artifacts of digital video, but it's still better than the artifacts of analog broadcast. You can complain about the reduced broadcast range. You can complain that they didn't go further, making 1080 progressive. You can complain that they didn't choose a better codec, such as MPEG-4, VP3, VP6, wavelet-based codec, etc. You could say they dedicated too much of the bandwidth to audio (or you could say too little if you're an insane audiophile).
What else is there to criticize?
Re:I never did understand... (Score:4, Interesting)
And the NAB (TV station lobby) is still mad about loosing that one. Even though there never were any stations on the air above channel 70, and even though the UHF stations never made a dime until cable and the Fox Network.
Once a business gets something from the .gov (for free in exchange for "serving the public interest" whatever that means), it becomes something they are entitled to, much like welfare. I'm not so sure modern "local" television meets the FCC requirement for free bandwidth anymore, but the day the FCC charges a broadcaster for spectrum is the day we'll all need descramblers for our televsion.
The only reason there was so much spectrum allocated in the first place was because of RCA's influence over Washington after WWII. If the broadcast stations would have allowed some flexibility in spectrum management, this mess may have been avoided.
Re:I never did understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
You wouldn't want TV over your air traffic control spectrum, or in your cell phone spectrum. Similarly you wouldn't want someone with a 3MW transmitter irradiating you. The government long ago divided up the airwaves into categories and sold chunks of it to interested parties. Thus we can all work and play well together.
There are many good reasons for the government to force digital transmission, the number one being the ability to permanently reclaim and repurpose some of the spectrum. However I suspect their real motivations are content owners and the $ that may come from selling that extra spectrum.
Personally I believe that nothing hollywood comes up with will ever be hackproof, but that digital TV is likely going to result in a somewhat higher observed video quality, so it's probably a good thing for us. I think the price issue is a red herring, I've seen the component chips required for this sell for cheap, it's just a matter of "this integrated feature will compete with our overpriced stand alone box and this will hurt our margins" whining.
What I wish some committee could come up with is a way to force cable companies to removing the set top box from their system. They're a pointless excuse to waste our money and cable/satellite companies deserve LESS control in our homes, not more. (This is an example of a non-free market that the government ought to be dealing with better)
EXCUSE MY IGNORANCE... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did I misunderstand the ruling regarding the broadcast flag, or is the FCC ignoring the meaning of it?
Re:Need low cost converter boxes ! (Score:3, Interesting)
As for connectivity, my atsc tuner has outputs for composite, Y/C, component, RGB, DVI, and IEE1394a , so it can be used with most any modern televison. Add an RF converter and one can even connect a coax only TV. However, the higher resolution signals (480p, 720p, 1080i) are only output through RGB, DVI, and component.
Re:I never did understand... (Score:1, Interesting)
The big problem will occur in the next year or so: people who haven't upgraded their TV or bought a converter (which includes myself at present) will complain mightily to their members of Congress when faced with loss of signal, and Congress will then change the Telecomm Act of 1996 (which mandates all this), probably pushing the cut-off date back a couple of years or even more.
But Congress can't do this willy-nilly. The businesses that bought the spectrum licenses from the FCC will be deprived of the income that they would have been making had the cut-off date remained unchanged, and this may well constitute a "taking" of property, which under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution requires "just compensation".
Who knows, it might in fact be cheaper for Congress to fund the subsidization of converters!
Re:I never did understand... (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're asking for is a block converter.
In the earlier days of cable when many if not most TVs still had rotary tuners, the cable companies put channels other than 2-13 on other VHF frequencies. The cable boxes from the cable companies generally tuned one channel at a time and shifted it to VHF channel 2, 3, or 4 so that you could set your TV to that channel and then choose channels with the cable box.
There were aftermarket devices which shifted the cable channels up to the UHF broadcast frequencies simultaneously so that you could tune them in with your television's UHF tuner. They were called block converters because they converted a block of channels up in frequency at the same time instead of one at a time. If you put a splitter on the output you could watch two different cable channels on two different televisions at the same time without needing a cable company cable box (or paying rent on it) for either set.
It might be possible to come up with something like that for broadcast digital channels, but don't expect anything like that for cable and satellite channels. Satellite and cable companies, especially cable companies who see "cable ready" televisions and VCRs as having cost them a fortune in lost cable box rentals, aren't going to want to surrender even that much control. The cable companies can hardly wait to go completely digital and re-use a lot of the analog frequencies for other revenue opportunities.
So whenever you hear about how great digital is going to be for the consumer what they really mean is how greater the number of opportunities for spending money the consumer will have.
Digital is not as "reliable" as analog. (Score:2, Interesting)
I bought the new digital-capable TV, check. I'm now getting both analog and digital versions of channels for the stations already broadcasting in digital (a majority of the 20+ broadcast channels I pick up, actually) While the digital channels look really nice, and the HDTV broadcasts even nicer, there is a basic problem. The weaker of these channels routinely break up, pixelate, or freeze and are totally unwatchable in digital, where in analog, they are a little snowy, but perfectly OK to watch. In bad weather, some channels may have a little snow or ghost in analog, but the digital signal breaks up in a hurry.
When this switchover happens, I'll go from getting like 20 channels to maybe 2, and those 2 will not be very reliable.
So people who still rely on broadcast TV are going to have a tough time with this I suspect, even if they can get a cheap digital TV.
Programming (Score:3, Interesting)
The potential is huge, but the broadcasters don't seem to get it. They're still sending a single subchannel at full bandwidth to people who have wide screens but can't display all the pixels. More content - even just weather and channel guides would be more valuable to most.