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Television Media

Feds to Require Digital Receivers In All New TVs? 602

Posted by michael from the you'll-pay-and-you'll-like-it dept.
jonerik writes "According to this article in USA Today, the FCC is expected next week to require all new TV sets to include digital receivers by 2006. TV manufacturers are balking at the requirement, which they say would increase the price of new TVs by about $200. The National Association of Broadcasters counters that their study shows that the price increase would be half that, and would decrease to about $15 by 2006. The government, eager to sell off the TV broadcast spectrum to wireless carriers, is between a rock and a hard place, with sales of HDTVs slower than expected, broadcasters and cable systems not exactly jumping at the bit to take on the cost of reconfiguring for digital broadcasts, and a public that seems pretty satisfied with traditional analog TVs."
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Feds to Require Digital Receivers In All New TVs? More

Feds to Require Digital Receivers In All New TVs?

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  • I'm still hoping that the FCC drops the requirements that broadcast channels be analog so that we can actually start seeing a push for all digital channels. The channels I have that come in digital are about 2x as clear and the sound is a lot better as well.

    • Re:Digital only (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sdjunky ( 586961 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:34AM (#3985979)
      And I assume you enjoy making copies of those "digital" shows. Do you honestly believe that with the "fairness" that congress has had lately to fair use rights that if digital is mandated and required that you'll have any right to copy "buffy" or even "bugs" anymore?

      I agree that digital is great. DVD's are great but at what cost? Can you make a backup? no. Can you purchase one from London? no.

      Why do you think that Digital TV, once required will be any better.

      Personally the quality isn't worth losing my rights over

      • Digital quality? (Score:5, Informative)

        by jdfox ( 74524 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @10:41AM (#3986554)
        Here in the UK we have both satellite digital and "terrestrial broadcast" digital, the latter being digital that you can receive through an ordinary antenna with a set-top box on your plain old analogue TV. The terrestrial broadcast network, ITV Digital, tried to squeeze 48 channels into the available bandwidth, and the result was famously shite quality.

        It wasn't even the tolerable sort of poor quality that you get on analogue: fuzz, crackle, etc. Instead, it's blocks of non-motion on your screen, or even the entire screen freezing up, while the video buffer struggles to refill.
        Just what you want when you're watching a crucial sports match.
        No thank you.

        ITV Digital have recently gone bust [bbc.co.uk], and a consortium [guardian.co.uk] including the BBC and Murdoch have stepped in to take it over [theherald.co.uk]. They are planning to reduce the channel count to 24, and to introduce other improvements in the transmitter network, so maybe the quality will improve. But they are no longer asking people to pay a monthly subscription: it will be for free-to-air channels only. Seems sensible to me: why pay for what we can already get it for free?

        I also expected that my new digital cordless phone's quality would be better than my old analogue cordless. No, just like the digital TV, the intereference is no longer crackle-and-fuzz, it's random cut-outs when I get more than 20 yards from the base station. A friend of mine has had similar problems with his new digital cordless in the US.

        So I don't expect that TV reception quality will improve simply because "It's digital!" You can implement bad quality transmission in any medium.
    • I hope they extend this requirement to include broadcast-content-quality, well ok I really wouldn't want the feds regulating what I watch. However, my 26" analog screen is fine for THE show I like to watch. Crocodile hunter is not worth buying an HDTV over though.

      I think that the reason people are so 'blah' over this technology relates directly to the quality of content. When a show such as friends is the 'best' entertainment available, things are bad.

    • Re:Digital only (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Andrewkov ( 140579 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:47AM (#3986141)
      Who cares ... TV is such crap these days, if it weren't for my wife I would cancel our digital cable and put up an antenna.
    • I'm still hoping that the FCC drops the requirements that broadcast channels be analog so that we can actually start seeing a push for all digital channels. The channels I have that come in digital are about 2x as clear and the sound is a lot better as well.
      Speaking as someone in the UK who has just recently bought a new TV with a built-in digital receiver, I've got mixed impressions about the quality of digital VS analog.

      Sometimes the quality of digital is indeed impressive, but there are other occasions when we switch back to the analog version of the particular station. There are occasional tolerable problems with what I assume are drop-outs/transmission interence which can range from just sections of the image being drawn with low-res blocks to having the entire display disappear.

      My main quibbles, however, are with the artefacts, especially in live TV coverage (eg with the current Commonwealth games coverage on the BBC). For example, competitors are often haloed by DCT blocks (i.e. high frequency areas) or while low frequency data (i.e. subtle blended colours like walls or the sky) are often quite banded.

      Of course, this could be that the realtime compression hardware simply doesn't have the grunt to cope with the image data that's being thrown at it, but I'm also wondering if the signals are deliberately over bandwidth-limited. I believe that the latter has been the case with some digital radio broadcasts.

      Simon

      PS: Mind you, for those in the US, digital TV would be leaps and bounds better than the standard NTSC broadcasts :-)

  • And the MPAA? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lennart78 ( 515598 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:31AM (#3985948)
    They'd like this. Digital is part of DRM, and DRM means no more videotaping a 10 year old movie on TV, so if you want to see it, it's another buck in Jack Valenti's pocket.
    • Yes and by that "logic" Thomas Paines the "Rights" of Man is also part of DRM. And a course on Time "Management" completes the trio.

      Digital TV != DRM, does it mean that DRM is possible, yes but it requires the complicity of the HW and TV operators. But to say that Digital TV is "part" of DRM indicates that you haven't realised what Digital TV is. The BBC broadcast a bunch of "free to air" Digital TV stations, and soon there will be more after their deal with SkyTV. There is Digital TV all over Europe right now and people are recording it onto their Videos just like they always have done.

  • How can they REQUIRE it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jsonmez ( 544764 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:31AM (#3985949)
    Are they going to put people in jail for making TV's without digital recievers?
    What about black and white TV's? What's the point of putting one in there?
    How about the TV Watch, is it going to have this huge digital reciever attached to it?

  • Old tvs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:32AM (#3985956) Homepage
    So if I don't buy into the "everything is disposable" routine and am still using a ten-year old tv in 2006, suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyards(until the FCC shuts them down of course).

    What are the TV manufacturers complaining about, suddenly they can force everyone who has been holding out to buy a new tv. BIG PROFITS.
    • I think that such problem can be solved very easy: you can buy converter from new HDTV format for old TV sets...just like current digital satellite receivers works
    • Not in 2006. The goal is to get every new TV capable of receiving digital by 2006 so that analog broadcast can be phased out in (just a guess here) 2012. Probably later.

      • Re:Old tvs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gorilla ( 36491 )
        The 'offical' target for analog switch off is 2006 [fcc.gov]. Almost everyone now agrees this date is unlikely to be met, simply because of the reluctance for consumers to adopt DTV at the schedule that the FCC made up for them. It took from 1964 to 1985 for Britian to eliminate 405 line television - in an era when TV equipment was unreliable and with short lifespans. I would be suprised if analog TV could be replaced any faster than that.
    • Hy HDTV receiver outputs in Hi-Res to an RGB/VGA port or component video port. It can also output in standard 480i NTSC via composite or S-Video.

      There will obviously be a huge market for external digital receivers, both for analog TV's and current HDTV's, which do not have internal receivers.

    • Set-top box (Score:4, Informative)

      by marm ( 144733 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:58AM (#3986254)

      So if I don't buy into the "everything is disposable" routine and am still using a ten-year old tv in 2006, suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyards(until the FCC shuts them down of course).

      No. You will buy a $99 (maybe even less) box that sits on top of your TV and decodes the digital signal so that your old TV can display it. Every other form of digital TV does this currently, and in fact I have yet to see TVs with integrated digital cable or satellite decoders. In the UK the government is considering giving them away to the stragglers if digital terrestrial TV hasn't taken off enough by the time the analogue signals are shut off. Perhaps the FCC might do the same if they're desperate for the frequencies. You get more channels and better picture and sound.

      In any case, 2006 is only the date when all new TVs must have built-in decoders - it says nothing about the actual shutoff date for analogue transmissions. In the UK that's set for 2010, although that could change by a year or two in either direction depending on adoption rates and how the government plays it, and the UK is a little bit ahead of the US in the adoption curve.

      Really, there is an easy way out.

      • Re:Set-top box (Score:2, Redundant)

        by cjpez ( 148000 )
        No. You will buy a $99 (maybe even less) box that sits on top of your TV
        Yes! That's the answer! Buy! Buy, buy, buy! Spend more money! Your government mandates it! Consume! Use up resources! Your life is meaningless without things! Surely this is the easy way out we've been hoping for! Give me your products, government!

        • Re:Set-top box (Score:4, Interesting)

          by afidel ( 530433 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @11:27AM (#3986898)
          Actually this is about more efficient use of a finite resource (spectrum). We have a big arse poster of the entire spectrum on a couple cubicles here, you would be suprised to see a visual representation of how much of the spectrum is eaten by analong tv and radio. Since those standards were adopted before modern encoding techniques made efficient use of spectrum possible there elimination and replacement with newer methods is good as it means the spectrum can be reused more efficiently. I don't think the FCC cares so much about forcing consumers to spend as it does about slicing up the spectrum in the most efficient manner possible.
    • Blockquoth the poster:
      suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyard
      Or your old VHS tapes. Or DVDs. Or you could just read. :)

  • I love english (Score:5, Funny)

    by infinite9 ( 319274 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:32AM (#3985958)

    jumping at the bit

    Did you mean chomping at the bit or jumping at the chance?

    Whatever you meant, don't count your chickens before they cross the road.

    • Did you mean chomping at the bit or jumping at the chance?

      Whatever you meant, don't count your chickens before they cross the road.

      I'm sure he'll burn that bridge when he comes to it.

  • Easy way around this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:32AM (#3985966) Homepage Journal
    is to sell "monitors" that dont come with *any* tuners. It would actually be nice because then you plug in any device (VCR, Satellite, cable box, etc) and use the tuner provided in that. There is no need to have a tuner in TVs nowadays...

  • Why I don't own an HDTV (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BMonger ( 68213 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:33AM (#3985968)
    I bought a Sony Wega 27" a few months back after much contemplation on getting a HDTV or just a plain ol' TV. First off, getting the signal for HDTV was gonna run over $60 a month. Secondly from what I understood I'd only get like... a few channels that were really enhanced anyhow. And as much as I want to watch QVC is startlingly crystal clear quality I think I'll pass. Last... the HDTV of equal quality was around $200-$300 more. Why bother? My 50 channels or so I get for $15 a month work perfectly fine for me.

    Also my TV broke last weekend during quite the thunder storm. I don't miss it a bit anyhow. I watch DVD's on it but that's about it.

    • Blockquoth the poster:

      My 50 channels or so I get for $15 a month work perfectly fine for me.

      I gotta ask -- where are you that your cable bill is only $15 a month? Mine is already pushing $40, without any extras or premium channels. (Comcast is trying to force everyone to switch to digital cable, by making regular analog almost as expensive.)

    • Re:Why I don't own an HDTV (Score:5, Informative)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @10:45AM (#3986582) Journal
      ("Remember, son, use your +1 posting bonus only for good, never for evil." "Yes, father, I'll only use my +1 bonus to squash misinformation and bring informed, insightful, funny comments to the world." "That's my boy. Now... avenge my death.")

      First off, getting the signal for HDTV was gonna run over $60 a month.

      Depending on where you live, there are up to three ways to get HDTV right now: OTA, satellite, and cable. One is free, one is sort-of free, and one sucks because it's cable.

      OTA ("over the air") HD is 100% absolutely free. You don't even need a new antenna. Rabbit ears aren't good enough, but if you have a rooftop antenna already, then you're all set. Just plug it into your HDTV-with-built-in-receiver or your set-top box and start enjoying that beautiful, beautiful HDTV. In my town, we get ABC (lots of James Bond and Disney movies, plus Alias and The Practice), NBC (Leno and the occasional sporting event), CBS (CSI, plus practically every other show in their line-up), FOX (despite the fact that they only broadcast widescreen 480, it's still better than SD), and PBS (lots of HD programming there of the "Discovery Channel" genre). All for free, all every day. Only a fraction of the OTA programming out there is available in HD now, but it's increasing a little bit every few months.

      If you want more HDTV, you can sign up with DirecTV. The downside is that you do need a new antenna for this-- they use a different satellite for broadcasting their HD content, so you need a triple-LNB dish to receive it-- and the HD DirecTV receivers are really expensive. But if you do, you can get HBO HD and Showtime HD sort-of for free. That is, subscribing to the regular HBO or Showtime channel package gets you the HD channels at no extra cost. So it's not free, but it's not extra, either. It's sort-of free. On DirecTV you also get HD pay-per-view movies, if you want to pay-per-view them, and the PQ on those is almost always substantially better than DVD. Oh, and let's not forget HDNet, for the sports fans out there, and Discovery HD for us nerds.

      Finally, if you live in a very specific set of cities, you can get HD over regular old buried cable. Cox, Time-Warner, and AT&T have all either started HD trial roll-outs, or are planning to do so soon. Of course, I'm no fan of terrestrial buried cable TV, so I wouldn't advocate that particular method.

      I bought a really expensive (> $4,000) HDTV about six weeks ago, after saving my lunch money and bus fare for the past two years. I would never go back. The widescreen aspect ratio is great for watching DVDs, which I do about half the time. And HD makes programs that I already enjoy, like CSI and Alias, just that much better. And all my HD programming is Free, Free, gloriously Free!
  • The National association of broadcasters has developed this new product, HDTV. However, due to the massive restrictions that they have imposed upon our use of it, the continual changes that they keep making to the standard, and the high prices that they want for the hardware, noone buys it. So now, they go the federal government to make them mandate it. And to send manufactuers (who produce what the public wants) to prison (or more likely huge fines).

    YOU WILL BUY THIS UNNECESSARY LUXURY ITEM!!

    This is great, that means that any psudo-useless luxury item that I produce could be a success so long as I can convince the government to require it.

    Oh, wait, I have to be rich first so I can bribe them... Oh well...

    Irvu.
  • I'd say price is the main hang-up for me... I'd love a digital tv, and a few of the stations in my area do broadcast a digital signal. I just can't afford a digital tv. If they had an add-on box with a digital tuner that I could, say, plug into the component video jacks on my tv, I could handle that, but aren't HDTVs the ones that are letterbox size, or do they make them in regular sizes too?

    I guess I'll have to go wander around Best Buy and do a little "research"

  • So, they want TV makers to include the HDTV receiver box inside the TV. By 2006 they'll be very cheap anyway.

    Even so... You can get one cheap. My cable company (Time Warner) does HDTV via Digital Cable. They gave me a box that does HDTV so I have a "digital receiver" and it didn't cost me any more than I was already paying. Same goes for DSS. You can get HDTV DSS receiver now, and soon you'll get them for "free' after signup.

    Also, the boxes MUST be priced artificially high. As soon as they get put in to every TV they'll be extremely cheap. Look at DVD players..they are as low as $69 now.

  • Good. I wondered when this would happen. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ayden ( 126539 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:36AM (#3986014) Homepage Journal
    Industry always balks at government mandates, the later conforms to the regulation. For example, look at the requirement that all TVs have closed caption capability. First the industry complained that it would increase costs dramatically. Once the manufacturers stopped complaining, they integrated everything needed to meet the requirement onto a single chip that costs are less than $1 per set. Now the same will be done with digital receivers.
    • Close captioning is a matter of access for hearing impaired folks. What oppressed minority is being aided through the inclusion of digital TV receivers? Not analogous.

      Hey, I like the idea of digital TV. I bought a close-captioning television before they were required, too. But mandating it? When airbags aren't required in cars??

      • Re:Good. I wondered when this would happen. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by flatrock ( 79357 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @10:25AM (#3986442)
        It's all about bandwidth. The FCC regulates the frequencies people are allowed to transmit on. Analog TV frequencies are taking up a huge block of bandwidth that can be used for other emerging wireless technologies. In order to free up that bandwidth, broadcast television stations need to move over to digital broadcasts which use a smaller chunk of frequencies to transmit. Until the broadcasters are switched over they are using both the analog and digital frequencies, which is a waste of this very limited resource.

        Once consumers switch over to digital TVs, or at least digital tuners, the FCC can take back the analog TV frequencies. Right now the plan is for this to happen in 2006. TV manufacturers are dragging their feet because they can charge a nice premium on digital TVs right now, and moving them into the mainstream means lower profit margins and lower overall profits for them.

        Once digital TVs become mainstream the price to make them will be very small. Consumers get better quality pictures and sound for this small additional cost. They also get access to the new emerging technologies that will be possible because of the frequencies freed up by the analog broadcasts going away. Older TVs will need a digital tuner/converter in order to work.

        The government will also reap billions from auctioning off the current analog TV frequencies. Consumers will in turn pay for those billions when they buy the new products. This makes legislators happy because they get to collect billions of dollars without it being obvious that people are being taxed.

        I personally think it needs to be done. Those frequencies need to be made available, and unlike much of the legislation, the people who are paying for it, actually get a benefit from it in the form of better quality pictures and sound.
    • The difference is that closed caption is actually for the good of mankind. Digital receivers don't add enough value and they give Fritz too many chances to regulate what I can watch in my own home.
    • How many millions of televisions are purchased in 10 years? Multiply that by $15 and that's the minimum amount of money that will be spent on this. Over a BILLION dollars. Perhaps a few hundred million in chips is a reasonable mandate to help the hearing impared, but a BILLION dollars is alot to mandate so that the FCC can rape the public of spectrum for cash. What do we, as consumers or whatever, need digital broadcast TV for anyway? How does anybody benifit? People who can afford this already pay for cable or sattelite, and people who can't afford cable and sattelite are going to be forced to buy new TVs, or tuner boxes. If they were going to open up that spectum for FREE public use, then I could see some value in this, but they're not going to do that.

  • Bandwidth..? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ckedge ( 192996 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:36AM (#3986015) Journal

    Ok, how long ago did the digital TV specs get finalized? How much bandwidth do they take up? How much more could we squeeze into that spectrum if they re-did it taking into account those fabulous new mpeg4 codecs that allow DVD quality data streams for only 150-200 KB/s.

    • patents (Score:4, Informative)

      by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @10:04AM (#3986303) Homepage Journal
      If they were to change the digital standard to allow for additional codecs now, it might take years to hash out the patent licensing. Also, the older the codec, the sooner the patents expire. MPEG2 has been around for a while now. And if they're really taking advantage of new codecs, they'll need to not only add support for them, but also add support for different divisions of the spectrum so as to use the saved bandwidth for something else.

      Not to mention those few digital tuners already out there and those chipsets already in development...

      While it would be nice to take advantage of all the latest technology, at some point you have to say it's good enough and go with it.
  • ...and a public that seems pretty satisfied with traditional analog TVs

    How can the public be satisfied when they can't see the difference? Normal people cannot afford HDTVs. There are scant few HD broadcasts. Subscribing to digital TV offers a clearer picture but most people don't really notice.

    Content, content, and more content. Offer some content in digital TV. Who needs another specialty channel? Offer people the shows they watch everyday in digital (widescreen and HD). Offer smaller, less expensive HDTVs. Only then can the public truely compare.

    • I don't know about your area, but Time Warner flooded the area with "digital" cable. The quality? Crap.... The problem with digital cable was not near enough bandwith to the box. You would see all sorts of artifact, etc. I was lucky and was able to go back to analog. When they forced the issue, I picked up a dish. After replacing the roof, I dropped from a sig str of high 80's to low 30's.... same crappy picture issues, but this one I can fix.

      Yes, their "digital" cable was not HDTV - but the public does not see that. They see "digital" on thier current sets and it is lame. Plug in a crappy picture into a lovely HDTV - sharper crap, since most shows are not in HDTV format anyhow. I can see why this is a hard sell.
    • Um, people can certainly see the difference between an analog broadcast and digital cable, and there are still people (myself included) who think that analog is just dandy. I refuse to spend money to get cable TV or satellite or what have you, and if my analog signals go away, I'm likely to not spend the money just so that I can get public TV and Simpsons back. The TV I've got is plenty good enough, why spend the money to replicate perfectly good hardware like that? Where is my old TV going to go? Some landfill? What a waste.

      It's one thing to have the content providers decide independantly to move over to digital and cut off the old analog signals. Nothing I can do about that, and that's their choice. I'm rather upset that the government seems to be mandating that my perfectly good equipment be obsolete by a certain date.

  • Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vofka ( 572268 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:38AM (#3986027) Journal
    ...The FCC Should look more closely at the series of foul-ups that have hit the UK's Digital Terestrial Television Service in recent months - with the collapse of ITV Digital [ondigital.co.uk], and the subsequent relicencing of the system to the BBC, view confidence in the system has slumped - and there were only 1.2 Million viewers of DTT at it's peak anyway!

    Serious thought needs to be put into the transmission systems employed, signal quality, and most importantly, programme content - poor content will doom any attempts at Forced DTT takeup to complete failure - pushing more and more people into Cable or Satelite based systems... Sure, the US and UK markets are very different, but should the FCC not at least try and learn from other countries' mistakes?
    • Yes, the UK situation should be a good pointer... our Government made an aburdly huge windfall it gained from autioning the '3rd generation' mobile phone frequencies - which indicentally practically bankrupted the entire UK telephone industry - and they ant to sell off the analogue TV frequencies band to the highest bidder.

      The change to digital that the Government wants has also been forced by regulation here, not by insisting that digital decoders are needed, but more simply (and arguably more reaonably) by the promise that terrestrial analogue transmitters will be turned off in 2010.

      The public reaction to this has been almost entirely negative, it seems that fact that the installed base of analog TVs, and the low sales of digital decoders will force a re-think on the proposed switch off.

      The UK public seem to have realised that they are better off with half a dozen good channels than with hundreds of channels of junk.

      You can buy a subscription-free digital box to get 15 free channels, but the selection is so awful that I expect sales will be very poor.
  • When an HDTV costs a couple grand and your average TV at Wal-Mart is a couple hundred.. I can see why HDTV has had trouble taking off... Too much $$$ for too little improvement.

    So now the government is going to mandate digital receivers..

    Increases the price of the TV.
    Allows wireless carriers to give you more services and more $$$ to use them.
    Easier to implement DRM.. adding more $$$ to your monthly bills...

    Seems to me this goverment mandate spells more $$$ spent by the average citizen all round... but hey.. that's what we have government for right? To make our lives better?
  • The whole HDTV push is starting to look like Vietnam to me. HDTV failed. It's time to put up the white flag.

  • NTSC Forever? (Score:3, Informative)

    by tshoppa ( 513863 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:42AM (#3986074)
    The 2006 cutoff date isn't new, although the FCC has backed off somewhat from their original very aggressive plan, which would have banned analog transmissions on that date. See this Usenet thread from 1997 [google.com] to see my initial reaction to *that* proposal.

    To sum it up, there's an artificial "bandwidth shortage" combined with a desire by electronics manufacturers to sell more expensive stuff. Get those groups lobbying the FCC and the result seems pretty obvious to me.

  • I certainly hope not... *I* want to make the decision of when I buy a new TV. I want to make sure I have the cash at the right time. I want to pick the features and not pay too much. If we are all required to buy them at a certain deadline, we will all be screwed by the TV manufacturers because they'll know we must buy one right now.

    that's just not fair

    T

  • Australia - a sneak preview (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gavin Rogers ( 301715 ) <grogers@vk6hgr.echidna.id.au> on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:45AM (#3986102) Homepage
    The Australian government has already declared by 2008 all TV transmissions will be exclusively digital. Digital signal is available now, and although the picture quality is very good (not quite DVD quality, but better than any video or free-to-air signal outside the studio) - it seems nobody wants it.

    TVs with digital decoders built in are just coming on the market, as are HDTVs... for the rest of us there is a $600 odd decoder to buy to make our perfectly working analogue TV work with digital.

    The government here doesn't even seem interested in making spectrum available for use in other purposes as the new digital TV channels are largely in between the existing analogue channels ! (except for channel 0,1,2 which suffer interference due to their frequency)

    Continous arguments by the govt and media companies haven't yet settled on arrangements for multi-channeling, or data-over-TV or any of the other cool digital TV features. Some media companies want some features, other want different ones. Insert much political nonsense... lather, rince, repeat.

    At the moment, it's just 'normal' TV that you receive through a digtal black box.

    After 2008 there is supposed to be no more analogue signal. No more spare TV in the bedroom. All need a digital decoder to function as they did before.

    Oh, did I mention that we use a digital format that is almost completely incompatible with every other worldwide format?

    Digital TV? Looks nice, government, but tell me why I need it and not why you want it!

    Don't jump in to digital TV too quickly, guys, it resulting mess is not worth it...
    • Well put. I had hoped he wouldn't be this much of a door mat but it seems every other day there's a /. submission about this. Seems that most everybody involved in anything remotely tied to tv/radio/internet/etc has decided that legislation by elected representatives (such as they are) is useless. Instead just get the FCC to mandate it. It's faster and cheaper to just buy off the FCC I guess. In any event, it's not like congress is there to backstop any of this foolishness. Sen. Disney, Tauzin and all the other idiots are submitting bills written by industry interests as fast as the lobbyists can write 'em.
  • The National Association of Broadcasters endorses the purchase of HDTV, wants everyone to have it, but the general public is OK with what they have, and don't want to spend extra money for something they don't want or need. People are generally happy with the options they've had, and can easily make copies of programs on their VCR's and DVD-RW players. The NAB sees this happening, but can't effectively do anything about it because the technology already exists, so the NAB persuades the government to force people to submit to their will.

    The RIAA endorses the purchase of music CD's, wants everyone to have it, but the general public is OK with what they already have, and don't want to spend extra money for something they don't want or need. People are generally happy with the options they've had, and can easily make copies of music on their computers. The RIAA sees this happening but can't ffectively do anything about it because the technology already exists, so the RIAA persuades the government to force people to submit to their will.
  • Who wants to bet that the digital recievers don't have code in them to keep a log of what it watched, with source IDs, program IDs, etc?

    Wait until you can't watch your DVDs or Tapes because you haven't paid the rent on them yet.

    --Mike--

    Oppose Digital Restriction Management (DRM)

  • Marketplace (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:50AM (#3986171) Homepage
    If consumers want ditital TV, they'll get it. If they're not adopting it as quickly as the broadcasters and the government would like, the problem is that the price is too high to justify the increase of quality. Its all supply and demand. Once upon a time, not everyone and their 3 yr old kid were talking on cell phones. Now they are. People adapted to that market because the industry found a way to make it happen. If that meant selling the phones for a penny and making up for it on the service, so be it. It was far more effective than forcing a $300 expense up front, which practically nobody was willing to go for.

    So if the industry wants Ditital TV in every home in the near future, they're going to have to sell that service so that purchasing analog sets or even keeping the current analog sets doesnt' make sense anymore. This means that new digital TV sets must be LESS expensive than the analog counterparts, not more. If this means the broadcasters will have to partially rebate the costs of the TV sets, so be it. They're the ones who want this so badly, not the manufacturers, not the retaillers, and not the consumers.

    If the broadcasters REALLY want this to happen, they just need to announce that they're going to stop transmitted analog signals as of a certain date. The consumers will switch if they really want the service. And if they don't, well, them the breaks. Of course, there will always be straggler broadcasters that will pull the entire market of analog receivers, so this will be a tough trick to pull off without losing tons of market share.

    But that's not the government's problem. The government does not need to get involved to mandate a change in industry standards in this way. You can't force the free marketplace. It tends to go where it wants to go. And when it wants digital broadcasting on a large scale, it will have it, and the analog will slowly die away until the point where pulling the plug on it won't make a signficant difference.

    -Restil

  • I was shopping for a 1080i/480p display recently. I looked at a Sony HDTV set with a tuner built in. Very soon they are putting out a basically equivalent model without the tuner, and it will sell for $500-$700 less. For other brands, HDTV-compatible sets without tuners sets go for $500-$1000 less than the equivalent sets with tuners. I don't know where they get the $200 figure.

    The plasma sets are monitors only. If you wnat to tune television -- SDTV or HDTV -- you buy a tuner. Many tube and projection sets come with SDTV tuners but require a separate tuner for HDTV if you want it. The tuner would plug into the TV through the component video inputs -- i.e. a so-called "analog hole".

    The government should stay out of decisions that people must spend extra money to have what they neither want nor need.

  • A brief history of HDTV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SkipToMyLou ( 595608 ) <b@b.b> on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @09:57AM (#3986233)
    (unfortunately I can't take credit for this one. It was written by a fellow slashdotter a while back, and I've lost the attribution. If the author is still out there, let me know and I'll send you a beer ;-) )

    For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:

    Here's how it went:

    Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV
    FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV"
    FCC says "What standards?"
    Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you.
    FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?"
    Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!"
    Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"
    FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."
    Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV??
    Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!"
    Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it."
    Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built."
    FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it."
    Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?"
    Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"
    FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that"
    Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!"
    Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."

    Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.

    • Re:A brief history of HDTV (Score:4, Informative)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @11:50AM (#3987032) Journal
      Your inappropriate use of profanity aside, you're wrong.

      Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"

      The much-talked-about 18 ATSC formats are as follows:

      1080 x 1920, 30i (meaning 1920 by 1080 pixels, 30 fps interlaced)
      1080 x 1920, 30p
      1080 x 1920, 24p
      1280 x 720, 60p
      1280 x 720, 30p
      1280 x 720, 24p
      480 x 704, 60p
      480 x 704, 30i
      480 x 704, 30p
      480 x 704, 24p
      480 x 704, 60p, anamorphic
      480 x 704, 30i, anamorphic
      480 x 704, 30p, anamorphic
      480 x 704, 24p, anamorphic
      480 x 640, 60p
      480 x 640, 30i
      480 x 640, 30p
      480 x 640, 24p

      So when people say "18 formats," they really mean a combinatorial of four resolutions, three or four frame rates, and one set of anamorphic modes. It's not that complicated.

      Consider that fancy graphics card and multi-sync monitor on your desk. It can display 1280 x 1024 at 60 Hz, or at 72 Hz, or at 75 Hz, or at 85 Hz. Did it cost you a fortune? Not relatively, no. Same with HDTV. The formats do not any significant cost to the sets. Particularly considering most consumer sets out there only have one sync rate-- 60 Hz-- and one resolution-- 1080 x 1920. They convert all other formats internally to that display format.

      FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."

      There are several very important standards for digital TV broadcasting. Your assertion that there are "no standards at all" is just wrong. In particular, two standards define how digital TV works.

      ATSC A/52 defines the Dolby AC-3 audio compression and encoding scheme. This is also known as "Dolby Digital." ATSC A/53 defines stuff like scanning formats, encoder functions, and the 8VSB transmission system.

      In addition, there are lots of SMPTE standards that define various interfaces and formats related to DTV. For example, SMPTE 274M defines the 1920 x 1080 scanning format. SMPTE 292M defines the HD bit serial transport over coaxial and fiber optic cables. The list goes on.

      DTV is highly standardized, and wickedly interoperable. You can take a camera from Sony and plug it into a deck from Panasonic and know, without a doubt, that one will record the output of the other without trouble. Likewise, you can buy a TV today with a built-in receiver and know that it'll be able to receive the 8VSB terrestrial signal from any DTV broadcaster in the FCC's jurisdiction.

      So you're wrong about that, too.

      • Now address the digital modulation (how the bits get into the RF spectrum). This is where HDTV falls on its face. At the same signal level where you would just minimally get a snow-free NTSC analog picture (grade B), DTV totally breaks up and you get nothing but occaisional flashes through the blue muck. The only way DTV is really going to work outside of metropolitan areas is for either the metro TV stations to crank up the power on the order of 50-100 MW-ERP, or start dropping in repeater stations around grade B areas (where previously this was only done well beyond grade B, now it will have to be done within). Another option the FCC has is to have a rule that bans any laws, restrictions, or covenants against erecting the necessary outdoor antenna to gain new signal strength. Cable is an option, but it has to stay an option; it cannot be a requirement. OTA must remain viable.

  • In general, I'm against the idea of forcing TV manufacturers to do this.

    However, my biggest pet peeve with Satellite TV and digital cable is that you have to have a tuner that's separate from your TV. That means that you've lost the ability to watch one show on the TV while recording another on the VCR. It means you have to add yet another remote to your collection. This is the main reason why I stick to basic, analog cable.

    Now, if TV's (and VCR's) had digital receivers, and if these receivers worked with satellite and digital cable as well as broadcast HDTV, without the crappy advertisement-laden "channel-selection" interface that the current digital-cable boxes provide, then I might actually want to buy one of these things.

    • You know why you can record something on your VCR while you watch something else on your TV? Because your VCR has it's own TUNER.

      Go buy a DirectTV/Tivo box with dual tuners and shut up about it.
  • I haven't used the tuner in any of my TVs ever (4 TVs since college). I use the VCR tuner. My 56" TV is just a monitor for my DVD, VCR, and PS2. I plan on keeping it that way.

    Why aren't external digital tuners an option?

    I am pissed off that there isn't a digital in on my TV, but I'm sure you can buy them that way.
  • I recently bought a DVD player, I want to slowly add new stuff to have a decent home theater.
    I had a fairly good price on it at my local Wallmart...
    Next, I went at some electronic shop with my wife to check out which TV I could get next.
    Well, I was pretty disapointed to see how much a decent TV cost, and because of that, I seriously think I will wait a few years before upgrading it.
    A 32 inch Sony Trinitron cost near twice as much as a D-Series of the same size. Why?!?
    Yes the technology is recent and it host a lot of cool features, but twice the price tag?!?
    It's all based on the hype which surrounds it, and some people will actually buy it.
    The problem is that I'm sure it is not within reach of the middle JoeBlow. And I don't eant to buy a standard analog TV cause I already have one.
    So I'll stick with what I have until prices drop significantly. Maybe if they are required to includ digital decoder it could help to lower the price, but I don't beleive the manufacturer argument that it is this much more expensive to make.
    Today, they benefit from the "cool" factor which help them sell their TVs twive the price.
    The day this will become a "normal" feature, they will have to reajust their pricing and is a "bad" thing.

  • I thought I understood this, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AWhistler ( 597388 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @10:11AM (#3986349)
    They want digitial tuners in TV's. But they didn't say they wanted HDTV tuners in TV's. At first I thought there wasn't a difference, but now I'm not sure. Couldn't you digitize a NTSC signal as easily as a HDTV signal and pipe it through a digital tuner? Also, what does this have to do with DishNet, DirecTV and all the cable companies? DishNet and DirecTV already use digital signals to broadcast NTSC-quality stuff to US televisions, and cable companies aren't using any of the airwaves (they use cable). Also, cable companies are selling digital cable now to people with NTSC televisions (analog tuners). I don't see the big deal here. So what if broadcasters are forced to send all their stuff in digital. I haven't used an antenna on my TV in over 15 years. Cable and dish companies even force you to keep your TV on channel 3 anyway and use a converter, so why not just use a monitor, or the video/audio-in ports on your TV and bypass ALL tuners?
  • Been watching HDTV for several months. You're wasting your time by watching in standard definition what is available in high definition. High definition originating from video sources is mediocre but high definition originating from film is spectacular. When you have an HDTV display you essentially have an exact replica of a 35mm print.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @10:16AM (#3986376)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • but why bother ? To see the crap served up on TV twice as clear, it just makes it suck worse,
    Rose colored glasses and all. Maybe if any of the networks could rise to the challenge and consistently produce high quality programming I might care
  • We go to my chum's house for all our wrestling pay per views. He has digital cable and what I like to consider is the world's finest tube TV, SONY's 40 inch XBR. It's huge and does good interpolation and comb filtering to make your LQ broadcasts look HQ.

    We have come to realise, in every high motion scene, how much digital sucks. Words on screen have no bandwidth to display sharply, flying bodies are turned into blocky messes and gradual swaths of colour are graduated in the ugliest fashion. Blacks aren't black.

    Furthermore, the interruption of the signal for any reason means clicking audio and ugly block breaks. We've missed a lot of important, not to be repeated events and phrases due to these breaks. In an analog signal, a break results in a picture that is still visible, sound which may be obscured by fuzz but which is audible, because you don't have to wait for the next "frame" to begin before you can start viewing. And this is over a cable line...digital broadcast signals will only mean a still worse situation.

    Every time we miss something, or catch an ugly jagged edge, or have what should be a crisp beautiful colour destroyed by the "high bandwidth" compression, we just turn to my big-TV friend, who pays more for cable every month than I do on my school payments, and say "Dude, digital sucks." He agrees.

    (Yes, we are those lamos who order these stupid things -- we're five skilled college grads who like wrestling, f*ck off)

    • Re:Digital sucks! (Score:3, Informative)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 )
      You're overstating things. It's not accurate to say that "digital sucks." It's pretty accurate to say that low-bit-rate, poorly compressed digital cable TV sucks.

      For about a week, I subscribed to AT&T Broadband digital cable. I like rugby and Aussie rules football, and AT&T carried Fox Sports International as part of their basic channel line-up. So I signed up.

      AT&T compresses Fox Sports International so much that you can see artifacts in the on-screen graphics. You have to turn that knob all the way to the left before you're compressing enough to see artifacts in non-moving parts of the picture.

      So I fired AT&T and bought a DirecTV receiver. I pay $12 a month more, but I get the same channel, also delivered digitally, with much higher PQ. No more artifacts in the non-moving parts of the picture, and much less compression artifacting when the camera swish-pans or something.

      Then there's HDTV. HDTV is digital, and it's compressed. It's compressed a lot, too, from over 1 Gbps down to 19.4 Mbps. That's about 50:1. But the picture is almost always crystal-clear, significantly better than DVD. It takes a lot to cause visible artifacting. One time I was watching a college football game in HD, and they cut to a shot of the kids in the stands waving their pom-poms. There was so much movement in the scene that, for a second, it broke up into total digital artifacting. But I only saw it because I was looking for it, and it was only on-screen for about ten frames.

      Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Digital is a powerful force that can be used either for good or for evil. Broadcasting digital HDTV is good. Broadcasting pay-per-view programs at a megabit per second is evil.

      Besides, dude, what the hell are you thinking trying to watch NTSC on a 40" TV?? The human eye can resolve about a point about six arc-seconds across. Given that NTSC only broadcasts 480 visible lines, you'd have to be, like, fifteen or twenty feet away from your 40" TV before you started seeing a decent picture. Any closer, and you're just looking at pixels.

  • damn government (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cheese_wallet ( 88279 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @11:04AM (#3986726) Journal
    If televisions don't fit the bill, and there is a need, then alternatives will be found. Maybe the broadcasters aren't jumping on this bandwagon because it's not worth jumping on.

    The broadcasters will do anything to give themselves a competitive advantage. Obviously high definition TV isn't giving an advantage at all. Sure they say the reason it isn't advantageous is because most people don't have high def capable TVs. Why is that? Is there a standard for these hi-def tuners yet? There are probably 16 standards, which is exactly as bad as none at all.

    I don't buy that argument that the tuners are too expensive. $200 is cheap. So what if there aren't many hi-def broadcasts, if hi-def is what you want you'll buy a tuner. I bought my dvd player pretty early in the game, and I can guarantee you I paid more than $200 for it. And there were like 6 movies available. But it was cool, and I shucked out the cash. I still use that same dvd player too.

    The problem with hi-def is that it just isn't that great of an improvement. It isn't worth all the ass-clowning required to make it happen, so it doesn't, and it shouldn't. Except now the Big Gov is coming in to force it happen. Once the Big Gov starts taking control of something, they never ever relinquish that control. It's like a cancer, and if you don't fight it diligently, it will get wildly out of control. So now we are going to be stuck with a bunch of lame ass broadcasters pumping out hi-def, and when someone invents the better/cheaper/cooler solution, none of the broadcasters are going to jump on that because they have too much frickin cash layed into their crappy hi-def broadcasts.

    We might get new broadcast startups if the cost of entry were reduced, except now the cost of entry is increased because you've got to have this craptacular high-def technology.

  • Is TV dying? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lxy ( 80823 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2002 @11:13AM (#3986796) Journal
    Seriously... look at the facts.

    The HDTV stuff has all the consumers confused. Digital cable, DirecTV, digital receiver, HDTV receiver... hey, guess what, they're not really related in any way. I just bought an NTSC TV, because I know whatever comes out next can be adapted to it.

    Add on top of that, the studios are apparently objecting to us watching their shows at different times by using PVRs. They want to kill them dead in their tracks.

    THEN it gets decided that ads should run DURING the shows, in a little square in the bottom corner.

    The end result? We, the consumers, shell out more money, are forced to watch shows when the networks decide that we should, and then are forced to watch MORE advertising. The entire TV industry appears to be going to pot. I think I'd rather pay $40/mo for a gym membership than cable, and I'd feel better in the end.

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