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There was a commercial on the radio yesterday touting a new Federal law called the Local Radio Freedom Act, which is designed to keep radio from paying the same fees as Pandora. The commercial said that my congressman (John Shimkis (R) and both my Senators (Richard Durbin (D) and Roland Burris (D, unelected) are all for it. I think I'll write them and tell them internet radio shouldn't have to pay, either.

The FCC requires 47 dB suppression of out-of-band emissions. The following web page has a nice graph of the emission mask:

OET CLARIFIES EMISSION MASK MEASUREMENTS FOR DTV TRANSMITTERS

An ATSC receiver can deal with some amount of in-band interference. That's a result of the use of several layers of forward error correction coding to reduce the bit-error-rate at the receiver.

Granted 2.4 GHz is an efficient frequency for heating due to the resonance of the water molecule, but exposure from other sources is far more intense. Cell phones are close enough to the body to be worth looking at. And if anyone is paying any attention to raw power, some of those UHF TV stations have effective radiated power levels of as much as 5 million Watts!

That ought to be enough to make those infomercials sink in...
(Of course if you feel that broadcasters are failing to serve local communities very well there is still time to file comments with the FCC.)

One thing to keep in mind about Microsoft's success at "requiring" the VC-1 codec was that neither HD-DVD nor Blu-ray had a VC-1 requirement at first. That was a long, painful battle for Microsoft which was typically used to dictating standards to everyone. Ultimately, Microsoft skillfully played the game of leverage between competitors to shoehorn themselves into both disk standards. With the future of digital media unfolding in the early 2000's, Microsoft simply offered High Definition equipment manufacturers and movie studios the whole Windows Media system [for a fee] expecting a quick surrender to the obvious victor of any technical battle - themselves. Microsoft envisioned their Windows Media player as the basis of all future television with themselves in control, dispatching all their competitors to oblivion and erecting a global toll booth between media creation companies and viewers. However, manufacturers tend to avoid these traps and SMPTE wouldn't touch Windows Media with a 10 foot pole for exactly that reason, recognizing that the Windows Media Player wrapper was fairly treacherous ground under Microsoft's control. Microsoft was informed by SMPTE that the codec inside Windows Media could be accepted if it was split out and properly standardized like all the other codecs. Leave the "player" wrapper with undocumented controls out of it. Although the DRM offered by Microsoft was attractive to Hollywood, it became clear that manufacturers would not simply hand their future technical path over to Microsoft, nor would the Hollywood production studios hand over control of their assets to an organization with a history of modifying the terms of an agreement to benefit themselves. Manufacturers and content creators knew that Microsoft could suddenly replace VC-1 with VC-2 and demand a ransom to stay in business. Windows Media 10 was on the horizon and everyone knew what that meant. Microsoft wasn't trustworthy in either of those circles and proper SMPTE standardization was the only road to considering any products from Redmond. Microsoft finally did separate the codec from the Windows Media player and offer it for ratification expecting a rubber stamp approval by SMPTE while refusing to release the source code, refusing to define the royalty conditions in advance, promising to deliver finished codecs while retaining control of the current and future source (and a few other tricks). This all prevented ratification by SMPTE. It was Microsoft's first foray into the workings of a real standards body and they thought they could simply bully their way through it. They weren't used to anyone standing up to them like this. Microsoft was very much out in the cold and basically entered panic mode as they watched other formats develop, deploy and gain momentum. Manufacturers were not going to commit to a proprietary codec which would later hold them hostage. No SMPTE standardization? No use for VC-1. Period. End of codec. End of Microsoft's influence on media. PANIC! As Microsoft was slowly releasing control of VC-1 and approaching SMPTE compliance, Microsoft released premature press releases claiming SMPTE ratification months before they were in actual compliance. SMPTE had to smack them down at least once for this tactic. Finally, Microsoft did what was needed for SMPTE ratification and gained acceptance by the HD-DVD camp [support and funding had something to do with this, I'm sure]. I don't personally know the back story of HD-DVD very well but VC-1 incorporation into Blu-ray had everything to do with the greed of MPEG LA. More on that later. I can say that the buzz at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show floor was that HD-DVD was a Microsoft backed entity which didn't do it any favors. The NAB members are typically only interested in repeatable standards. Looking around the 2006 NAB show floor, the only people using Microsoft video standards were their direct "partners" in a confined area. Everyone else was using AVC/H.264. Meanwhile

As far as the retroactive royalty fees go, I hate to disagree with you, but while I think it will cause some chaos, I also think that it will be fought tooth and nail, and I don't think the RIAA is going to come out on top of this one.

I'm sure a lot of Internet broadcasters are hoping that is the case. Watch for appeals to come from the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Digial Media Association on behalf of the big media companies. They are the only ones with the resources to fight this. Whether their appeals are successful, and whether they will benefit smaller, independent stations, remains to be seen.

I hate to point you back to the link in the summery, but the rates are right at the top, including those for 2006. The Copyright Royalty Board fully intends to collect these royalties, and are well within their mandate to do so. If your station played copyrighted works in 2006, you will pay royalty fees for the use of that material (although the fees may ultimately be reduced, as they were in 2002. Scroll down to the bottom of Kurt's page for coverage of that go-around).

'm rather wondering why you think this would require us to turn our back on the last hundred years of culture.

This was in response to the notion that this will somehow be of benefit to independent artists.

First of all, this royalty is collected on all performances, even those of works by non-RIAA artists. The RIAA lobbied hard for these rates, and are licking their chops at the prospect of collecting them, but don't make the mistake of thinking fees will not be collected for all songs played, even those of "independent artist." The "sound recording copyright owner" is entitled to compensation, and anyone can apply to Sound Exchange for their cut, just like Sony or EMI or whomever. The only problem is the allocation of these royalty payments is based on aggregate totals from the industry as a whole, meaning all those Clear Channel stations that stream their FM broadcasts skew the numbers in favour of established artists. The independent artist is unlikely to see any money, even if they are getting airplay on stations not so beholden to the RIAA marketing machine.

So why don't Internet broadcasters play only "free music," licensed through Creative Commons or something?

Many do, and some even get a few listeners I'm sure. But there are other costs associated with running a radio stations, including the cost of maintaining your music catalog (even if you don't "pay" for the music, you need to acquire it, sift through it to separate the good from the bad, store it etc.), bandwidth costs, on-air talent, the cost of maintaining a website that offers features that will attract listeners, BMI/ASCAP royalties (still gotta pay those, don't forget) and sundry costs incurred by any small business. Attracting a listener base sufficient to offset these costs while exclusively playing independently produced, Creative Commons licensed, music by artists nobody has heard of is a heavy lift. Not saying it can't happen in the long run, but I don't see independently run Internet radio stations with no other source of revenue surviving long enough to make this a reality.

But the 'big media' companies who stream their FM broadcast will be subject to these fees too, so what's the problem?

Frankly, they will probably lose money as well. That doesn't mean they won't use Internet streams as a "loss leader," to get people who listen to them on their commute to tune in while the're at work, all the while bombarding them with on-air commercials, ads on their website and compiling marketing data that can be sold to offset some of these costs.

The small, independent station can

"If you enjoy MP3 or OGG streams of internet radio, it's time to pay attention. This week U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Lindsey Graham decided to reintroduce the 'Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act'. An Ars Technica article explains that PERFORM would restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use 'technology to prevent music theft'.

You seem to be under the impression that digital TV is a technology designed to benefit the end-user/viewer.

This is incorrect. Digital TV is designed to benefit broadcasters, not viewers. It does this by allowing them to (a) squeeze more programming into a given slice of spectrum, and (b) use the spectrum for other, non-TV applications that can use over-the-air digital signals (many of which are more lucrative than running sitcoms).

For us poor schlubs on the other end of the broadcast the only attraction of digital is that it allows High Definition programming; and the molasses-like pace with which broadcasters have rolled out HD tells you exactly how much they care about that.

Once you realize that digital TV is a lot more about making life better for NAB members than for you or I, the decisions that surround it will start to make more sense.

Don't forget NAB, Las Vegas April 16-21. Not high odds that Apple would announce a PB there, but they have announced broadcast related technology there on a regular basis. And a G5 PB would be of great interest to people in broadcast.

Personally, I think this is where we'll finally see "asteroid", the breakout box that some believe is specifically for Garage Band. IIRC, it had two XLR plugs, which should be proof that it will be pitched at a market a bit higher than the home user/hobbyist. I don't know of anyone other than a serious musician or pro (or a really serious amateur videographer) that would have equipment (mics, mixing boards) with XLR connects.

The FCC has monitoring stations throughout the U.S.

And for many areas without stations they are quite infamous for little black vans with lots of antennas on top and very small white letters that say "FCC"

The FCC are not idle people, and they not only track you down (if you are radiating RF it's emberassingly easy in case you didn't already know), but they confiscate your equipment also, and you will not see it again. Also, you might have to come up with serious cash for the fines.

Contrary to what you might think, they still chase after CBers with illegal amps too.

I'm someone with a ham license, and am somewhat disappointed with Bruce for advertising something like this, as it goes against the ham ethos of responsible use of technology (esp. radio). If not for his own sake, but for others that will ignorantly decide not to go with the seemingly innocent 100mw version, but those who decide bigger is better and move up to 3 watts, which blows the doors off part 15.

I say seemingly innocent, because if you pump this out your standard home fm antenna as suggested by some, these are almost always a yagi that has gain and will certainly exceed the 250uW at 3 meters.

If enough of these pop up, you can count on NAB to become the next dirty acronym on slashdot, as they become more proactive in squelching (pun convenient) the competition. Except that these guys have a vast amount of caselaw/FCC resources to help back themselves up with.

I truly believe that there is a need for Low Power FM broadcasting, contary to what NAB and NPR propaganda tells you. But breaking the law rather than working to change it is not the way here.

I can't help but wonder if Bruce didn't confuse AM Band with FM band concerning power levels. Without pulling out my calculator, I don't see how 100mW can be legal for FM unless you are using an extremely long length of coax. I believe that the max you can have going to the antenna is around 1 mW.

I hate to take of the rose colored glasses on this one, but it's a bad idea all the way around.

Don't forget NPR along with National Association of Broadcasters has vehemently opposed community microbroadcasting. That coupled with the advertising is enough to keep me from supporting them ever.

As much as I enjoy (some of) their content I think its sometimes better to let something die to give something else the opportunity to fill the vacuum. Or we continue to limp along with the steady Clear Channelization of public radio.

"Amid surprisingly little fanfare, Apple today updated their entire professional video lineup..."

I bet that if you had been in Las Vegas today, there would have been plenty of fanfare. The National Association of Broadcasters conference is currently underway there. It's a gigantic gathering of people in that business and I'm sure that's why Apple timed things the way they did...

Expect Final Cut Pro 4 very, very soon.

Probably sometime between noon and 1PM.

No, it is actually in the 12 minute Digital Grading section of the special edition DVD. Director Peter Jackson and DP Andrew Lesnie were actively involved in the color grading decisions of the movie. You may not like the result, but as you know, Lesnie did receive the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the Fellowship.

The color grading was done at The Posthouse in New Zealand, under the supervision of Peter Doyle, and using software developed by a Hungarian company Colorfront. The software was later introduced to the general market by London based 5D Solutions as 5D Colossus. 5D later went into liquidation in October 2002. Colorfront has since signed an agreement with Montreal based Discreet, who will introduce their digital film grading system in Las Vegas at NAB 2003 in April. Colorfront software has been used to digitally color grade more than a dozen features including We Were Soldiers, Frida, Blue Crush, Stuart Little 2, xXx, Daredevil and Finding Nemo.

The Posthouse has just started work on the digital color grading of The Return of the King.

To the leader of the Internet Villian of the Year, H i l l a r y!

• Summary of Argument:
  AM/FM streaming -- the Internet transmission by an FCC-licensed radio broadcaster of the program fare offered by such broadcaster pursuant to its FCC license -- constitutes a "nonsubscription broadcast transmission" within the meaning of Section 114(d)(1)(A) of the Copyright Act, and thereby is exempt from the limited performance right in sound recordings conferred by Section 106(6) of the Act.

  ...

  While there is thus no need to resort to legislative history, that legislative history nevertheless confirms the plain language construction of the "nonsubscription broadcast transmission" exemption, and demonstrates that Congress did not intend to impose sound recording public performance copyright liability upon FCC-licensed terrestrial broadcasters that simultaneously stream their radio programming to listeners via the Internet.

...in order to protect their $20 of fake -- excuse me, "intellectual" -- property, they're going to destroy their customer's $1000 physical property. Anyone want to join me in tracking down Hilary Rosen and fucking her up the ass with each one of these CDs? To that "beat you to death with an aluminum baseball bat" troll I've been seeing around here recently: your services are also requested. Please bring a spare bat, or three; Ms. Rosen is quite a porker. Thank you.

Hilary is a she. Picture here

Here is Ms. Rosen in *far* higher resolution than I ever want to see her again.

• For old dos games, you might need Bochs
• Abandonware: Classic Trash
• ,
• theunderdogs.org, abandonware.universal.av7.net,
• arcade emulation: mame.net, mame.dk, mamefans.metropoliglobal.com
• To code new games that run on DOS/Win32/*nx/BeOS, use allegro.

• MPAA
• RIAA
• NAB
• BSA
• IDSA - stoopid anal idsa protecting 15 yr old dos games LOL!!

..and came across a few links that show all the HDTV broadcasters in the U.S. Kind of interesting, there's one in a town 100 miles north of myself.. woohoo.. :P

www.nab.org

www.hdpictures.com

See:

• Google cache of the NAB position
• Washington Post article
• further concerns about lack of "public service" programming

Support your local non-comm radio station!

*shrug*

The standard for uncompressed HDTV is a document called SMPTE-292M -- it's a 1.485Gb/S synchronous stream typically carried over coax. There is an IETF draft RFC for carrying uncompressed SMPTE-292M over IP HERE.

The University of Washington, with the assistance of Sony and Enron, presented a demonstration of seven channels of HDTV compressed to 200Mb/S over an OC-48 backbone at the National Association of Broadcaster's convention in April of 2000. In this demo, they produced a HiDef newscast on the floor on the Las Vegas Convention Center, while the newcasters, cameras, and the broadcast transmitter were all in Seattle.

I know there were limited demonstrations of highly compressed HDTV over internet protocol almost a year before that. One group that has been working on that is a University consortium called The Research Channel.

By the time the MPEG toolkit compresses a video signal down to 50:1, a LOT of data has been discarded. You see strange artifacts (if you're watching carefully enough) such as arms disappearing while the football player is throwing the ball, or water behind a moving boat looking more like clouds. Yes, for some still images you still get the 1920X1080 resolution, but mostly you get interpolated fuzz lower than the resolution of standard-definition video.

We need to learn from what has happened to low power radio and not get behind like we are in open access. We need to create mechanisms for civil society to self regulate public resources, with the stakeholders doing the regulation not the government. And we need to make sure we keep access to our spectrum and not let the NAB lock it up.

You are right. The FCC had a proposal to grant thousands of low power licenses and the NAB poured millions into quashing this. Right now a bill that will kill this is on an appropriations bill, waiting for Congress to resume.

For more info see on the bill see this article.

For more on the media industry's lobbying to take away your airwaves see this report from the Center for Public Integrity.

The FCC has made LPFM (Low Power FM) legal, but it is under attack by the NAB. While the cost for the transmitter and antenna is not bad, ~$2500, the other costs associated with running a station and the difficulty of managing it can prevent folks from getting involved. Enter Open Source: we can create the rest of the radio station based on models of distributed communication and cooperation established on the Internet. Making it possible for people to speak their mind to the community and have the community interact with the station via the Internet. Technologies like FreeNet make it possible to share resources (music and information) so members of the radio station can easily produce the local content required by the LPFM license. Sharing the software to do this makes it easier for groups to slip out from under the corporate thumb.

Matrox is dealing big time in Macintosh ware these days. Apple has gotten together with Matrox to build a very powerful Real-Time DV card for the G4. Today's press release detail some of the more salient points.

Matrox and Apple Announce Real-Time DV Editing for the Mac

NAB 2000 Convention

Matrox Video

NAB2000, LAS VEGAS--April 10, 2000--Matrox Video Products Group and Apple® today announced the first PCI video card for real-time digital video (DV) editing on the Macintosh®. The RTMac, architected by Matrox and Apple engineers, is tightly integrated with Apple's award-winning Final Cut Pro(TM) video creation software to provide real-time editing, effects and compositing. Fully configured systems are expected to start at under $5,000

There is also a rumor that Matrox may replace ATI as Apple's video card supplier.

The NAB has http://ww w.nab.org/newsroom/issues/lpfm/responsetofcc/techn icalrecord.asp as an example of "real-world" interference caused by adjacent stations. The thing that strikes me is that all of these interfering stations are said to be at least 32 times stronger. When is one of these low-power stations ever going to be 32 time stronger than an adjacent commercial station. I mean come on! a 100w (max) homebrew versus a 50,000 watt station on a huge ass tower! Thats 1/500, not even close to the 32/1 ratio of these tests.