Digital TV Restrictions Coming Soon

Kagato writes: "CNN reports here that Sony and WB have come to an agreements for Digital Content Control via cable. Even worse, Fox and Disney are making the rounds to get Content Control into over-the-air broadcasts. "...a controversial notion, since over-the-air is, by its literal definition, free and clear." It should be noted 80% of US households use cable/DBS." So when AOL/Time-Warner says you can record a show, you can. I'm sure we can all be happy with that much freedom.

Comments

The bandwidth is the same

[SpiceWare]

NTSC uses 6MHz of bandwidth per channel, as does the US implementation of HDTV.

The stations don't have more bandwidth, we're just using compression to utilize the bandwidth more efficiently.

See Cringley's PBS article, Bandwidth Squeeze, for more info - such as how Japanese's HDTV standard uses 20MHz of bandwidth because the signal is not compressed(at least as of 98, when the article was written)

DVDs have shown us the way

[JanneM]

At least here in sweden, one selling point has become that the player is region-free, i.e. that it it ignores the region coding, or can be set to whatever region you please. At first players needed to be modded, but today all but a few name brand players usually come region-free out of the box.

With consumers becoming used to the idea of buying copyright-avoiding technology, and manufacturers seeing there is a very large market for it, I'd expect tv-sets and VCRs that ignore this as well.

Remember, most manufacturers are not content providers, and has little incentive not to do this, especially with competitors taking market share with their products.

/Janne

Re:DVDs have shown us the way

[mblase]

Unfortunately, capitalism in the US isn't as free as we'd all like it to be. It's no big secret that corporate interests are integral to the lawmaking process here, thanks to corporate-sponsored lobbying in Congress and the high costs of running for re-election (not to mention some plain-old corruption here and there).

That, combined with general apathy on the part of the citizenry, is how things like the DCMA get passed in the first place. It's the reason we have Macrovision on all our VCRs and region encoding on all our DVD players. Companies demand protection for their media, so the technology manufacturers are left with no choice but to comply. Stopping piracy (theft from media owners) is more important than the freedoms of the individual (inconvenience for the voters), and while intellectual theft is and should be a crime, it gets taken to such insane extremes sometimes.

Take digital television, for instance. All broadcasters must carry it by 2006, but are consumers really demanding this sort of "advanced" picture capacity yet? No, but the TV makers demanded it be enforced in law because there was a Catch-22: why buy the digital TV if there's no broadcasts, and why make the broadcasts if there's no TVs? Better features will sell products regardless -- DVDs have caught on mainly because of the added features and conveniences, not because any law requires them to be produced.

Now the companies are demanding enforced copy protection along with enforced broadcast technology, and they'll probably get it. There will be hacks, but they won't be widespread, because they'll still be illegal. Never mind that I would rather have an enhanced DVD from the producer than a digital "videotape" of the show anyhow; anything that stops me from having to sit through paid commercials must be prevented. Someday it'll be a law that I can't leave my chair once I've sat down, or I'll be violating a license agreement.

I'm just tired of it all. There's not enough good content out there on the channels for me to pay their ever-increasing prices anyways, so I settle for local antenna-based TV and a DVD collection of my favorites with no commercials. As long as it costs me as much time and trouble as this to get something for free, I'll continue to just pay up front and keep it simple.

new technology, old VCR

[option8]

so, how are they going to prevent me from taping new "protected" shows on my old (very old) VCR? i can understand if they're targeting people with Tivos and whatnot, but if there's some way for them to prevent some shows from being recorded by joe average with a 3 year out-of-date VCR, then it'll work about as well as, say, macrovision on my DVD player, and do little more than tick off those of us that can't be home when DragonBall Z is on during the week, so we tape all the episodes and watch them saturday afternoon...

what was my point? damn. i keep forgetting to include one of those...

People don't buy crippled hardware.

[glen]

We saw it with DivX. People aren't going to spend good money on hardware that comes with artificial limitations.

When this technology starts appearing on store shelves and people find out that you may or may not be able to watch and or record certain shows, hopefully they will stick with their current status quo NTSC arrangement and wait until they can get what they want without the unfeatures.

Let the marketplace decide. And let's hope the marketplace makes the right decision.

It's supply and demand economics. And I don't see a great demand for crippled hardware.

Re:What's the household penetration?

[jmauro]

Analog stations will stop broadcasting in a few years. Their signals are being taken away and replaced with HDTV signals. All othse with analog signals will need to get a converter, which can handle the conversion. It really, sucks. The TV stations get 4-6 times the amount of bandwidth (for free no less, those signals could easily raise a couple billion) and all they've been able to figure out with what to do with them is broadcast 4 channels instead of one. No interaction, no HDTV, just 4 channels instead of one. Really great. But anyway, everyone will be force to upgrade to digitial whether they want to or not. Digitial Cable, Digitial Signal Receivers for Analog TVs, and Digitial TVs. There is now way around it, since the FCC has said to make it so. Analog TVs are on the way out, really really fast, before anyone gets any silly ideas like they really aren't all that bad after all.

Re:What's the household penetration?

[gorilla]

Except that everyone is lagging behind the FCC's timetable. The original timeline was that by 1 May 1999, the top 10 markets would by ready for digital, and the top 30 by November 1999, and all commercial by 2002, and PBS by 2003. Needless to say, this is not happening. In 2000, there were 24.2 million analog sets sold, against 648,429 DTV sets. Even the FCC is now saying that it's original 2006 date is unrealistic.

In the UK, 625 line TV was introduced in 1964, and 405 line broadcasting was offically obsolete in 1969. Yet it took until 1985 until it was finally switched off. This was with the upgrade being to colour, more channels, sets being valve based, and consequently with shorter lifespans, and the increasing uptake of TV.

If it takes 31 years for 405 line TV to disappear, it won't take 8 years for NTSC TV to go.

Links: http://www.videosystems.com/2001/03_mar/features/n umbers/numbers.htm

http://www.gvmag.com/issues/2001/0301/editor/0301. shtml

http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/405-Lines/

What a disaster

[LS]

Copy protecting TV broadcasts is like putting defecation in a safe. I just hope they don't touch PBS.

LS

How long will it take ...

[SirSlud]

I really wonder how long it will take before we collectively (and by this, I mean, including the technophobe business types) admit that fair-use and lack of nazi-like-restrictions were probably responsible for at least SOME of the stability and complatency of the public at large during the 20th century? How much longer till people say 'the hell with it' and starting throwing around flaming beer bottles like in some other countries that contain regular, average people who are sick of their government-imposed disposition?

Honestly, if this keeps up, I really dont see how the western world can survive under its own canabilistic economically-driven laws and policies. Time/Warner, you're rich enough. Stop paying the drug addicts and bimbos millions of dollars to ply on the ignorance of mass media consumers so you can start affording your own business without having to chase pervasive fair-use-infringing legislation (oh wait, too late.)

Re:So, shall we have a betting pool...

[RedX]

Ask that to all the DirectTV hackers that can't use there DirectTV reciever anymore...

Sure, go ahead and ask those hackers. Perhaps they'll answer you in between the free porn and PPV movies they're watching. The DirecTV anti-hacker hack was the biggest marketing FUD I've seen in quite awhile.

I don't get it.

[anacron]

They won't let us copy over-the-air, "high value" programming, but how many of you will watch a movie when it comes on TV even though you already own it in several formats? How many of you have started buying DVDs of your favorite VHS movies?

When did this whole "us vs them" attitude start where these companies are putting so many restrictions on new technology because they feel like there is POTENTIAL for their IP to be lost. Well, bullocks to that. Anything they do will be broken anyway. Why not just forget the whole thing and move on. Hell, they're so damn scared they MIGHT lose IP they will spend millions to prevent it.

And all of you will say Napster was a Good Thing, but I say Napster brought the end of the Good Thing. The free ride is over my friends. Copy protection on CDs, TV you can't even watch. Digital Rights Management on downloaded things. What's next? A car that gets 10MPG less unless you pay a yearly fee to the company that sold it to you? A keyboard that disables the letter 'e' unless you pay .001 cents per keystroke?

Napster screwed everything up. It made companies afraid of technology that they're willing to sacrifice features (e.g. TiVo) for fear of lawsits from other companies. And this "Intellectual Property" they banter on about is so etherical anyway.

Oh? So you can only make 3 billion dollars next year instead of 5. Oh, so record sales have doubled in the past year after lagging for 5 years yet you'll still put a business out of business.

Capitalism sucks when the people with the power aren't the ones with the money. I'm not sure when it happened, but it'll be the downfall of everything we currently hold sacred. Our paradigm shift will be watching all the things we used to enjoy going away. Our children will not think twice about paying to breathe, and we'll hate the fact we pay for it.

You just wait. The worst is yet to come.

.anacron

Re:I don't get it.

[anacron]

Ummm, is that a misprint? The problem is that the people with the power are the people with the money, and only the people with the money. I'll just assume you mistyped.

No, that wasn't a misprint. Capitalism relies on the relationship between supply and demand. In this case, let's assume that only companies have the supply and consumers create demand. We have the money. The companies want it. Yet we have no power.

Simplified model aside, companies do have money. And they do have power. But it wasn't supposed to be that way. Capitalism works because the money the supplier wants starts in the hands of the buyer. There's an inherent check and balance system at work.

Somehow over the past 10 years that system has flipped and the buyer also has money. This puts them in a superior position of power because of it, and the people with the buyers are left with nothing.

Quality used to stand for something. Now it's not quality but quantity. How much can we make? How many can we produce? How many features can we build? All of these drive current capitalism. It's not "We had better make this quality because then no one will buy it"

The real bummer is that competition is the root cause of the flip. It was supposed to be a Good Thing, but Thomas Paine couldn't have predicted what would have happened if the companies

1. Didn't care about consumers
2. Had too much money
3. Had IP to protect

It almost feels the same to me as the beginning of the industrial revolution. Or the huge Carnagie steel conglomerate around the turn of the century. Money and power in the hands of a corporation can't be a good thing. Look what happened last time (hint, it starts with a D and ends in epression). When the companies with money and power lose all their money they lose all their power too.. and the rest crumbles like a stepped-on sand castle.

.anacron

That's been the hold up so far

[Greyfox]

I was working for a crappy company trying to build a tivo-like Linux device and one of the major hold-ups (Apart from Management changing their minds about our requirements every 3 days, that is) was that the content providers didn't want to talk to us unless we could assure them that customers wouldn't rip the hard drive out of the box, steal the mpegs and post those episodes of "Dharma and Greg" on the internet. I'm under the distinct impression that the reason digital TV hasn't caught on in the US is because the content providers are holding out for ways to keep their shows from being copied.

Nevermind the potential for timeshifting and convienence features that the Tivo users have already experienced. The content producers would rather shit on the food after eating their fill rather than allow anyone else to have a bite. Doesn't matter to me though. When my room mate moves out, so will the TV and I have no plans on getting another one. I'd just as soon avoid their table altogether.

Ratings

[MattW]

I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record. I'm certainly in that group. If I can't record it, I'm not watching it. The networks need to stop the "fast forward" button more than anything.

What's the household penetration?

[the Man in Black]

Every time this topic is discussed, I think the same thing. This will introduce handshake authentication between your DBS/Cable box and your Digital TV (or TiVo). There is no way that there are enough people using Digital televisions that this should be a problem. As long as there are still analog sets, they can't implement this technology across the board. How upset would the consumers be if they wake up one morning and they have an AOL symbol on their $2,500 RPTV. "We're sorry, this cable service is no longer compatible with this television/device. Please upgrade to a Digital Television to experience this service." Spare me.

I've said it before, and I'lls ay it again. Stay the hell out of my living room.

Re:What's the household penetration?

[einhverfr]

Even if it is feasible to do so technically, what about the rights of people to record shows for home use (per the home recording act). Of course, we can expect to see them hide behind the DMCA. The encryption scheme will probably be rediculously short, and so runtime attacks will be easy, so the DMCA will be the only tool they will have to enforce it.

OTOH, this may be a blessing in disguise. It shows what is really happening with the DMCA and gives a better chance to have it overturned or repealed.

The children (will be reeducated)

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Speaking of the children, there are plans to indoctrinate kids into believing anything a content provider does not like is wrong. It was mentioned back in the days of the IITF white paper/green paper and I believe has been mentioned in the UK now.

They'll think recording a show off TV is as morally wrong as copying CDs or as wrong as stealing cars.

The content owners will have the government issue propaganda in their name. The Department of Justice is biased against DeCSS, yet they are getting sued in the Federal Courts. Conflict of interest bigtime. When the judicial system in which you are being tried issues a brief in favor of the plaintiff, there is no chance at anything even approaching impartiality or a fair trial.

Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.

Re:Its just keeps getting worse and worse

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Umm Judge Kaplan's DeCSS decision DID eliminate fair use.

You only have "fair use" if the content owner and their "protection" racket (pun intended) allow you to have it.

That does defeat the purpose of fair use...

We need to get the DeCSS decision reversed, or else fair use WILL have been legislated and judicially ordered to be illegal.

Nice to see CNN towing the company line

[jayhawk88]

-- In a landmark deal that could provide crucial momentum to the nation's foundering digital TV transition,

Foundering? HA! How about Withholding? As in, "In a landmark deal that will provide Sony, etc with the incentive to stop withholding the digital TV transition from America until they can damn well lock it down and control it...".

Another priceless one: Hollywood's top lobbyist, Motion Picture Assn. of America president Jack Valenti, has said digital TV produces such a perfect picture that even amateurs could successfully pirate the content.

Who exactly are we going to pirate it to? Does Jolly Jack think the nation as a whole has collectively agreed to have 1 person subscribe to digital cable, then throw it up on the Internet for the other 249 Million of us?

Re:How soon will the switch really happen?

[sulli]

85%? I say never. Mark my words.

Do you really think they'll change over in 2006 when less than 10% of users have digital sets? No fscking way.

a future of enforced ad viewing

[mkcmkc]

[A]nything that stops me from having to sit through paid commercials must be prevented. Someday it'll be a law that I can't leave my chair once I've sat down, or I'll be violating a license agreement.

You just think you're kidding:

• Dave: (returning to chair with popcorn) Okay, play the show, Hal.
• Hal: I can't do that, Dave. My sensors indicate that you weren't in the room when I played the required sponsor messages.
• Dave: (muttering) Okay, play the bleeping messages, Hal.
• (Hal plays them.)
• Dave: Okay, now play the show, Hal.
• Hal: I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave. My sensors indicate that you weren't watching the screen when I played the required sponsor messages.
• Dave: (staring at screen) Okay, Hal, play the bleeping messages again.
• (Hal plays them.)
• Dave: Okay, now play the show, Hal.
• Hal: I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave. My sensors indicate that you weren't listening to the required sponsor messages with a warm and loving attitude, Dave.
• Dave: Here's a little warmth and love for you, Hal! ("zaps" Hal with his one megawatt laser remote)

I'm just tired of it all. There's not enough good content out there on the channels for me to pay their ever-increasing prices anyways, so I settle for local antenna-based TV and a DVD collection of my favorites with no commercials. As long as it costs me as much time and trouble as this to get something for free, I'll continue to just pay up front and keep it simple.

I'm tired too, but if we keep giving them our money for content we can't fairly use, you can bet they'll keep selling it that way.

--Mike

It's about the boxes

[dachshund]

Essentially, I see this as a way for cable/content providers to force their will on the set-top box manufacturers, in much the same way as they did to the DVD makers. Beginning next year (I believe), set-top boxes will be sold at stores like Best Buy, as an attempt to prevent cable companies from having complete control over this segment of the market. Unfortunately, if set-top box manufacturers are forced to license technology equivalent to DeCSS, they may lose some autonomy right back to the cable companies. This is where I see these tactics going in the short run.

In the longer run, I think their aim is primarily towards the HDTV and high-quality digital markets. HDTV is still a few years from being practical for more than a few channels, especially over standard cable networks. But perhaps offering higher quality via the digital connection may be a selling point for the cable companies, if they could get away with it. In any case, with DVDs taking over from videotapes, and services like Tivo going into the cable headend, most consumers may choose not to own analog recording technology in a few years.