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.

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.

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.