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Feds to Require Digital Receivers In All New TVs?
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."
I have to agree with this one - this is a business decision.
Give me a reason to upgrade my TV, a purpose of spending another $300-$500 dollars so I can get what I get now.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
If you think this is a good thing, which some of you may- its the same thing as requiring DRM to ship with new TV's, VCR's, PVR's, computers, etc.
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.
So, just to summarize. When the government artificially props up the software industry via the DMCA, we're all up in arms. When the MPAA artificially inflates prices in certain countries through DVD region-coding, it's horrific. Yet when the FCC wants to force analog televisions off the market to prop up digital broadcasting, without any consumer demand for it, that's okay.
The manufacterors dont want to pay for the cost of digital recievers, the broadcasters dont want to pay to upgrade, and the consumers dont want to pay extra.
Then maybe that's a sign that it's not ready to be piped into everyone's home. Not a commodity yet. Not mature enough to be within a sane price range. Let the people buying the televisions decide; don't decide for them.
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...
I think the FCC is more concerned with freeing up the analog spectrum. There's a ton of cash and political hoopla around who gets the rights to what frequencies. Unless they do something now, there's to much of a chance that 85% of Americans won't be able to get digital signals by '06.
The consumer is worried that they will buy a HDTV today and have it be outdated tomorrow, and when they cost thousands of dollars, compared to under $1000 for a reasonably high quality analog TV, what do you expect? The consumer isn't jumping on the bandwagon. There aren't enough broadcasts, there are frequent news stories about the standards changing and not being able to record HDTV in the future and so on. Nobody is confident in HDTV. Not to mention that we are not in the best of times economically and who the heck wants to shell out that much for a TV when you aren't sure about your job?
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
(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.
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
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'd rather be sailing...
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?
AT&T and other carriers still on TDMA can switch over to the newest CDMA gear which has a much higher capacity. CDMA has it's own problems and it's perfect, but to use the argument the reason for the poor service is lack of airwave is a total lie. Well to me anyway. There are viable long term solutions to the current "percieved" shortage of airwave bandwidth. I can't help but think the telco's just want to buy up bandwidth from the FCC so that they own it. After all, if the big boys owns all the bandwidth, how can a small guy use new technology to break into the market.
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.
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.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I have TimeWarner digital cable, and it's the same problem. I don't know whether they allocate bandwidth based on a channel's popularity, but the big networks (NBC, ABC, etc.) all come across fine, the Sci-Fi channel and specialized movie channels are just a little blocky (especially in any scene with fog, smoke, or sand), and digital-only channels (i.e. can only receive them if you subscribe to digital cable) such as Style and BBC America frequently go all blocky or crap out altogether.
I called TWC last night about BBC America breaking up and all the customer service rep would say was "That's a network problem."
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
you have it all backwards.
"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."
ITS NOT THE BROADCASTERS OR CONSUMERS WHO WANT IT!!!
Which is the root of the whole problem. Both parties would be happy to keep sucking up large amounts of the spectrum. Yeah, there is some benefit to the consumer and the broadcaster once everyone has adopted digital TV, but the main beneficiary is anyone who gets to use the newly freed up spectrum.
Thats why adoption is so slow, obvious costs but (largely) hidden benefits.