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."

Comments

Australia - a sneak preview

[Gavin Rogers]

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...

A brief history of HDTV

[SkipToMyLou]

(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:Set-top box

[afidel]

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.