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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'm still hoping that the FCC drops the requirements that broadcast channels be analog so that we can actually start seeing a push for all digital channels. The channels I have that come in digital are about 2x as clear and the sound is a lot better as well.
They'd like this. Digital is part of DRM, and DRM means no more videotaping a 10 year old movie on TV, so if you want to see it, it's another buck in Jack Valenti's pocket.
Are they going to put people in jail for making TV's without digital recievers?
What about black and white TV's? What's the point of putting one in there?
How about the TV Watch, is it going to have this huge digital reciever attached to it?
So if I don't buy into the "everything is disposable" routine and am still using a ten-year old tv in 2006, suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyards(until the FCC shuts them down of course).
What are the TV manufacturers complaining about, suddenly they can force everyone who has been holding out to buy a new tv. BIG PROFITS.
lysergically yours
jumping at the bit
Did you mean chomping at the bit or jumping at the chance?
Whatever you meant, don't count your chickens before they cross the road.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
is to sell "monitors" that dont come with *any* tuners. It would actually be nice because then you plug in any device (VCR, Satellite, cable box, etc) and use the tuner provided in that. There is no need to have a tuner in TVs nowadays...
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
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
So people in the US get a piece of crap (worse spectrum usage, no doppler tolerance -> no mobile apps).
Why whould people buy it?
See McDonalds for details...
The National association of broadcasters has developed this new product, HDTV. However, due to the massive restrictions that they have imposed upon our use of it, the continual changes that they keep making to the standard, and the high prices that they want for the hardware, noone buys it. So now, they go the federal government to make them mandate it. And to send manufactuers (who produce what the public wants) to prison (or more likely huge fines).
YOU WILL BUY THIS UNNECESSARY LUXURY ITEM!!
This is great, that means that any psudo-useless luxury item that I produce could be a success so long as I can convince the government to require it.
Oh, wait, I have to be rich first so I can bribe them... Oh well...
Irvu.
Just imagine the hullabaloo to be had here when the Feds require all TVs to ship with WinCE and/or MSN ...
Or Even CANCER! OR BOMBS! That'd be pretty contraversial too! And like the previous sugestion, completely beside the point.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I'd say price is the main hang-up for me... I'd love a digital tv, and a few of the stations in my area do broadcast a digital signal. I just can't afford a digital tv. If they had an add-on box with a digital tuner that I could, say, plug into the component video jacks on my tv, I could handle that, but aren't HDTVs the ones that are letterbox size, or do they make them in regular sizes too?
I guess I'll have to go wander around Best Buy and do a little "research"
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
So, they want TV makers to include the HDTV receiver box inside the TV. By 2006 they'll be very cheap anyway.
Even so... You can get one cheap. My cable company (Time Warner) does HDTV via Digital Cable. They gave me a box that does HDTV so I have a "digital receiver" and it didn't cost me any more than I was already paying. Same goes for DSS. You can get HDTV DSS receiver now, and soon you'll get them for "free' after signup.
Also, the boxes MUST be priced artificially high. As soon as they get put in to every TV they'll be extremely cheap. Look at DVD players..they are as low as $69 now.
Industry always balks at government mandates, the later conforms to the regulation. For example, look at the requirement that all TVs have closed caption capability. First the industry complained that it would increase costs dramatically. Once the manufacturers stopped complaining, they integrated everything needed to meet the requirement onto a single chip that costs are less than $1 per set. Now the same will be done with digital receivers.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
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.
How can the public be satisfied when they can't see the difference? Normal people cannot afford HDTVs. There are scant few HD broadcasts. Subscribing to digital TV offers a clearer picture but most people don't really notice.
Content, content, and more content. Offer some content in digital TV. Who needs another specialty channel? Offer people the shows they watch everyday in digital (widescreen and HD). Offer smaller, less expensive HDTVs. Only then can the public truely compare.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
...The FCC Should look more closely at the series of foul-ups that have hit the UK's Digital Terestrial Television Service in recent months - with the collapse of ITV Digital, and the subsequent relicencing of the system to the BBC, view confidence in the system has slumped - and there were only 1.2 Million viewers of DTT at it's peak anyway!
Serious thought needs to be put into the transmission systems employed, signal quality, and most importantly, programme content - poor content will doom any attempts at Forced DTT takeup to complete failure - pushing more and more people into Cable or Satelite based systems... Sure, the US and UK markets are very different, but should the FCC not at least try and learn from other countries' mistakes?
Disclaimer: I meant what I thought, not what I wrote! What? You can't read my Mind? Oh dear!
When an HDTV costs a couple grand and your average TV at Wal-Mart is a couple hundred.. I can see why HDTV has had trouble taking off... Too much $$$ for too little improvement.
So now the government is going to mandate digital receivers..
Increases the price of the TV.
Allows wireless carriers to give you more services and more $$$ to use them.
Easier to implement DRM.. adding more $$$ to your monthly bills...
Seems to me this goverment mandate spells more $$$ spent by the average citizen all round... but hey.. that's what we have government for right? To make our lives better?
Hey, I like the idea of digital TV. I bought a close-captioning television before they were required, too. But mandating it? When airbags aren't required in cars??
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The whole HDTV push is starting to look like Vietnam to me. HDTV failed. It's time to put up the white flag.
I thought that the radio frequencies available to different people (TV, Radio, Mobile phones, etc) was controlled by the government. Analog TV uses a huge amount of the available r/f bandwidth, and this is bandwidth that can be split up, controlled and resold by the government. As such, I think it's a government decision. They want some of that bandwidth back by 2006, and the only way they're going to get it (and make sure that people can watch TV) is by forcing Sony et/al to start going digital now.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
To sum it up, there's an artificial "bandwidth shortage" combined with a desire by electronics manufacturers to sell more expensive stuff. Get those groups lobbying the FCC and the result seems pretty obvious to me.
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.
that's just not fair
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
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...
Subject says it all.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
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.
You see there is this part of the government called the Federal Communications Commission. It is their job to make sure that all of those nifty wireless devices; like Radios, Walkie-talkies, Cell Phones, Wi-Fi Internet Access points, Cordless Phones, Television Signals, Very Low Frequency Transmissions, Satellite Signals and just about every other way to communicate wirelessly are able to do their thing without interfering with one another.
No matter what they do, they are simply unable to create new frequencies. There are only so many frequencies available. So, they have to limit and control those frequencies, otherwise the next time you turn on your cell phone, you might end up getting nothing but an old "I Love Lucy" show, or end up having to help a Jetliner land at a landing strip 60 miles from your home.
Without the government regulating and controlling the airwaves, what kind of Electro-Magnetic Interference is tolerable from your computer and other things. Many, if not most, of the communications devices that we take for granted would simply not exist.
Everyday that I can turn on my car radio, make a cell phone call. Heck, even connect to the internet and post a message here on Slashdot, is another day that I should thank the FCC and the people that made the FCC possible.
BS about how "Market Forces" and other blah-blah crud would simply be much better than government regulations regarding communications, would have left us with a wasteland of commmunications devices that simply wouldn't be able to communicate.
I have no doubt that without the FCC, we simply would not have the same level of technology that we have today. Most everything with electronic control devices would have trouble operating properly, if they operated at all. There would be little to no chance that we would have been able to see the Moon Landings, let alone even travel to the Moon.
The world would certainly be a different place without the regulation of the airwaves. I have to admit that I am unable to claim being an expert when it comes to radio signals and wireless communications, but from my limited readings, it is very easy to interfere with the radio signals that are in use in most devices. Just remember that the next time you enter a tunnel while on your cell phone.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The National Association of Broadcasters endorses the purchase of HDTV, wants everyone to have it, but the general public is OK with what they have, and don't want to spend extra money for something they don't want or need. People are generally happy with the options they've had, and can easily make copies of programs on their VCR's and DVD-RW players. The NAB sees this happening, but can't effectively do anything about it because the technology already exists, so the NAB persuades the government to force people to submit to their will.
The RIAA endorses the purchase of music CD's, wants everyone to have it, but the general public is OK with what they already have, and don't want to spend extra money for something they don't want or need. People are generally happy with the options they've had, and can easily make copies of music on their computers. The RIAA sees this happening but can't ffectively do anything about it because the technology already exists, so the RIAA persuades the government to force people to submit to their will.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Wait until you can't watch your DVDs or Tapes because you haven't paid the rent on them yet.
--Mike--
Oppose Digital Restriction Management (DRM)
Why whould people buy it?
See McDonalds for details...
I know right! The other day I was eathing a big mac while flying my airplane, and the whole thing just turned an ugly shade of ultraviolet! WHY CAN'T I GET A DOPPLER TOLERANT HAMBURGER AROUND HERE?!!!!
If consumers want ditital TV, they'll get it. If they're not adopting it as quickly as the broadcasters and the government would like, the problem is that the price is too high to justify the increase of quality. Its all supply and demand. Once upon a time, not everyone and their 3 yr old kid were talking on cell phones. Now they are. People adapted to that market because the industry found a way to make it happen. If that meant selling the phones for a penny and making up for it on the service, so be it. It was far more effective than forcing a $300 expense up front, which practically nobody was willing to go for.
So if the industry wants Ditital TV in every home in the near future, they're going to have to sell that service so that purchasing analog sets or even keeping the current analog sets doesnt' make sense anymore. This means that new digital TV sets must be LESS expensive than the analog counterparts, not more. 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.
If the broadcasters REALLY want this to happen, they just need to announce that they're going to stop transmitted analog signals as of a certain date. The consumers will switch if they really want the service. And if they don't, well, them the breaks. Of course, there will always be straggler broadcasters that will pull the entire market of analog receivers, so this will be a tough trick to pull off without losing tons of market share.
But that's not the government's problem. The government does not need to get involved to mandate a change in industry standards in this way. You can't force the free marketplace. It tends to go where it wants to go. And when it wants digital broadcasting on a large scale, it will have it, and the analog will slowly die away until the point where pulling the plug on it won't make a signficant difference.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Currently most people who get digital TV get it with an antenna. Very few cable providers transmit it (digital cable != digital TV), so satellite is the only prevalent pay option.
Short answer, before analog broadcasts go away they get digital over the air.
I was shopping for a 1080i/480p display recently. I looked at a Sony HDTV set with a tuner built in. Very soon they are putting out a basically equivalent model without the tuner, and it will sell for $500-$700 less. For other brands, HDTV-compatible sets without tuners sets go for $500-$1000 less than the equivalent sets with tuners. I don't know where they get the $200 figure.
The plasma sets are monitors only. If you wnat to tune television -- SDTV or HDTV -- you buy a tuner. Many tube and projection sets come with SDTV tuners but require a separate tuner for HDTV if you want it. The tuner would plug into the TV through the component video inputs -- i.e. a so-called "analog hole".
The government should stay out of decisions that people must spend extra money to have what they neither want nor need.
TV reception over an antenna does not have to be analogue only. Well, not in the UK at least. Admittedly, the company that was doing it has gone bust, and the licenses have now been sold to the BBC, but if I bought a digital box (for 99 pounds), I could pick up free-to-air digital services through my antenna. Digital through satellite or cable is also available of course.
As I said, I get my HDTV signal via Digital Cable. Along with the Digital Cable channels I also get HDTV versions of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, HBO, and Show Time. Much easier than OTA and more content than DSS.
I just traded in my normal Digital Cable box for the HD Digital Cable Box... Right now I use the Scientific Atlanta 2000HD, but they just sent me a card saying I can get the 3100HD if I drop mine off.
If nobody really wants digtal TV, then why push it? There's no need to rush. With Tivo undercutting traditional revenue methods, the Internet revolutionizing distribution and ruining distribution control, Wireless and P2P poised to exacerbate the whole situation, and the Spectrum subject to all manners of demand, controversy, and newer more efficient and effective technologies, we might as well wait.
It may take a while to get this mess all sorted out and there's doubtless significant improvements on the way. Maybe traditional commercial-driven networks will collapse. Maybe small-scale production and distribution will really take off with the enablers we're just starting to see. Maybe someone will come up with a generalized wireless system that is so good everyone wants to switch to it. In the long run it'll probably be better to go without for a few years until all the pieces fall in place, than to have ourselves saddled by an ever more complex and restrictive arrangement.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Well put. I had hoped he wouldn't be this much of a door mat but it seems every other day there's a /. submission about this. Seems that most everybody involved in anything remotely tied to tv/radio/internet/etc has decided that legislation by elected representatives (such as they are) is useless. Instead just get the FCC to mandate it. It's faster and cheaper to just buy off the FCC I guess. In any event, it's not like congress is there to backstop any of this foolishness. Sen. Disney, Tauzin and all the other idiots are submitting bills written by industry interests as fast as the lobbyists can write 'em.
(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.
However, my biggest pet peeve with Satellite TV and digital cable is that you have to have a tuner that's separate from your TV. That means that you've lost the ability to watch one show on the TV while recording another on the VCR. It means you have to add yet another remote to your collection. This is the main reason why I stick to basic, analog cable.
Now, if TV's (and VCR's) had digital receivers, and if these receivers worked with satellite and digital cable as well as broadcast HDTV, without the crappy advertisement-laden "channel-selection" interface that the current digital-cable boxes provide, then I might actually want to buy one of these things.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
So if I don't buy into the "everything is disposable" routine and am still using a ten-year old tv in 2006, suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyards(until the FCC shuts them down of course).
No. You will buy a $99 (maybe even less) box that sits on top of your TV and decodes the digital signal so that your old TV can display it. Every other form of digital TV does this currently, and in fact I have yet to see TVs with integrated digital cable or satellite decoders. In the UK the government is considering giving them away to the stragglers if digital terrestrial TV hasn't taken off enough by the time the analogue signals are shut off. Perhaps the FCC might do the same if they're desperate for the frequencies. You get more channels and better picture and sound.
In any case, 2006 is only the date when all new TVs must have built-in decoders - it says nothing about the actual shutoff date for analogue transmissions. In the UK that's set for 2010, although that could change by a year or two in either direction depending on adoption rates and how the government plays it, and the UK is a little bit ahead of the US in the adoption curve.
Really, there is an easy way out.
It's quite strange that in a world where the government talks the talk of deregulation, they walk the walk that Staliln set the pace for...
I haven't used the tuner in any of my TVs ever (4 TVs since college). I use the VCR tuner. My 56" TV is just a monitor for my DVD, VCR, and PS2. I plan on keeping it that way.
Why aren't external digital tuners an option?
I am pissed off that there isn't a digital in on my TV, but I'm sure you can buy them that way.
Joe Batt Solid Design
The difference is that closed caption is actually for the good of mankind. Digital receivers don't add enough value and they give Fritz too many chances to regulate what I can watch in my own home.
Coding Blog
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
If they were to change the digital standard to allow for additional codecs now, it might take years to hash out the patent licensing. Also, the older the codec, the sooner the patents expire. MPEG2 has been around for a while now. And if they're really taking advantage of new codecs, they'll need to not only add support for them, but also add support for different divisions of the spectrum so as to use the saved bandwidth for something else.
Not to mention those few digital tuners already out there and those chipsets already in development...
While it would be nice to take advantage of all the latest technology, at some point you have to say it's good enough and go with it.
The DTVs are expensive because of the low volumes. Right now manufacturers are charging premiums for the DTVs. High end TVs are where they make the best profit margins, so they aren't real interested in making DTVs into a commodity product.
I suspect that the $100 higher price at first and the $15 in 2006 is reasonably accurate. That's how much they will have to mark up the TVs to get their usuall profit margin on those mainstream models. The actual cost to the manufacturers will be much smaller.
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?
Been watching HDTV for several months. You're wasting your time by watching in standard definition what is available in high definition. High definition originating from video sources is mediocre but high definition originating from film is spectacular. When you have an HDTV display you essentially have an exact replica of a 35mm print.
Americans are cheap bastards. I know I'm one of them.
:)
We'd all buy a digital TV if it were cheaper. In my apartment with my roommates we had one tv, it was like 13 inches. We don't care about "digital cable" or HDTV because we can't even afford *basic* cable. Plus lots of people are already invested in their giganto projection TVs already.
Rob
P.S. I would be glad to take your gignato projection tv so that you can buy a digital.
How many millions of televisions are purchased in 10 years? Multiply that by $15 and that's the minimum amount of money that will be spent on this. Over a BILLION dollars. Perhaps a few hundred million in chips is a reasonable mandate to help the hearing impared, but a BILLION dollars is alot to mandate so that the FCC can rape the public of spectrum for cash. What do we, as consumers or whatever, need digital broadcast TV for anyway? How does anybody benifit? People who can afford this already pay for cable or sattelite, and people who can't afford cable and sattelite are going to be forced to buy new TVs, or tuner boxes. If they were going to open up that spectum for FREE public use, then I could see some value in this, but they're not going to do that.
10 No-Prize points for catching the reference. Double that for naming the episode.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
but why bother ? To see the crap served up on TV twice as clear, it just makes it suck worse,
Rose colored glasses and all. Maybe if any of the networks could rise to the challenge and consistently produce high quality programming I might care
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
It's all about bandwidth. The FCC regulates the frequencies people are allowed to transmit on. Analog TV frequencies are taking up a huge block of bandwidth that can be used for other emerging wireless technologies. In order to free up that bandwidth, broadcast television stations need to move over to digital broadcasts which use a smaller chunk of frequencies to transmit. Until the broadcasters are switched over they are using both the analog and digital frequencies, which is a waste of this very limited resource.
Once consumers switch over to digital TVs, or at least digital tuners, the FCC can take back the analog TV frequencies. Right now the plan is for this to happen in 2006. TV manufacturers are dragging their feet because they can charge a nice premium on digital TVs right now, and moving them into the mainstream means lower profit margins and lower overall profits for them.
Once digital TVs become mainstream the price to make them will be very small. Consumers get better quality pictures and sound for this small additional cost. They also get access to the new emerging technologies that will be possible because of the frequencies freed up by the analog broadcasts going away. Older TVs will need a digital tuner/converter in order to work.
The government will also reap billions from auctioning off the current analog TV frequencies. Consumers will in turn pay for those billions when they buy the new products. This makes legislators happy because they get to collect billions of dollars without it being obvious that people are being taxed.
I personally think it needs to be done. Those frequencies need to be made available, and unlike much of the legislation, the people who are paying for it, actually get a benefit from it in the form of better quality pictures and sound.
Umm, totally OT... isn't that phrase supposed to be "C'est la vie"?
So, whats your saying is, your wife decided you spend too much time sitting in your chair, drinking beer and watching sports...
Atleast, thats how I intepret "we"
I don't think it's her head that people want to see four feet across...
-jon
Remember Amalek.
We go to my chum's house for all our wrestling pay per views. He has digital cable and what I like to consider is the world's finest tube TV, SONY's 40 inch XBR. It's huge and does good interpolation and comb filtering to make your LQ broadcasts look HQ.
We have come to realise, in every high motion scene, how much digital sucks. Words on screen have no bandwidth to display sharply, flying bodies are turned into blocky messes and gradual swaths of colour are graduated in the ugliest fashion. Blacks aren't black.
Furthermore, the interruption of the signal for any reason means clicking audio and ugly block breaks. We've missed a lot of important, not to be repeated events and phrases due to these breaks. In an analog signal, a break results in a picture that is still visible, sound which may be obscured by fuzz but which is audible, because you don't have to wait for the next "frame" to begin before you can start viewing. And this is over a cable line...digital broadcast signals will only mean a still worse situation.
Every time we miss something, or catch an ugly jagged edge, or have what should be a crisp beautiful colour destroyed by the "high bandwidth" compression, we just turn to my big-TV friend, who pays more for cable every month than I do on my school payments, and say "Dude, digital sucks." He agrees.
(Yes, we are those lamos who order these stupid things -- we're five skilled college grads who like wrestling, f*ck off)
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Without regulation the competitor to your cell phone company could block the signal.
Sucks to be you.
It is entirly unfortunate that it is necessary to restrict Radio frequencies. It isn't how ever some evil plot.
Yes and by that "logic" Thomas Paines the "Rights" of Man is also part of DRM. And a course on Time "Management" completes the trio.
Digital TV != DRM, does it mean that DRM is possible, yes but it requires the complicity of the HW and TV operators. But to say that Digital TV is "part" of DRM indicates that you haven't realised what Digital TV is. The BBC broadcast a bunch of "free to air" Digital TV stations, and soon there will be more after their deal with SkyTV. There is Digital TV all over Europe right now and people are recording it onto their Videos just like they always have done.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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."
Actually I was seeing a very low quality picture here in Canada on the 18" satellite dish watching footage from the Commonwealth games. It was very blurry and grainy. Everything was hard to make out. Since the digital TV vs. Satellite are totally different broadcast methods, perhaps the problem is, as you said, with the recording equipment and not the broadcast system.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Here in the UK we have both satellite digital and "terrestrial broadcast" digital, the latter being digital that you can receive through an ordinary antenna with a set-top box on your plain old analogue TV. The terrestrial broadcast network, ITV Digital, tried to squeeze 48 channels into the available bandwidth, and the result was famously shite quality.
It wasn't even the tolerable sort of poor quality that you get on analogue: fuzz, crackle, etc. Instead, it's blocks of non-motion on your screen, or even the entire screen freezing up, while the video buffer struggles to refill.
Just what you want when you're watching a crucial sports match.
No thank you.
ITV Digital have recently gone bust, and a consortium including the BBC and Murdoch have stepped in to take it over. They are planning to reduce the channel count to 24, and to introduce other improvements in the transmitter network, so maybe the quality will improve. But they are no longer asking people to pay a monthly subscription: it will be for free-to-air channels only. Seems sensible to me: why pay for what we can already get it for free?
I also expected that my new digital cordless phone's quality would be better than my old analogue cordless. No, just like the digital TV, the intereference is no longer crackle-and-fuzz, it's random cut-outs when I get more than 20 yards from the base station. A friend of mine has had similar problems with his new digital cordless in the US.
So I don't expect that TV reception quality will improve simply because "It's digital!" You can implement bad quality transmission in any medium.
doing mandating market acceptance of a new product or technology anyways ? Our government is certifiable. They've accepted the corporate rational that they have a right to the money in our pocket, and if they aren't getting it, then somthing must be wrong and the government should pass some laws ensuring the continued flow of cash from our pockets to theirs.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Chinese lottery, anyone?
the pun is mightier than the sword
Is it just me, or does the whole concept of "broadcast" in the traditional RF 50kW sense seem like an outdated sledgehammer?
I mean, with the advent of cheap microprocessors, it seems like a low-power, cellular approach to putting video signals where you want them shows a lot more finesse.
The only reason I can figure for overwhelming market areas with such strong signals is so that 0.1% of the population in outlying areas can see I Love Lucy. That, and being able to tell advertisers that you easily can reach a million households once you purchased the right to a loud bullhorn.
It seems better to relay the signal to little cellular wireless access points and not to fry the airspace with such strong signals. That would make it possible for me to watch TV from Hong Kong if I choose to do so.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I love a digital picture, especially when watching a movie. But one thing I've noticed with my Comcast digital box is that traditional channel surfing is painfully slow. Each channel seems to need a sync-up time lasting from a split second to a full second or two. This is especially annoying when I catch a glimpse of something interesting just as I'm changing channels, like a plane crash video or a blouse coming off. By the time I can switch back to the prior channel, I may have missed all the action.
My quesiton is this: will broadcast digital tv be like this? If so, I may rather stick to DVD for digital movies.
Evil is the money of root.
Again, the FCC can and does do all those things WITHOUT mandating digital broadcast television. Regluation is different from a mandate. If television stations wish to broadcast a digital signal, or if television manufacturers want to make digital TVs, then they should be regulated by the FCC. I don't see how a mandate on television manufacturers forcing them to include a digital tuner has anything to do with those regulations.
So the FCC won't let me be
Or let me be me so let me see
You're skirting the issue. Yes, the FCC would have to approve digital TVs. But they don't have to force them upon the public.
Where did you get the idea that any parties actually want HDTV? Most people are perfectly happy with the televisions they have right now. Manufacturers don't want it because they know that people aren't going to want to pay more for something they don't want anyway. Broadcasters don't want it because it's a huge expense to implement something that they know consumers don't even want.
The government is the *only* entity that really wants this so they can sell off the extra frequencies.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
No it's not.
The industry is stuck in old technology and no one wants to move forward.
The industry can make the investment now and upgrade its distribution to digital. Once they're done they can work on selling me that it is in my best interest to buy into it. If they're willing to take the risk of losing their market they can also cut off the analog signal for all I care.
The electronics industries would love to sell new tv's to everyone. The broadcasters don't want to spend money upgrading equipment, sets, and they would also rather fit 5 crappy channels at standard definition than 1 crappy channel in high definition.
None of this is my problem.
The general public doesn't want to spend money on HDTV's or even digital TV's because there's not enough content off the air, or any other way. If digital receivers were integrated into the TV then at least broadcaster will know a large number of people (eventually) will be able to receive what they're broadcasting. And the price is really not an issue.
Are you high? Price isn't an issue? What bullshit. Now all of sudden, you're going to tack on $200 and when I wanted to get a 35" set I'm now stuck getting a 27" set. Look whether you want to admit it or not a tv is a major purchase. You're back to original problem. The additional cost will make consumers put off the purchase. Putting off the purchase will delay getting a cost reduction. In this scenerio a tv isn't even making my top ten list. Hell that tankless water heater I've been investigating is beginning to look a lot sexier than a new tv with an expensive "digital" converter.
There are so many advantages to digital TV (not only HDTV) that it really is the smart thing to do. All the industry needs is someone to get them to swallow the initial bitter pill!
Name one that outweighs the eventual mandate for DRM in the set and the then inevitable slide to pay-per-view for all programming.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
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.
The $200 extra per TV seems a bit steep.
Here in the UK you can get a set-top terrestrial digital receiver for £99 with no subscription charges. That gives us a rough idea of production costs, but compare similarly-featured analogue TVs to digital TVs and there's a couple of hundred quid difference.
It seems that the cost of "going digital" is being kept artificially high by TV manufacturers.
On a similar subject, the UK government wants to switch off analogue broadcasts by 2010. Many people think this is unrealistic because digital take-up has been slow and TV manufacturers aren't doing anything to help, especially with regard to low-income homes. You can get a decent-sized analogue TV for less than £200 but you're looking at almost three times as much to get a basic digital set.
Your second-hand American set bought at a low-low price will be useless within a decade as the analog broadcasts will stop.
When will people actually research the things before making such broad assumptions?
I think _all_ or nearly all set-top HD recievers sold in the US can recieve digital transmission and convert them to most common analog signalling formats. You can buy recievers and converters that will decode digital broadcasts to composite, s-video, component and HD component formats.I would think that European sets would do similar.
In short, YOU CAN USE YOUR EXISTING SET. Just buy that set-top box. It might not show as much detail but you would hopefully be getting benefits from digital transmissions.
Yes you did. The fact that the FCC will then sell off the spectrum that old analog tv was using to the highest bidder without one thought to reserving some of it for spread spectrum networking and the like.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I wonder if these mandated digital receivers will include the Gemstar guide software. When I got digital cable, I was given a Motorola receiver and it uses this monstrosity. It is excruciatingly slow, and it is plastered with ads. Why should I have to look at ads that take up half the screen When I want to view the program guide? Not to mention that it's ugly and hard to use.
The motorola receiver is junk too. I have managed to lock it up and get it into a loop where it turns itself on and off. And it's so slow. If the rest of the gemstar guide such a peice of crap, I would blame the slowness just on the receiver.
Anybody else have experience with this crap?
They're not mandating that every TV has an HDTV tuner on board. They are mandating that every TV has a digital tuner. This would mean that you don't need to use that external box for your digital cable any more.
Had the FCC not required manufacturers to put the tuners that we use today, we'd still be using those old cable boxes. I'm sure that most of you have seen one of those clunky things before.
I know that it's the "in thing" to get all up in arms when "The Man" does anything at all, but show some common sense.
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
to expensive to die.
I work for a PBS affiliate, and we just bit the bullet last year and bought the new transmitter and other bits to broadcast digital. I believe it cost us $800,000 plus reoccurring expenses. Our electricity bill per month can be several thousand dollars. And we still have 5 transmitters left to convert in my state. Once most stations convert to digital, the only thing they can afford to do is take their analog signal and convert it to digital. It looks horrible, but it's cheap. All the pretty demos you see at Best Buy are meant to make you buy the TV. It will be a long time before most stations can/will actually make content to look like that.
As far as my opinion as a consumer, it's WAY to expensive. I just bought a new TV several years ago because I could not wait any longer for a relatively inexpensive digital TV. Yes, new TVs will be probably can contain a digital receiver, but I don't like it. Most of the television engineers I talk with recommend you buy the TV and the receiver separately. Ypu know in a few years receivers will be better, with great new features they say you can't live without. The TV is not going to get much better, but receivers will.
And for those of you who don't want to buy a new TV just to get a digital signal(myself included), most of the receivers I have seen will transcode the signal for your current analog TV. That's what I going to do anyway.
consumers want digital tv, but there aren't that many displays in "consumer" grade sizes. Samsung makes a 27" 4:3 display, and thats about it as far as i know for 27" and under displays which can display HD.
not everyone wants or can afford a 36"+ display. For some people its just impractal. Most people aren't videophiles, but just want to watch their sports, news and sit-coms.
I believe once you see more 13", 19", 25" and 27" HD capable displays at a reasonable pricepoint (say $50 more than an SD tv) sales will take off.
The other alternative is to offer HD exsclusive (sporting events?) content or some other added value(such as digital subchannels for NBC, CBS ETC) which are available OTA. Then consumers would have more incentive to upgrade.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Or consumers are too smart to buy digital when no one knows what control I.P. moguls will insist on.
Naw... too simple.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
The government...is between a rock and a hard place, with sales of HDTVs slower than expected,
Slow Sales? Well what do they expect! What's the salary of the average tv watcher (4 hours a day of viewing) and what part of that is disposable income? Now what part of this disposable income do you think they will have to spend on a tv that right now will not really even make their watching experience moderately more enjoyable??? Come on. And now they want to increase this cost? The only way they're going to move these things at the pace they want is if the price drops dramatically or they start giving them away to people.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
The general public doesn't want to spend money on HDTV's or even digital TV's because there's not enough content off the air
That's not the problem. The problem is that people *already* get the content they want. The government is basically saying, "We know you are almost all perfectly happy with the television you have right now, but won't it be neato if it were 'digital' instead?"
Why spend all that money to get such a marginal benefit?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
So why doens't the industry just stop producing televisions and produce "Analog Video Signal Viewing Appliances" :)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
5. Are airbags required? Yes. As of the 1999 model year, the federal government required automakers to install driver and passenger airbags for frontal protection in all cars, light trucks, and vans.
And before that they were required for drivers for I believe 2 years. Besides the insurance industry basically required it since 1996, they jacked the hell out of the rates for any new car that lacked an airbag as it was basically seen as coming from a manufacturer that intentionally cutting corners on safety.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
> > Why do you need to see Jennifer Aniston's head four feet across?
> I don't think it's her head that people want to see four feet across...
Okay then, whose head do they want to see four feet across?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Wow! How did you manage this amazing feat? And do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
So, in 4 years, a huge, federally mandated bonepile of "old" analog TVs will be created. Lately, there's been lots of concern about TVs and monitors in the landfills due to heavy metals and other environmental ills associated with their disposal. Then, there's the sheer volume of junk which would be created by this government fiat.
Where are the environmentalists? Why aren't they raising hell about this?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
My 27 inch TV (Daewoo) only cost me 200 bucks. Now the FCC wants to DOUBLE it's price?? This whole HDTV debacle is really beginning to piss me off...and I was General Manager/Chief Engineer of a small UHF TV station until 1999!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again..the only people who WANT digital TV are the TV manufacturers and Congress. The manufacturers want it so they can force sell us two thousand dollar TV's instead of letting me choose a $200.00 one..and Congress is having a hard on over all the $$ they're getting by selling off THE PUBLIC'S RF spectrum to the highest bidder.
Frankly, the public largely sees HDTV as a rich person's toy. Besides...TV viewership is DOWN...so the answer is to make them pay big bucks for a new TV? I don't think so....
As for me, I'd much rather spend my $$ on a more powerful computer with a 21 inch monitor and a DVD R/W...and keep my 200 buck Daewoo for the 10 hours a week I (still) watch Television.
It's not clear why this should cost $200. The radio part of a cell phone costs about $10 in quantity, and that's a very good digital radio tranceiver. On top of that, you need something comparable to a midrange graphics card to do the decoding. The total ought to come to under $100 in early versions, then decline from there.
It would be simpler to forget the whole "digital television" nonsense and sell off the frequencies it would have occupied for some more productive use.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The government will also reap billions from auctioning off the current analog TV frequencies. Consumers will in turn pay for those billions when they buy the new products. This makes legislators happy because they get to collect billions of dollars without it being obvious that people are being taxed.
But when they piss off millions of grannies[1] with old sets and no money to buy a new one or upgrade, the Vote Monster may bite back.
[1] Or unemployed techies
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe this would be tolerable, if 100% of TVs in use, were only used to receive over-the-air broadcasts.
But they aren't. TVs are also used to receive cable signals, and cable TV is outside the scope of FCC's excuse for existing, since it's not using the airwaves. TVs are also used to receive signals from other electronics (e.g. stuck on channel 3, getting a signal from a VCR, some kid's Nintendo's RF modulator, etc.), and these uses are outside the FCC's excuse for existing.
Fuck you, FCC. You have no right to do this. If you want the reassign part of the spectrum, then limit yourself to going after people who broadcast on it. Receivers are none of your business.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In reference to your sig:
Have you ever surfed the web through a ssh connection using Lynx? It is pretty interesting...
Why is that particularly interesting? I've used Lynx, but I haven't done the above. ???
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
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.
ITV Digital going bust had more to do with the fact that its parent companies, Carlton and Granada (the two largest regional terrestrial TV broadcasters) decided to renege on their £315 million (~US$475 million) football (the type that's played with the foot rather than the type that's played with the hand ) rights contract than any technical issue.
Basically, they overspent on the live rights of domestic football's lower divisions (minor rather than major league baseball is a rough analogy) and were somehow amazed when the viewers didn't sign up in droves. After the footballing authorities refused ITV Digital's greatly reduced "take-it-or-leave-it" offer, Carlton and Granada took the easy out and let ITV Digital go into liquidation rather than bite the bullet and honour their contracts.
Currently, the Football League and its clubs are fighting a legal battle to get the money they are owed from these parent companies.
Bottom line: ITV Digital collapsed because some suits wanted to rid themselves of a less than profitable contract that they and clubs both signed in good faith.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
They want some of that bandwidth back by 2006, and the only way they're going to get it (and make sure that people can watch TV) is by forcing Sony et/al to start going digital now.
The weird thing is that one analog TV channel is the same "width" as one DTV channel. What is happening is that through the process of the digital conversion, analog stations are being pulled out of UHF channels 52-69. This happens because stations in the upper UHF are given new DTV assignments outside the upper UHF, then in 2007 they will give up their analog channels in the upper UHF.
So it is more of a "defragmentation" of the broadcast spectrum.
As long as they are separate components, it'd just be a device that gets in the way of being able to use your entertainment system the way you wanted to when you first bought it.
Now if you're talking about _integrating_ them into televisions, that's a whole different ball game, but I somehow doubt that they're going to start giving away large-screen TV's with these devices embedded directly into them.
As was already pointed out elsewhere, the public is quite happy with analog television -- there would have to be a benefit that is far more real to people than just better pictures and more channels.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But the MPAA doan't want me to have one. As a result, my widescreen TV will be showing DVDs and TiVo content. Stuff that is already broadcast in letter box looks excellent.
:^(
My only problem is I can't get my Buffy DVDs to show up decently on the widescreen TV. Everything is stretched horizontally.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
What about CSI?
A couple of those re-enactments in full technocolor would look cool on HDTV.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Thanks.
Yah, the bastards will keep trying, and they will take away our freedoms as harshly as any third-world dictator to do so. As Bush likes to say; "The price of freedom is Eternal Vigilance" he just doesn't think to apply it to american companies.
Irvu.
And then, by 2004 we'll have 1984 where we all sit in dark corners like Orwell's hero in order to avoid the TV. Granted in his version the TV contained a monitoring camera but ours won't.
;)
Or will they? We do have all that bandwith free for transmission
Irvu.
...but until Tivo et al can do it, there's no point as nothing I want to watch is on when I can (or want to) watch it. And any omniscient being will know that I can't stand to watch live TV any more anyhow.
"Our federal government's 15-year industrial policy to make sure the conversion to HDTV is complete by 2006 looks more like an impending train wreck with each passing month."
"What went wrong? A lot of things are to blame but ultimately it comes down to a federal industrial policy that substitutes bureaucratic mandates for the wisdom of markets and the desires of consumers."
"There are no easy escape routes from this industrial policy mess. Perhaps the best solution would be to cut our losses and allow the broadcasters to keep what they've got, and more importantly, to sell it as they wish. This option would be difficult for some to swallow because the broadcasters would be getting away with murder. But it would achieve the important goal of freeing the spectrum they're hoarding by encouraging them to sell it through private auctions to those who value it more highly. And it would get the feds out of the business of micro-managing the television industry."
"Congress should have auctioned off this spectrum back in the mid-1990s and let the chips fall where they may. HDTV would probably have emerged, but through other means (satellite or cable), and other wireless providers would have snatched up the spectrum at auction and put it to better use. As it stands now, we're left with the mother of all industrial policies, and few pretty TV pictures to show for it." (more...)
The entire broadcast band, TV and radio, occupies about 500 MHz of a 300 GHz spectrum allotment.
Prices for Digital TVs should be comming down as soon as Apex releases their Digital Televisions. They were the ones that created the ever popular DVD/MP3/VCD/SVCD Player at well under $100. They haven't been making the best quality equipment, but at the prices they are likely to be pushing (most likely under $800) they will drive down the prices of most other HDTV monitors.
Since the Apex DVD Players hit the market, there has been a huge influx of Sub-$100 DVD/MP3/VCD/SVCD players...among them Magnavox and Hitachi...Even most high-end players now have the MP3/VCD/SVCD capabilities.
They have already released some very nice Flat Screen TVs at very cheap prices. Apex has only been around for ~3 years, and just Recently got into the TV market, but it looks like they are stiring things up.
My only concern with digitalbroadcasts is that it gives incredible powers to the content broadcasters and creators over my ability to
a) tape/record it
b) see it at all!
But what's even worse, it will make almost impossible to have multiregion DVD players.So no more US/Canadian DVDs on my TV, then (I live in Europe). That would -really- suck.
Sigged!
Don't forget the promise of digital control crap. People *want* VCR's. People want to avoid having digital control crap in their TV; they're not used to it.
However, the MPAA is really thirsty to put it in. For example, look at the rate of uptake of 'digital cable'.. If it didn't have that control crap, we'd have digital-cable-ready TV's and VCR's by now and we'd all use it. But it does, and thats why nobody uses it.
Yeah, and the box with the 10GHz AMD you'll be buying around then will cost $7K, right?
Here's your clue, and I won't even shove it in with a cluebat.
Guess what. Moore's Law applies to the electronics in TV sets as well, other than the circuitry (HV power supply, etc.) feeding the CRT, which will hopefully be obsolete by then. TV chip sets or more likely, single chips will be cheaper for OEMs than they are now. Set-top boxes... the box itself, a chip, about 4 square inches of PCB, maybe, and a handful of jacks... the first generation might cost as much as $100, after which the price will probably drop to the $25 level within a couple of years. (using 2002 dollars and assuming the price is comparable to that of consumer devices of comparable complexity now)
As for what gets done with the freed spectrum, lots of possibilities. How would you like the chance to buy wireless broadband at a reasonable price? You like the current situation? How many wireless broadband channels can you get where you live right now?
Tech Public Policy stuff