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FCC Mandates Digital Tuners
Gekko writes "The FCC has caved to pressures and has rolled back their mandate to requiring HDTV to 2007." A follow-up to this article: looks like the answer is "yes", although an extra year's delay has been added. Cherish your analog televisions, they will be collector's items. Update: 08/08 20:38 GMT by M : Declan McCullagh notes that there was also a vote on the broadcast flag concept to prevent copying of digital television - a set of draft regulations will be released next week.
At what point does the government have the power to dictate that an entire industry must change it's technology? It's not as if this is an issue of public safety. I just don't understand how the Feds create these kinds of requirements.
Analog/Digital converter, cable boxes, Satellite Boxes, have you not been reading the articles you guys have been posting? This will be a $50-$200 purchase, in 4-5 years, at that, and no replacement on analog sets is required.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Why does the FCC need to mandate this? The FCC didn't mandate that all new televisions be color when color tv started. They didn't mandate that all radios must receive FM when that was started. They didn't mandate that all radios receive and decode stereo signals when that started. They did mandate certain types of compatibility with television and radio standards, which seems reasonable. If the market isn't willing to pay for digital television, is there really a compelling national reason to mandate it?
The FCC mandated that all broadcasts be digital by 2006. That doesn't mean they have to be high def. You can broadcast in 480i in digital by 2006 and still be in compliance. They FCC has now ruled that the digital tuners have to be in TV's. They didn't say they had to be HD tuners.
Digital TV isn't necessarily HDTV. Make sure you understand this point.
He asked me: "When did we, the public, without which public television would not exist, vote that we wanted to move to digital television? How is it in the public interest to move public programming to a new standard for which most people don't have televisions and which will eventually necessitate the the purchase of a new set?"
Good questions, and he's starting to understand some of what is going on in the name of progress that is starting to encroach on the public good that he, and really all of us, are used to.
The nightmare scenario for him, of course, would be that he couldn't be able to time-shift News Hour, Washington Week, and The McLaughlin Group because of digital no-record flags. He tells me that the majority of the TV he watches is recorded with only a small portion being live.
Of course, my dad also says that the problem with TV isn't that there is too little good stuff to watch, but rather that there is really too much. He loves his TV.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Once they sell the airwaves, your analog tv set will be illegal under the DMCA.
Someone somewhere will say that broadcasting their cellular network on channel 6 is "encrypted" because people aren't supposed to have receivers for channel six. Your analog TV is a circumvention technology and you'll go to jail for having it. EVEN if it ISN'T PLUGGED IN.
That's the future fud or not.
but, it should make for some fun hacking.
80% of the US is able to recive digital TV
Depends on your definition of "able to receive".
If there's a broadcaster with digital transmission in the right range, you may be classified as "able to receive". What? You don't have a digital capable TV? Not their problem.
The reality is that people are still buying televisions, and at a good clip. TVs wear out sooner or later, and even a minor repair often costs more than a new set.
And before people whine and cry that this is just a big ploy to make everyone buy new TVs, remember that it was the manufacturer's association that was trying to block this. Yup. That's right. The people who you'd have to buy a new TV from were trying to prevent you from having to buy a new TV. I don't get it either.
Oh, and their estimate of $250 additional cost is a load of crap. Yes, it would cost that much (or more) today, because of supply and demand. This very same organization complained that IEEE-1394 should not be made the digital connection standard for TVs because it would raise the cost of TVs $100 per connector. Yes. IEEE-1394, aka Firewire. You know, that connector you have 2 of on your new $80 motherboard? In addition to about 20 other connectors?
Yeh,
Why don't they mandate digital radion, it's been arround a hell of a lot longer than T.V.
Oh i remember, they want to sell the air again.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
As a libertarian, I can name only a few areas where the gov't has a legitimate function. Regulating the common radio spectrum is one of them.
This isn't about regulating the radio spectrum, it's about regulating the sale of devices which happen to use the radio spectrum. Further, what right does the federal government have to regulate intrastate use of the radio spectrum? These televisions could still be used for reception of low-power stations which do not interfere with those in other states.
I sure as hell am not. This would lead to a classic "tragedy of the commons" situation, where everyone would stamp all over everyone else's transmissions, so that noone would get any use out of radio transmission. Kiss your cellphone goodbye. Kiss the radios in your police cars and ambulances and airplanes goodbye.
Secondly, regulation of transmission keeps devices from interfering with each other. It's quite possible to broadcast a signal that will prevent your cable TV from working properly, for instance. It's quite possible to broadcast a signal that will kill someone with a pacemaker. But the current regulations prevent this.
And if you deregulate everything, they'll somehow be less able to do that?
Anarchy on the airwaves would be about as bad as real anarchy in real life, i.e. get ready for someone to kick the shit out of you.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Just a few of the players:
The FCC, which wants to reauction the existing licenses for lots of bucks
The military, the EU, the FCC, and others who desperately want to grab some of the VHF station bandwidth
The existing cell phone companies, who don't want any new bandwidth to become available
The remaining cell phone dreamers, who want more bandwidth so they can pay billions for it
The content providers, who want to use the move to digital to impose copy protection
The hardware mfgs, who are deeply conflicted: they would love to sell everyone a new TV (at least as of the 1990 census, 98% of US households had a TV while 94% had flush toilets), but who don't really want to get involved with copy protection and who are afraid everyone will just stop buying for a while
And finally, the consumer/voter, who watches 60 hours a week of TV and who may not care much about school taxes or world peace, but who WILL get off his butt and vote any congressman who interrupts his TV watching out of office so fast the Capitol will be smoking.A big, big fight with everyone being both a good guy and a bad guy. What fun!
sPh
Won't there be a market for digital->analog downsamplers? Sure, you'd lose some resolution, but you wouldn't have to throw out that big screen that once cost a month's pay.
Maybe that's what the manufacturer's association is wary of...
The FCC has a real Chicken and Egg problem. They mandated that all TV stations stop broadcasting analog signals by 2006. Then congress came along and said stations couldn't stop transmitting analog signals if fewer than 85% of the TV households were able to recieve the digital signal. 85% is an impossibly high number, and congress knows it. Cable TV and VCR's don't even have 85% market penetration so how could DTV have it in only 8 years?
Of course the FCC knows that any TV can view DTV signals with a converter -- they even put it in their FAQ but no one is going to buy a $200 piece of equipment to see what they are already watching down converted from DTV to analog. This also ignores whatever equipment people would need to actually recieve the DTV signal in the first place.
So, the FCC knows people aren't going to invest in the equipment until the analog signal goes away. And the analog signal won't go away until people have the equipment. The FCC has no choice but what they are doing. The only other alternatives would be to force consumers to buy converters (or give them away). The FCC already forced broadcasters to send the DTV signal, and they won't send both signals forever.
It will still take a long while for the tuners to get up tp the 85% level (even though that represents households and not sets) and I predict that number will eventually be lowered. Doing it this way will take much longer than the FCC originaly hoped, since it will first start with large TV's and then gradually all TV's, but it will happen eventually. And once the analog signal is turned off the number will climb rapidly. You can say now that you just won't buy a new TV, but eventually you'll need a DTV tuner to see anything at all. Much like the V-chip, DTV is something you will eventually have whether you want it or not.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
How many people still watch OTA broadcasts?? If FCC mandated that everything be digital tomorrow and shut down the analog signal then what would happen? Digital to Analog converters would be needed by everyone who doesn't have one already. This does not make your TV obsolete. You just have to buy a new box. They won't be expensive either, really they won't.
This is not HDTV.
This is not Cable TV.
This is not Satellite TV.
This is OTA broadcasts. Digital transmissions will use much less bandwith than the current analog ones, the govn't really has a good reason to push this!
But then again, you guys still use your inches and feet so I guess you're just stubborn like that. (joking.. joking.. I swear!)