NeuroManson asks:
"With the growing hype surrounding HDTV and copy protection, and as further corporate control of the FCC becomes more commonplace with the inevitable arrival of the technology thanks to Hollywood, you will have no choice in the future of watching anything else, since your TV, VCR, etc, will be forced into obsolescence.
There are two things that this brings to mind that should be addressed: who will be paying for the retrofit to the thousands of CRT and TV manufacturing plants around the world to make this possible; and assuming that this is going to be a US only problem in the short term (approx 3 years), how do they propose to safely dispose of all those outmoded TVs?" About the only way that this can happen by
the recently proposed deadline of July 1st, 2007, without trashing and replacing the majority of our current televisions, American television owners would have to have their TVs "serviced" by a qualified technician to continue to receive broadcast signals. Having a secondary tuner would not work as that would break the "trusted" display chain that Hollywood is seeking to establish.
"Assuming there are approximately 300 million Americans, with 2/3 having upwards of 2 TV sets, that amounts to close to 500 million or more perfectly functional TVs that will wind up in landfills or third world 'recycling' countries like China. These are not exact figures, but you get the idea. As this grinds on, it looks like economic and ecological impacts are the predominate risks involved, as well as not being able to record the latest Star Trek because they put a copy-block flag into the digital broadcast. This is something that I think everyone, from the geek on the web to the little old lady across the street, through the average soccer mom should be concerned about. Any suggestions as to how such could be made publically known, organized against, and promoted, in such a way that the public would know it as a threat, not only to their way of life, but also to their pocketbook and health?"
Slashdot Mirror
Should be obvious to most that television dwindles intellect. My solution is to just not buy one. Dont really need it.
Got the net for news and I can watch dvds on my computer.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
It just won't happen. This is an FCC/Hollywood pipe dream. If it does actually happen this way, there will be revolution, trust me. There are people who can barely afford TV sets today, let alone taking that privlege away from them by forcing digital down their throats.
While forced technological innovation may be a bad thing, remember that the main reason this is being pushed through is because the FCC really needs the additional frequencies. This is your future Gigabit wireless that they're trying to lay the foundations for.
Mike
Although broadcasters will be broadcasting HDTV by 2006, there is a catch. HDTV can be broken up in to several different, lower quality channels. Its much cheaper for networks to do it this way, so what do you think will happen? The other big problem is that by 2006, the majority of us will still have plain old nonHD-TVs. What incentive will there be for the networks to provide a high-quality signal? I don't think its realistic to expect networks to broadcast high-quality TV for free when they can split the signal and make more money, especially when the consumer demand is not there. The only hope is to have pay channels like HBO - I think thats the only real HDTV you will see.
If you don't know what Zoo Blacklisting is, click here.
I havent watched TV in 3 months and I can honestly say that I can get anything from the net: news, pr0n, movies, whatever. Who needs a TV anyway?
My father bought an HDTV about a month ago (a Phillips, IIRC). It's very nice, though all of the signals are still coming in analog (4:3) because the digital cable receiver *doesn't support HDTV output*, meaning he has to replace it with one that does. Oh bother. It's wonderfully ironic when the local nightly newscasts declare they're "broadcasting live in HDTV" yet the output doesn't change to match this fact.
At least DVD playback looks really good.
As for existing televisions, there are probably legions of geeks and middle-to-lower-class citizens that will either use their older game consoles with them, or simply choose not to buy into the hype and watch their older stuff that they've been taping but haven't had rhyme nor reason to watch, which is pretty much counter to what the industry wants.
Most information I've seen is that they don't mind 480i ( standard TV ) resolution output even if not 100% copy protected. What they worry about is HDTV 1080i or 720p becomming the next rippable format without a fight.
C'mon this is the same crap the TV manufactured whined about when CC became mandatory. The chip now gos for $2US in bulk. By the time this becomes the standard simple decoder boxes will proabably be in the sub $50 range and the cost in a new TV will be less than $20.
Will these become "obsoleted" as well? No. The copyright protection systems discussed so far involve also the recording of analog signals. This is about the same as macrovision did for DVD players. This is already happening with DVHS.
The truth is, probably ~80% of the HDTVs sold (all the reasonably priced ones) do not contain an HDTV tuner, they have analog inputs which are capable of 1080i, 720p, etc, resolutions. These _cant_ be simply ignored since it took so long to get capable equipment into the hands of consumers, the industry isn't just going to say tell everyone to buy another set.
I imagine these will be grandfathered. New sets will contain digital connections (like DVI for example) and some kind of end-to-end protection, but this, as we all know is futile anyhow.
For the time being, there are VERY few practical ways for Joe Consumer to record a high-def broadcast and replay it, or even send it to someone else. DVHS is the only customer usuable solution right now. Which as we read about earlier has already been taken care of.
...that the standards being proposed for digital television transmission were open, and that the specs could be obtained somewhere (possibly the FCC). Hence it shouldn't be all that hard to build your own system to get around all the "don't copy" bits, etc.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
The obvious solution is to have some sort of convertor box, like a cable box, that can receive the HDTV signals and output an NTSC signal that a standard TV can display.
But that would allow people to circumvent the copy-protection scheme by hooking up a VCR. Maybe something like the old MacroVision scheme could be used to make the output viewable but unrecordable.
Anyway, my point is that an inexpensive convertor should be possible, once the details are worked out. When the general-public outcry begins (and the impact on the economy is considered) I doubt that the industry will object too strenuously because TVs and VCRs have a limited lifetime, and eventually everything will be converted over to the new technology. I mean, how many black-and-white TVs and 8-track players do you see in stores these days?
I predict that a compromise will eventually be reached, and the old technology will be allowed to fade away naturally.
The results ?
The EU, Japan and soon China, too, are ahead of the US with their high quality GSM system for mobile communications and will switch over to the extremely powerful UMTS asap. We have already lost this competition, all important mobile phone technology leaders being non-american.
And because of such stupid argumentation we will loose our lead of entertainment, too.
What will be next ? With more and more technology draining from the US we'll drop below countries like the EU states, China or Russia. Countries which definitely don't care about international problems and the mind-stunning threat of internation terrorism. The world will be a mess and it will be because of whiners like you destroying the worldwide US surpremancy.
Sorry, this is quite a rant but the crashing towers always come in mind when hearing such silly whining about the US industry.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Don't worry about all the old TV's. Max Headroom and all the other homeless avatars have to live somewhere! If the idiots on the hill hadn't already hawked the current broadcast spectrum and counted the cash in the budget, you can bet that no five-year deadline would be out there. Perhaps we can kluge up a couple more particle accelerators out of a few million CRTs and duct tape?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. -- James Klass
What's more, they probably want to make it possible to use existing VHS recorders, because otherwise people will go out & get TiVos and DVD recorders and other things that will make it very easy to exchange Content with all their eyepatch-wearing friends. If the VCR works, the TV will too. I wouldn't worry about throwing out that tube just yet...
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
the problem with the tv today is content, not presentation. crap like "friends" and "survivor" and "who wants to debase himself on national tv for a few dollars" isn't gonna be any better in 720p than it is now. well, if bush gets his way at least the history channel will have some new stuff to beat into the ground by this time next year. grrr. screw you kids and you newfangled digital tv, i'll stick to npr and the bbc on the wireless. feh.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
... for Slashdot to have such an anit-technology standpoint. Every HDTV article I've seen on Slashdot in the last two years has been totally against it. Wild claims by ill-informed posters decry the supposed "lack of difference" in picture quality or fears that their TV's will be remoted controlled by Hollywood.
I've owned an HDTV for over two years now. A big one! Widescreen, rear projection. I watched a boatload of DVD's on it via a progressive scan player. 480p looked pretty damn good! Leaps and bounds above interlaced NTSC video from a VCR. Nobody will deny this, of course.
Three weeks ago, the first local station went up with the DTV (digital TV) broadcasting. Last week I purchased a DTV set-top-box and a very small UHF antenna which I hid behind the TV. I turn it on and get to watch real, true high-definition content received directly from the air! No cable, no satellite. Even watching non-HD content that is upconverted directly from the network -- it blows DVD away!
Anybody who says they can't see a difference is either not watching HDTV or a blind luddite!
I bought a 36" standard set last week. I also bought a year of sattelite(sp?) service.
I would assume a set top box would be made available, hopefully an open source solution as I'm buying a TV card.
Almost ten years ago I chose to either pay for Internet access or Cable TV access. I chose the former and have been more than happy with it. My life is in no way lessened by not seeing "The Sopranos" or any of the other shows out there.
If all of TV moves to a subscription model, so be it! I'll only miss the news that is deemed to be fed to me while continuing to recieve what I find important. The "great" shows will be better targeted and I'll miss them no more than I do now. No big whup.
I'll have this Satelite thing for a year(I can afford both Internet and Satellite now). I doubt it'll make a huge diference as I have a laptop to work in while I engage my couch.
Digital TV has been creeping in for years, all without anyone buying a new TV. In the UK we had BSB digital a decade ago, and BskyB is digital now, and I believe Dish network in the US is also digital. Most europeans have access to over-the-air digital with DVB boxes, and in the US one can get AT&T digital over cable. [Some of these (dish, BskyB at least) transmit one or two HDTV channels, but these mostly seem to be used in TV stores to try to sell the occasional HDTV set.] All of this is done with external translator boxes in the comsumers home - almost no-one has either a DTV, never mind an HDTV.
My local COMET store is selling funny little DVB translator boxes for around 60 quid, so all this stuff about digital TV adding hundreds to the cost of TVs is horseshit. I'd bet that once every TV can do DVB, they'll be _cheaper_ than regular TVs.
Now, there's other reasons to worry about DTV, not least the greatly increased control this gives the content/distribution folks, but "I need to buy three new TVs" isn't one of them.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
The answer is obvious to anybody who has studied business in college or in RL. The manufacturers will invest the extra money to adapt the manufacturing process, add the costs into the selling price of HDTV (maybe recovering a portion of the costs in current equipment sales over the next four years as well...), and ultimately the consumer will pay. If the manufacturers collectively cry poormouth through their trade associatons and lobbies, the government will give tax breaks to the manufacturers, ultimately passing the bill to taxpayers who may or may not be consumers of this technology.
Don't worry--the manufacturers will profit from this. How else would you explain the level of confidence that encouraged them to enlist Michael Powell to issue the decree that all devices with video tuners be HDTV-capable by 2006?
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq"
-- Paul Wolfowitz, 7/21/2003
Since the progression towards HDTV will benefit:
Hollywood
TV Studios/Media
iTV Media/Developers
It is wise to ask these groups to pay for the retooling of all tv manufacturing plants. We could do this indirectly by having the resulting analog spectrums from the tv broadcasting bands be auction off with proceeds going to tv manufuacturers.
The other groups could be taxed on revenue as an entertainment tax to be used in the saem manner.
The only problem with this solution is that taxes generally create new lobbyists which drain the system of innovation, thus maybe this is nto the solution after all..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
"People of Earth:
:::::: END TRANSMISSION :::::::
It seems our plan has worked. The tests have ended, and our master plan has begun.
You are addicted to your two way screens and the percentage of humanity that questions the subliminal brainwashing techniques, or is even aware of this has been reduced, but a few of you still remain, just outside our grasp. Some of you have discovered the subliminals of human advertisers that we use as a wrapper to transmit through directly into your thought streams. Others have dismissed the subliminal advertisements as something that is harmless, or an acceptable trade-off for the hours of entertainment they receive from their two way screens.
Therefore, we have decided to bless your planet with what will appear to you as new technology while still maintaining the same basic means of mind control: visual entertainment.
As we share with you our digital enchancement to your two way screens, the upgrade will allow us to manipulate subliminal messages to suit you, the viewer, on an individual basis in real time, depending on whatever specific message we wish to suggest.
Thank you for your continued support.
Your Leaders,
The Aliens From Outer Space"
"you will have no choice in the future of watching anything else"
Sure you do. You can choose to not watch tv for a change. Read a book, go outside, go to the pub and have a pint. "By the end of the first month, I didn't miss tv." - Narrator.
I swear, if this weren't Slashdot I flat out would not believe that anoyone could be so clueless as to ask who's going to pay for HDTV. Hello? Earth to Slashdotty?
Slashdot: Entertainment for geek wanna-bes and poseurs. If you ever stop posting the occasional Science story that I haven't come across elsewhere, I would have no reason to stop by. Maybe that would be good...
It's sad that this is being forced upon Americans so Michael Powell can land a cushy Hollywood job after he steps down from chair.
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." -Aldous Huxley
The answer to the Hollywood Tax FCC requirements/DRM mandates represent is obvious to a student of American history. Rent a replica of an 18th century cargo ship, load it with TVs that still work but can no longer show images due to broadcast flag digital restrictions, sail to Boston Harbor and dump them in the harbor.
However, since this seems to be a problem originating from Hollywood Royalty and Ruling Class, perhaps the cosat off Malibu would be more appropriate.
The problem that happens in all this trusted mumbo jumbo crap is that in the end it will be my eyes and ears that process the light and sound. Without that, there can never be any hollywood or movie industry. So as long as it can be seen or heard, it can be recorded as well. Last I checked, even grabbing the analog signals before they make it into the CRT would be good enough for a recording, wouldn't they? If not, any joe schmoe could video tape the images and play them back. The trusted computing/television is nothing more than a pipedream as many of you have said. If humans (not roswell aliens) designed the system, then it is crackable. Here is to another 50 years of great hacking (damn I shouldn't be drinking on a sunday =/)
The Big Media's greatest strength is also their Achilles Heel: profit motive. If people really don't like something, and won't pay for it, it will go away. Witness DIVx.
Ed Abbey had a solution for all this years ago: Shoot your TV. Repeat as necessary.
It was tough to find the questions buried in that long commentary, but here are the answers:
1. Who pays for the factory retrofits?
It's not like we're talking about a completely new way of generating images that makes all old factories completely obsolete. Most of the parts stay the same, there are a few new ones, and some need to be built with better specs. The manufacturers are constantly upgrading their facilities, because it enables them to sell more TV's cheaper. So they'll pay, and if it does cost a lot, they'll pass some of it on to the consumer, just like they always do, but I'd be suprised if there's a huge jump in priace in 5 years. HDTV Tuners started out at $1000 and have dropped to $500 in about two years, and they're still not really being manufacturered in quantities yet. Plus, tuners to upgrade old sets don't need to be high-res, which makes them much, much less expensive.
2. Where do all the old TV sets go?
Where do they go now? Into landfills. That problem has got nothing to do with HDTV. There will be an easy, cheap, external box to buy that will make your TV continue working. Hollywood doesn't care about low-res, NTSC analog outputs, only the higher-resolution ones, so they don't need a "trusted chain".
There are things to be worried about for when it comes to freedom of digital media going forward, but this isn't one of them.
I've got insufficient motivation to buy anything else, particularly a set which only has one use and would end up gathering dust anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Congress will pass a law (DMCA) that makes it a felony to circumvent digital copy protection mechanisms, yet there is no similar felony for passing laws that circumvent our Constitutional liberty?
Which is the greater crime here? The person who wants to crack CSS so he can watch a DVD on a Linux computer, or maybe so that he doesn't have to watch ADVERTISEMENTS on a $18 movie that he'd PURCHASED?
Or a Congress who accepts Jack and Hillary's BIG LIE (along with a lot of their dollars) that digital technology is legally different from analog, thus "circumventing" the Supreme Court's many rulings on the legality of consumer analog recording, copying and time shifting technology?
I vote for the latter.
There will be no protections of the rights of American Citizens so long as there are no criminal penalties for legislatures who pass illegal laws. They should have to cite where in the Constitution authority is granted to pass said law. And they should be removed from office if convicted of voting for one that is Unconstitutional.
We should not have to solely rely on the courts to protect us. Legislatures should be AS beholden to "ignorance of the law is no defense" as we plebes are expected to be of the thousands of byzantine laws we are subject to at any given time and in any given place.
The only law they are really subject to in passing laws is the Constitution. Which anyone can read in under an hour, so what I'm asking isn't impossible.
Corporatism != Free Market
Pack them up and ship them to your favorite congresscritters! And save a few to send to your favorite Hollywood movie moguls, too.
Preferably with additional postage due.
They don't want them to be of any use to you, so let *them* figure out what to do with a half billion of them. It's only fair.
Reading the posts so far, it seems that very few people understand the issues involved. An exception is a reply titled "Don't confuse DTV with HDTV", look it up above. Here are some more facts to set matters straight:
;)
:-)
1. The FCC says that analog transmissions will shut down on 2007 only if 85 percent of the population will have DTV receivers.
2. Rather than replacing your TV set, you can use a Set Top Box that receives digital transmissions and converts them to either NTSC or AV signals.
3. You could use a DVD to do the same job.
In addition, I believe that by 2007 DTV prices will drastically go down- even today, you can get a large DTV screen for $1600.
So don't panic, things are not as bad as you think
To read more, check out: http://www.oren.com/knowledge.html
Hope this helps
Astromage
What is she doing on the other side of the street? Since you haven't helped her across, you're not a good samaritan, and deserve to have your TV taken away.
There's no such thing as perfect encryption (yet, although I gather quantum physics might be getting nearer.) I'm betting that within a year of implementation that either some uberhacker will tell you how to sidestep it, some eastern company will sidestep it and massproduce a hack to make a buck, or someone in on the scene will tell people how the encryption works which brings you back to options 1 and 2. The companies are living in a dream and if this is the best they can come up with then they deserve the pummelling they're about to receive anyway.
Jynx
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Okay, so there's a Federal mandate to broadcast HDTV signals in a few years.
How valid is the assumption that the mandate will still be in effect when the due date rolls around?
If the assumption that Federal mandates are immutable and succeed is valid, why is my TV sized in diagonal inches, not centimeters?
Ok, your posts prove how messed up Slashdot Moderation is. The first part of what you say is not very informative, as we all know that broadcast HDTV is not going anywhere fast. The most informative part is where you dig out the conspiracy theory on the Bush Administration. And WTF is the crap about the Presidential term limits?
So we are basically informed as to your lack of independent thought. Troll material, I would think, then one sees the link to a Salon Blog. Of course, we all know how objective and realistic Salon's readers are.
Grow up and read some history books, instead of cliff notes written by the extreme left.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
I was just talking to someone here at work who is somewhat acquainted with a few of the local TV stations. He said that, on average, it will cost approx. $1.7 million to outfit a television station with the necessary technology to prepare for all this nonsense. That may not be a massive amount to a big city CBS affiliate, but what about public broadcast stations? Won't they also have to participate in this?
I'll certainly bitch and moan if I have to outfit my TV with some new-fangled doo-hickey to watch anything, but I'll bitch and moan even more if I lose the small local/publically funded stations here. That's a lot of call in donations for a station already on a tight budget. Is there some sort of government money available for what they're forcing on everyone?
(please note, this is just a figure that some guy gave me. I'm not claiming it to be absolute, just what I heard.)
Also, what the hell is going to happen to my handheld TV that I use in emergencies and power outages? Where's the tornado? I'll just flip on the special report. Static?!?!?! Damn blessed government!
Most people with HDTV sets don't have HDTV, they just get better DVD quality. A lot of people get Digital Cable (heavily compressed NTSC/480i signal) and are convinced that their expensive set is important.
I have an apartment, and I got an attic antenna giving me the local OTA signals. Combine that with DirecTV (HDNet, ShoHD, HBO-HD), and you get 8-9 HDTV signals. It's fun, it looks great, but it ain't easy.
Broadcast HDTV is going strong, slowly. All the HDTV STBes for satellites include an antenna input. Samsung has a line of OTA-only STBes.
Living in a city (I live in Boston), you start to think that everyone lives in apartments. However, more middle-class individuals live in houses in the suburbs. Home ownership remains high. Houses can put roof-top antennas up, etc.
HDTV is coming along, its coming along slowly, but its coming along. Personally, I would expect HDTV to die a few years after the DTV switchover. I would expect the local affiliates to show 6 480i signals in the HDTV over-the-air. This doesn't bother me though, if you can get 40 channels over-the-air with a $150-$200 STB, that will put a lot of preasure on cable/DSS.
From what I've read there is no mandate that the cable companies have to switch anything. They will have to receive DTV signals, since analog will go away, but they don't have to DELIVER them. Smaller cable companies may just choose to continue to deliver NTSC quality signals derived from the DTV ones, inother words they perform the set top box function. If their customers demand more they might get it, at a higher cost. I've heard nothing from my cable company of their plans, but since AT&T broadband does have a digital cable signal (as well as the existing analog one) I suspect we will have a choice to upgrade. BTW their digital signal is NOT compatible with DTV, isn't HDTV, and you need THEIR converter box.
As the subject says, this is the kind of shit we have to deal with when people see the state as the be-all, end-all solution to problems. I'm semi-opposed to file sharing because it eats up the bandwidth like crazy at my university, but even then you won't see me advocating prosecution. This is what happens when institutions of control push one thing over another. I know from personal experience why this is bad because I'm one of only 2 CS majors at my school that use OSX. Our school is geared toward whatever the professor wants, --if it can run on a PC--. Even though all of the curriculum for the BS can be completed with a Mac running OSX, a Sun Blade 100 (isn't that the $1000 one?), etc. A perfect example of them choosing to limit our options even though it is completely unnecessary.
So if my new TV won't show a picture unless it has the new `broadcast flag' (or something) what happens when I try to plug my camcorder into the back of it to watch a video of my kids ?
Am I going to have to buy a new camcorder ?
What if I want to make a copy of a birthday party recording to give to my mum ?
With the upcoming DTV and HDTV formats you need not worry about your existing TiVo, VCR's and televisions if you have a digital satellite system. Many of the Digital TV signals will simply be the same old NTSC-like format crammed into the space of one channel, so these work fine on old sets with a decoder box. When you have DirecTV the signals are always converted into a compatible format for your equipment. Don't believe the hype that all television channels will be in HDTV. THey will be in DTV.
Kris
Kriston
I'm reminded of something Data said in one of the early episodes of ST:TNG: "That form of entertainment didn't last much beyond the 22nd century." (paraphrased, century might be wrong, etc. You get the point.) The television industry will kill itself by making it too difficult to watch, and we'll find something else to do, and we'll be all nostalgic for the time when we could sit in front of the TV.
This leads to the question: what will replace TV?
Some people think I'm anti-capitalism. I'm not. I just get upset when congressmen and FCC committee members attempt to mandate corporate expansion of power to secure campaign donations and guarantee corporate careers after their duties as 'representatives of the American people' expire.
The FCC has taken huges leaps in expanding corporate freedoms. Any search of slashdot archives will tell you that, in the past year, The FCC is responsible for: (1) giving broadband cable companies a monopoly by denying competitors access to their lines, (2) ruling that telephone companies can sell names and phone call information to affiliates, creating opt out marketing (Spam), and (3) current debates over broadcast flags that would prevent time shifting and sharing, requiring early adopters to replace their HDTV equipment.
The FCC is dominated by Republicans - 3 to 1 - because Bush is clever (contradiction?) enough not to appoint a Democrat to the vacant 5th seat. Since the committee chair is a Republican, Michael Powell, who has declared that Big Media doesn't need any restrictions, any agenda he dictates will become Republican agenda. He is guaranteeing for himself a fat paycheck from Hollywood after his low-paying job in the FCC is over.
Does anyone else feel that the FCC needs some drastic reform to ensure that the committee is turuely "independent" as it is officially touted?
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." -Aldous Huxley
They aren't going to necessarily phase out analog
broadcasts any time soon; they are just requiring
that all TV's support digital.
You won't have to get rid of your old TV either,
cheap tuners will be available to take the basic
digital 480 signal and display it on the standard
composite connection that virtually every TV and
VCR already support.
HDTV tuners today are $500; by the time this
technology is mandated, the cheaper 480 tuners
will likely be less than $100.
The copy protections will only prevent users
from recording and using the raw digital stream.
Devices that record the composite signal, e.g.
VCR's and Tivo, will still work just fine;
though VCR's auto-programming features might have
some trouble.
Speaking from here in Norway, our last analog satellite broadcasts are shutting down now 15. October, the two big national broadcasters (NRK and TV2) being the last to go. After that, you'll *need* a digital decoder box, never mind that we got two perfectly fine analog decoder boxes as it is. No TVs come with digital decoders (as far as I know, at least it's not an advertized feature), it's all about external set-top boxes. And there's no talk about moving to HDTV either (or more like HDTV-PAL, they couldn't actually settle on a STANDARD? No, sir.) Analog transmissions are shutting down, they're obsolete. Of course you can have DRM, in the same way you had ARM (like Macrovision), but digital broadcasts are the future no matter what.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Most people cant afford a 40" widescreen TV. To draw use of HDTV you need a big telly or you wont notice much difference from 3 meters away. Big televisions are expensive and hasnt really taken off except at stuff crazy youngsters and cinefanatics.
Most content is of pretty poor quality on most channels (many not even stereo). To expect that everyone owning a television should run out in a buying frenzy just to get sharper picture on otherwise pretty fscked up content (jeopardy in HDTV?) are just plain stupid. It is a dream conceived by manufacturers and Hollywood over a bong the size of Wembley Bowl.
What eludes atleast me is what are the benefits for the comsumer?
I can see better sound and picture being good while you watch movies but most people just watch shows and where are the benefit there?
3D Tv would be another thing but just slightly better sound and picture doesnt really cut it for the big masses.
HTTP/1.1 400
Both DirecTV and Dish offer high definition content.
Scroo the cable companies if they don't keep up.
Is anybody else old enough to remember the UHF converters that downconverted UHF TV to channel 3 for all the old TVs that only received 2-13?
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I believe you're correct.
They will have to receive DTV signals, since analog will go away
One would imagine that they largely get content from the TV stations in digital format already (although probably not the consumer DTV type) - I remember my local public TV station (KTEH) appealing a while ago for monies to upgrade their plant (cameras etc.) to digital, something one imagines the for-profit guys did a long time ago. I _really_ hope they're not turning a digital signal to analog, sending that to the cable company, who then redigitize (argh!) to send to digital cable subscribers - surely not!
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
You will just need to add a cheap tuner; by the
time this is mandated they will probably cost $50
or even less. I just bought a hi def tuner for
$300, and we're still in the guinea pig stage.
Also, this current requirement is a requirement
that manufacturers and broacasters ADD support
for digital, not that they are going to take away
analog... that won't happen until a vast
majority of people can support digital. Maybe in
2020.
I am a CE major at the University of Michigan and many people use OS X, most professor do not like windows, and most programing is done with GCC. Hell here OS X is gaining popularity with CompSci majors and professors, I see people buying powerbooks everyday.
The whole thing here is that the FCC wants this conversion to take place as soon as possible so they can re-parcel the old televisions spectrum and sell it at auction for bug $$$. TV stations pay nothing for the airwaves under the "public good" clause.
All those analog TVs will still be useful. Just as B&W monural TVs can still be used today in the age of color image and stereo sound. Please don't use such alarmist tones unless you really understand the issues at hand.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
A. The 2006 goal of starting to shut off NTSC transmitters has been around since 1998 at least. So if you want to blame the FCC for being autocratic here (which I personally think is a defensible position), you can't blame this one on Michael Powell, you have to go back to Reed Hundt.
B. If the FCC is talking about July 2007 now rather than January '06, this represents an admission on their part that their original goal was unrealistic.
C. Conditional access (televisionese for encryption) is intimately built into MPEG-2 and has been around on your DBS receivers for years. Billy Tauzin didn't invent it. Billy Tauzin can't go just blithely imposing technology wherever he wants to; sophisticated engineering like MPEG-2 takes years if not decades from drawing board to consumer.
D. The FCC realizes that it can't just shut off NTSC. Not only are there all those NTSC sets sitting out there in living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms, but there are NTSC transmitters and production equipment sitting in every TV station from coast to coast that will have to be scrapped at the transition to DTV and replaced with brand-new expensive digital stuff.
In the top 30 market I live in, exactly one of the six network affiliates has taken a digital signal to air at this point. The five who have not are resisting presumably because it's hard enough to make a living in NTSC television already. And that's in a major metropolitan market; forget those guys who are running UHF transmitters in, say, Nebraska. If the FCC mandates a hard switchover to DTV at any point it will effectively mean the end of terrestrial TV in rural areas.
E. In general, you don't have to worry about Hollywood's evil technical geniuses; if Hollywood had evil technical geniuses, you'd already be watching Jackass five nights a week.
Worry about the boneheads in Washington, and the malinformed paranoids who vote them in.
And after that we'll all switch over to IP v6, DDNS and so on.
And where are those flying cars and jetpacks that I was promised?
An NTSC frame, refreshed in two interlaced passes every 1001/30000 of a second, has 480 picture scanlines and 45 vertical blank scanlines. Thus, NTSC is called "480i" for "480 lines, interlaced".
Will I retire or break 10K?
if the sky falls and people stop watching tv, then maybe this country will not be as full of empty head, fat, rhetoric parroting monkeys like it is now. Of course, in reality you realize that it is not TV (nor internet, radio, etc) that is the problem as much as it is the blind devotion/zeal and stupidity of the masses.
timeshifting was found to be protected "fair use"
Fair use is part of copyright law. The DMCA's circumvention ban is completely orthogonal to copyright law. According to the decision in the MPAA v. 2600 case, making a backup of a copyrighted DVD is fair use, but it's still banned because fair use is a defense only to copyright infringement, not to circumvention.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I bought my 55" Toshiba HDTV monitor a little over a year ago. I love it. I do not have cable, or satellite, and I live in a rural area in a basement apartment where I cannot get over-the-air signals even if I wanted to. I saved about $1000 by getting a model without a digital tuner. Even in major cities, most of the content is not broadcast in HDTV anyway, so what's the point out here in the middle of nowhere?
What do I use the TV for? Well, three things:
DVDs -- Mostly anime DVDs, but a fair number of TV series (Farscape, Sopranos, Young Ones, Buffy), HK and other foreign films, and a modest selection of good Hollywood movies.
Digisub anime -- This I download off the internet. Stuff is broadcast in Japan, captured by people there, traded P2P, translated and subtitled here in less than a week sometimes. It's a great time to be an anime fan.
TV shows -- I also download the occasional TV episode, but I don't have _that_ much bandwitdh and free time to spare. I did download the 2nd half of The West Wing season 3 instead of having a friend tape it for me. The quality was better than his crappy VCR recorded, too. ^__^ I also got Sopranos Season 3 to watch until the DVD set came out (which I bought). We can't get UPN here, even on cable, so I'd have to resort to the internet for Buffy episodes anyway.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
the "5-year" deadline was set back in 97-98 for 2003-2005. Hollywood is trying to change the rules in the middle of the rollout as most stations were required to dual broadcast about a year ago!
The stations were alocated their spots years ago with the understanding that after the change the FCC would get the old space back. It's supposed to already be happening!!
Whatever protection they put into the signal, it must be decoded before being sent to the screen.
This means that you can access to the signal directly from the wires that drive the internal LCD screen (probably a widespread and well documented model), send them to a small system that will reconstruct the image (that's a pixel matrix), encode it in an unprotected well known and free format and upload it somewhere.
I'm not saying that's easy, but is definitely possible. When HDTVs will be out, it'll be just a matter of months before someone starts working on a device like that.
I've been meaning to throw that hunk of tubulous junk out. On the other hand, why do the current millions of television sets need to become obsolete? Why not give over the current VHF and UHF television channels to "amateur" transmissions, and have HDTV use some other frequencies? Has anybody thought about the shear load of plastic, glass, and heavy metals that our landfills will have to sustain if everybody has to throw out their current color or b/w television sets?
We slashdotters jizz over anything digital, but when it comes defiled with copy protection (ALL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS MUST DIE) it's quite the insult.
Considering the cable penetration in many areas is in excess of 90%, the fact that TV stations will broadcast in digital starting in 2007 will have a much smaller impact than proposed in the original post. Not too many receive their TV "over the air" it's all over the cable or via satellite.
Three things that could come together happily:
1) A huge audience with prematurely obsolete video equipment, looking for material to watch on it
2) Independent filmmakers who don't expect to make money off their first efforts, just exposure
3) Broadband
I'm not qualified to propose a workable economic model for this, but it has the feel of something exciting waiting to happen.
this was put into motion almost 10 years ago. Hollywood has posioned the water for the whole time refusing to follow along. They just want to change the rule at the last minute to get a better deal while breaking the existing momentum any of the broadcasters and manufactures have created.
They intend to make your VCR obsolete too. No analog outputs.
- Paul
Contrary to what is being stated here, the SIGNAL is what is changing, the TELEVISION does NOT have to change.
Sure, your VCR will be outmoded, but, last I checked mine is a big ass clock.
There will be set top boxes for those people not wishing to spend their hard earned, or non-existant income on a brand spanking new 16:9 television. These boxes will take a 1080i, 720p, 480p, or whatever signal they decide on and down-convert it to good old 480i (AKA NTSC).
You can then plug in a cable from this box, to your regular 1950s color televisor console television should you so desire.
Or, cable companies/broadcasters have the option of taking a HDTV bandwidth frequency that should hold a 1080i signal, but they wills end 2 - 3 480i shows through it. Not every show will benefit from HDTV. Hell, last I checked up until a few years ago all of our old shows are still 480i/NTSC/PAL so it's not like broadcasting reruns of Seinfeld or Star Trek is going to get anything out of 1080i broadcast. So we can have channels of 480i being multiplexed into the HDTV.
So don't lament and throw away your television yet. It'll be decades before you have to get rid of yours.
Me, I just bought a HDTV capable Sony 57" Widescreen. But I watch lots of DVDs, and I have DSS HDTV.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
It is common for a cinematographer or videographer to setup the 16:9 shots so that it also looks acceptable in 4:3. This will become more common with television, as there will be a mix of 16:9 and 4:3 displays for many years.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
countries like the EU states, China or Russia. Countries which definitely don't care about international problems and the mind-stunning threat of internation terrorism.
Without wishing to get into a political argument, as a citizen of a `second world' country, I'm a bit irked by your implication that nobody outside the USA cares about international terrorism. No disrespect intended to the thousands who died and were bereaved by the horrific attack on the WTC, but the rest of the world has been living with the effects of terrorism for a bit longer than the last year.
To take an illustrative example, over the last thirty years in the UK we've had actual elected Members of Parliament assassinated by both loyalist and republican Irish activists. Shopping centres have been bombed at Christmas, pubs blown up, ordinary people shot for associating with other ordinary people who happen to be `on the other side'.
I count myself fortunate that I've not been personally affected by such things, and I have every sympathy for those who have - like millions of people around the world I watched in horror as the WTC collapsed.
But to claim that countries and federations like the EU, China and Russia (which between them have roughly 1.5 thousand million inhabitants - a *quarter* of the world's population) just aren't interested in international terrorism is at once naive, insular, and offensive, and in the long run will only serve to fuel the sort of ill-feeling and fanaticism which causes the terrorism in the first place.
The world will be a mess and it will be because of whiners like you destroying the worldwide US surpremancy.
The world is a mess partly *because of* the USA's powerful influence. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot about the USA which I admire, and I don't think the UK has a particularly shining track record as far as international diplomacy goes, either, but simply dismissing everything as the other guy's problem is not the right way to go about making the world (or even the USA) a better place.
But then I'm a bleeding-heart liberal eco-head living in a `second world EU state', so what would I know?
nicholas
What about microsoft? The parent comment had nothing to do it. Looks like somebody's got a grudge.
The fact is that digital signals from local affiliates look 5X better than the analog equivalent.
Have you seen HDTV yet? Do you own one? I do. The difference is like night and day.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Yeah.
I anticpate a huge boom in the sale of used 35MM film cameras on eBay. Everybody will buy one to use to record copies of the new enhanced Digital versions of 'Friends'.
Yep.
With the lights off sitting in your stupid office chair, all alone in your den watching your porn on your computer listening with your crap computer speakers with your crap 4 inch subwoofer.
Sounds like your intellect has dwindled Poindexter.
Should be obvious to most that you are a masturbating pseudo intellectual.
Slashdot, haven for geek intellectuals with the same tired arguments who talk a big game.
Fuck this shit. I am gonna go spin records and get laid by non virtual women. All of you pansy ass 3l1t3 haxors can jack each other off some more.
Why not go outside 10s3r5 ??
Fuckin moron.
DAMMIT! Why cant people read. Even the news stories have it wrong. The mandates are *NOT*, I repeat *NOT* for HDTV - they are for *digital* broadcast.
You can have analog HDTV, and you can have digital non-HDTV.
Holloywood wants this so that they can copy-protect everything the sun, the FCC wants it so they can reclaim the VHS spectrum and make money auctioning it off.
The migration to HDTV is muddied by the fact that the screen formats are not really compatibile (4 wide by 3 high for regular TV, 16 wide by 8 high for HDTV). Yeah you can smush, stretch, and crop, but that takes explaining, makes it sound complicated, and is really a kludge anyway. So really, you have to buy a new set for HDTV (or buy a weird adapter, etc). This makes the HDTV migration a "hard cutover"... much more difficult than the migration to color.
So instead of a hard cutover migration, taking an early adopter approach makes sense. I.e., hardcore tech junkies pay premium prices for the first few years paving the way for the materialistic masses.
Except that there's little HDTV source material available for the tech junkies. A few hard to receive over the air broadcasts, a few heavily compressed satellite channels, virtually no cable channels, and virtually no prerecorded material (except for a handful of mostly non-blockbuster DVHS releases, Fight Club being the exception)
The cable companies complain about the bandwidth it takes to broadcast full quality HDTV, but at the same time, they're broadcasting huge numbers of "public access" channels, often displaying static graphics and low quality audio. These public access channels are just silly plain silly, now that the web is around.
If the cable companies could toss these amazingly useless public access channels (requiring law changes), and use the bandwidth for super primo (expensive) HDTV channels, early adopters would get their hi-res fix, the cable companies would get their money, and slowly, the technology would become cheaper.
Yeah, blue laser HD-DVD's are coming, but they're 5-7 years away (widescreenreview.com, not free). DVHS would be great, if all the studios decide to support it.
Everybody likes DVD's because they look better. The same could someday be true for HDTV, if early adopters just had something to adopt.
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
WTF ? Does your fucking palm pilot actually need a gigabit connection. How much porn do you want to store on it for your sorry public restroom masturbation sessions ?
Is it just me, or do we really not need HDTV? What are the benefits for consumers? Nobody I know has been begging to count the nose hairs in Jay Leno's nose. It seems like The Industry and The Feds have decided that we need this when we very obviously don't. Why do we have to legislate this into existence? Original TVs didn't have to be legislated into existence so that people would buy them. The force from The Industry and The Feds thats is required to prod American Consumers into buying this crap just proves that WE DON'T WANT IT. The only people benefiting from this will be the Japanese TV makers. Wohoo for patriotism!
Mods: -1 Flamebait, -1 Lunatic, +1 True
About as realistic as readers of CNN.com, USAToday.com, or the Onion, I suppose.
Face, it- there's a more than just left-wing propaganda at Salon. There's a lot of truth that the Bush camp wants suppressed. Don't blind yourself.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
Should be obvious to most that television dwindles intellect.
Bravo!!!!!
Remember the movie "Repo Man"? The little mechanic guy said," The more you drive, the less intelligent you become". I've always used a ripoff of that quote and modified it:
The more TV you watch, the less intelligent you become
If this goes through, this may be Presient Clinton's most lasting effect on American culture, even more than putting the InterNet in every school. No machine is used more hours per day by more Americans (or anywhere else in the world) than television. Time to leave the primitive 1940s standards and move to 1990s standards. The stuff is great, if it can succeed.
"Assuming there are approximately 300 million Americans, with 2/3 having upwards of 2 TV sets, that amounts to close to 500 million or more perfectly functional TVs that will..."
I know it's tangential to your main point, but I can't let those numbers stand. Since the FCC jusrisdiction is the USA, I'll interpret your reference to "Americans" to refer to those in the USA only. As you stated, that's a little under 300 million people total. So far so good.
I'll also assume most TVs are in homes. I think it's fairly safe to ignore other locations as an insignigicant fraction of the total.
So, by your numbers, an average family of five should have eight TV sets(!)
I don't know where you got the 1.75+ per person figure, but it can't be real. 1.75 per *household* MIGHT be true in some circles, but even that I doubt it very much as an average for the US. Even if so, it's meaningless without taking into account the average household size.
With the exception of a few single individuals living alone, I don't remeber ever walking into someone's home, and seen as many as 1.75 TVs per resident.
From what I've read there is no mandate that the cable companies have to switch anything. They will have to receive DTV signals, since analog will go away, but they don't have to DELIVER them. Smaller cable companies may just choose to continue to deliver NTSC quality signals derived from the DTV ones, inother words they perform the set top box function.
I wonder how often this will happen. Most cable cos that I'm aware of now are going digital, even rinkydink small town ones due to the cost/availability of equipment for expanding their capacity or just general upgrading. But even then the bandwidth allocated to a given channel stream may actually be less than a given DTV stream, even at vanilla NTSC standards. Which means in my mind a degredation of picture quality.
The thing I imagine will be even more prevelant will be downconverting high def content to lower resolutions to fit smaller channel bandwidth slots, and I'd just bet that this will really clobber picture quality in the same way that audio kinda tanks when you run it through a bunch of different codecs or compression cycles.
The whole converter box crap is why I haven't bothered with the digital cable we have here. It's $5 more per month to get digital cable (including one box) and you get a LOT more channels (of shit, I'm sure). But since I have 3 TVs, if I want digital in all rooms it's like another $20 more on top of it all.
Ideally a standard digital cable standard that makers can build into TVs should be developed.
Has anyone ever seen over-the-air HDTV?
There will be an easy, cheap, external box to buy that will make your TV continue working.
Any such external box will be deemed to be a digital copyright circumvention device and thus will be a federal felony to own, posess, sell, or manufacture such device.
Hollywood will see to it that the congresscritters they bought and paid for will make this law.
As for the obsolecense issue, my old equipment will not end up in a landfill. My VCR, camcorder and TV work just fine, thank you. I have equipment which I can use to edit the tapes into digital format and make shows for distribution in either analog or digital form. Those tools are not going in the trash till they and everyone else's break. If I can't convince morons like you that Toe-Zan does not have your best intrest at heart, I'll just have to settle for "obsolete" technology to share my stuff with my family and friends.
No, I'm not going to buy any of those silly new things until the smoke clears. As Hollywood sucks harder, I demand less. It's amazing what you can do when you don't follow all that nonsense.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Folks, one of the core sources of this kind of problem is who "owns" Congress. We need to make it so that it is illegal for anyone other than individual citizens to contribute to politicians' campains. No corporate contributions, no organizations (profit or non-profit). To contribute, you must be an individual, have a SSN, not be a convicted felon and be a citizen of the US. All contribution records must be published publicly at the expense of the politician who recieves the contribution. To break any of these rules should be a felony. The Constitution does not start with "We the Corporations..." it starts with "We the People..." and we need to restore that.
I'll buy a HDTV as soon as Hollywood pays for it.
I bought a good TV and Dish Network so I could watch babylon 5. That the only thing I could see that was worth paying that much for the TV. Now that there is nothing worth watching on TV, if someone thinks I should have a HDTV, they can pay for it. Otherwise I'm keeping what I've got since it works fine. Once the major broadcasters switch to digital only, I will have three choices, watch cable (or sat), watch the hundredes of vidoes that I've got, or tune out. I guess I could buy a new TV so I can watch the local broadcast is an option but I haven't tuned those morons in for very long time.
Not having new TV signals will not be a bad thing for me. One thing that will be a problem is how will congress or the president deliver their load of media crap to me if I don't have a new TV? I guess thats not my problem after all. If my congresscritter wants my to watch their nonsense, they can pay for a new TV or digital tuner or whatever since I'm not going to.
This leads to the question: what will replace TV?
How about live performances?
I like the new quality. I know there's some DRM in there, but it'll be cracked in no time.
The problem is we're going to be _forced_ to buy these new sets. And if anyone has been on slashdot for any amount of time, you'd know we're one defiant crowd.
If this were a dual-broadcast, companies-switch-as-they-like mantra, we'd not care at all (or at least I wouldn't).
But it isn't.
How would you like it if the US mandated everyone to have DSL VoIP phones instead of regular phone lines? Sounds nice to have DSL everywhere, but if/when they _force_ you to do that, you'd be pissed too.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
300,000,000 million citizens does not mean 300,000,000 people who are all in the same age and income range.
2.5 kid nuclear families are ~5 people (if we round down), which divides to 60,000,000. This doesn't account for seniors, low income people, or high income people. But it's more accurate than nearly everyone owns 2 TVs.
If most of them (2/3rds) owned 2 TVs, and everyone else owned 1 TV/family, then it'd be about: 100,000,000 TVs tops. Or about 1/5th of what you just projected.
Don't you think that's a littre more accurate, NeuroManson? You can't just spew random statistics and hope they're correct. You have to justify the numbers, or you'll fall into various traps when modelling systems without actually examining those systems.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Super8 with the film cartridges would be easier to handle. Problem is, I don't know of any film format that will allow you to film for a full half-hour without having to reload. And what about syncing audio?
The consumers clearly don't want it. If they did, they'd be selling more then the trickle they do sell. The broadcasters (trust me on this, I'm one of them) don't want it. For them it's a pain in the ass! The only people who WANT HDTV are the content providers (ie: program producers, movie studios) and their paid off lackeys in Congress. Why they want it should be crystal clear to you by now: CONTROL!!!! Enough said?
Where is all this FUD coming from? It seems that every HDTV article here is based on these same sensational misconceptions.
Every DTV / HDTV receiver available today supports output via standard NTSC. They can downconvert the image to be displayed on any existing TV. Given the economies of scale, with 100's of millions of existing sets, you can expect these DTV receivers to be very inexpensive.
Then, all of those existing TV's with their fuzzy, snowy, shadowed NTSC reception will have a clear digital picture.
Those with cable TV or satellite will be even less effected. As they can do the conversion at the head end. And, when the customer wants to do true HDTV, they can upgrade their set top box.
There are two completely seperate issues that most here can't seem to see.
One is a purely technology issue: converting a 50 year old analog broadcast system to a modern digital system, with many technical advantages.
The other is political: Hollywood, and the congressmen they own, are trying to subvert the open system to extend their control to unprecedented levels.
Now, even the tech issue is being misrepresented here. What's this garbage about throwing away all existing TV's? A simple digital receiver will output NTSC that your existing TV and VCR can use. These are already available, and will be VERY cheap once people start converting.
The technological advantages are very clear, DTV allows 6x the resolution of DVD's (1920x1080), Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, sub-channels to display more than one program per channel, program guide data included in signal, and a perfect digital picture - free of static/ghosting/fuzzines/etc.
Check out this site for some screenshots to demonstrate the quality of HDTV broadcasts.
As a big fan of HDTV, I hate the Hollywood efforts as much as anyone. But, these misconceptions only cloud the true issues.
The output doesn't change to match HDTV simply because your cable company is carrying the analog signal. Plus, not all HDTV is widescreen. They could be broadcasting in 480i, which is essentially the same format that current analog TVs use except it's transmitted digitally. Digital cable isn't DTV, and it's not even in the same ballpark as HDTV. It's an analog broadcast, compressed and sent digitally. If you want to view it in HDTV, you're gonna need an HDTV tuner and an HDTV antenna. Or you can sign up for DirectTV HD and pay for some premium channels in HDTV, but your local channels will still be analog unless you put up an antenna. I wish you the best of luck.
Cliff's comments are just as uninformed as the orignal contributor's:
About the only way that this can happen by the recently proposed deadline of July 1st, 2007, without trashing and replacing the majority of our current televisions, American television owners would have to have their TVs "serviced" by a qualified technician to continue to receive broadcast signals. Having a secondary tuner would not work as that would break the "trusted" display chain that Hollywood is seeking to establish.
This is completely incorrect. All that will be needed on existing TV's is a simple DTV receiver that will downconvert the signal to NTSC. All current HDTV receivers do this, and without the need for the HDTV components, the downconverting DTV receiver can be made very cheaply. Especially considering the economies of scale with the millions of boxes needed.
No "qualified technician" needs to service your TV. It's equivalent to hooking up a cable box, and simpler than connecting a VCR.
His point about the "trusted chain" is wrong. Since the output we're talking about here is plain old 480i NTSC, it does not fall into the protected realm. In fact, the threat of the legislation that the Hollywood-owned congressman are proposing is that on an unsecured output (like my analog component video outputs) that the signal will not be available in HD, it will be downconverted to NTSC (or possibly 480p, the level of downconversion is unclear). So, even in the worst case scenario, the 480i NTSC output is still available for existing TV's and VCR's.
Have you ever had cable TV or digital cable hooked up? AT&T (or the cable co of your choice) doesn't give a damn how much experience or qualifications you have under your belt, they won't let you get cable without sending a truck to your house/apartment and having a technician hook up a box that consists of two coaxial cable connectors... No rocket science there, but they have to pay their techs somehow...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Otherwise, I couldn't care less about this situation.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
There was also a nuclear war in the Star Trek universe; that would probably help end TV transmissions.
We got rid of our TV years ago due to the shocking lack of content, rather than lack of clarity.
We used to bring it out when something good came one. But those events got further and further apart.
Last time we moved, we left it behind.
I don't believe this is legal. Which, admittedly, just means that you have to spend a bit more money buying the law.
Right now, over-the-air analog tv broadcasters are not *allowed* to put content-protection like macrovision in their signals. It is illegal to do so.
Putting macrovision on the analog output of a converted over-the-air digitial tv broadcast signal? That sounds remarkably like an illegal act.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
We all know that even the safest and best satellite receivers with codes that update every day or so are broken. Heck, they even have pirate cards now, that can automatically adapt (ie, update) to the new codes. So with the growing resistance to having your life dictated by the cooperate companies (ok, so I'm overreacting a bit here :)) people will find a way around it, sooner or later (probably sooner).
;))
Besides, from all one reads, it would seem that this only affects the US, or that the rest of the world will loose the capabilities to watch anything after 2007.
Hopefully, by 2007, the MPAA and RIAA will have shoot themself in the foot enough times to either:
a) Gone under (and been replaced... better? Dunno)
b) Realized their stupidity and started to take advantage of the way new content can be delivered (as if)
c) Be totally ignored by any manufactor (in order to cater for the customers)
Maybe I'm overreacting (or just plain tired) but this is getting silly. If the MPAA/RIAA/Corps would have their way, we'd still be using VHS and there wouldn't be a "record" function on the VCR (defeating the acronym somewhat
My $0.02 / MrWorf
Amendment XXII - Presidential term limits. Ratified 2/27/1951.
1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
There is a reason for sending a technician to set up the cable connection. An improperly installed cable connection can leak EM radiation, causing interference with many licensed radio services. The cable company is legally responsible for preventing leakage. They can get in big trouble with the FCC if their system causes interference to licensed radio services.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Having a secondary tuner would not work as that would break the "trusted" display chain that Hollywood is seeking to establish.
I guarantee that people are not going to upgrade their perfectly good existing TV's just to get the new HDTV copy-protected signals. Either there will be external tuners or this whole thing will flop faster than DIVX. Maybe the top 10% income bracket in America will consider, but the rest will raise hell if their existing equipment becomes useless one day. The FCC will then have no choice but to listen to the masses.
Either way, TV is worthless. Cancel your cable or satellite and stop supporting the media monopolists. Your brain cells will thank you.
Now before you rabbit on about the wonderful United States government couldn't possibly interfere in the free market like that, might I remind you about, oh, the $20,000 dollars per farming worker the US government hands out in subsidies. Or the airline bailout...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Some more info on these things, HDTV has been attempted to be pushed since 1995, the FTC wanted HDTV broadcasts by 1997. HDTV Tuners are going to be required in all televisions by 2007.
This is not stifling analog broadcasts, its increasing overall bandwidth (because its digital) and when they start getting these tuners in all televisions the prices will be driven down. Right now they make more money selling HDTV w/o tuners then making you buy a tuner.
Seems like BS, but if you go to a best Buy or other electronics stores, most of those snazzy HDTV dont even have the ability to process an HDTV signal.
7 years ago (maybe more) the HDTV was intended to be THE next generation of television, this has been an issue for years, to get crazy about it now is just silly. I saw no one here getting angry that the HDTV standard had a deadline of 1997?
The reason people are getting angry now is because they want to be able to record video off the television, and I completely understand where you are coming from, I am not going to argue that that is a bad thing in many ways, but I am sure someone will make a rather easy converter/workaround that will turn it back into digital, and then you can get your movies off the net again, or record them yourself.
I remember going to the smithsonian and seeing an HDTV broadcast back in 1996 and I thought it was one of the coolest things around. let the technology progress. the Deadline is YEARS away, by the time they stop sending out digital signals the TV that had analog only tuners will be obsolete, and it wont even be thought about.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Existing SD TV sets will not need to be thrown out. All current and proposed HD receivers will provide SD analog outputs, so your existing SD sets will work fine.
The problem is existing HD TV sets that lack a DVI input with 5C copy prevention hardware. The new HD guidelines that Hollywood is working on mandate that NO HD analog outputs are allowed - only SD analog and HD digital (with 5C copy prevention - like CSS for television). So you won't be able to use an older HD TV set with one of these new receivers, since most older HD TV sets only accept analog or unencrypted digital signals.
Hollywood is so intent on getting this standard adopted that they are willing to obsolete most existing HD TV sets. A Disney official has been quoted as saying, "[we care so much about the new HD standard] that we're willing to visit each current home with a HD TV set and replace it with a new [copy-prevented] one..."
The new HD guidelines put forth by Hollywood's "Broadcast Protection" working group are truly disgusting. They mandate precisely what outputs a HD receiver is allowed to provide - SD analog is OK, HD digital (encrypted) is OK, HD analog is NOT OK. Which means the only way to record or manipulate (e.g. subtitle) a digital HD broadcast will be using Hollywood-approved hardware, and conditional on the "copy-prevention" flag in the data stream being turned off. And I'm sure that before long, all HD broadcasters will simply leave all of the "prevention" flags on all the time... (goodbye fair use, goodbye time-shifting, etc...)
No, you won't need a technician to dabble inside your old TV to get the new HDTV signals. You'll be able to get a set-top box that will output composite and S-video signals, no problem.
The DRM freaks aren't as worried about people pirating NTSC signals as they are the HDTV native signals themselves. I'm likely to have more problems hooking my old analog HDTV monitor up to the new signals than anyone with a standard TV.
My 'TV' is a 27" Sony PVM video monitor, and while it is not a truly top-end display, it produces a much better image than any consumer TV i have seen, and it shows up the inadequacy of the picture transmitted through the cable here in NZ rather obviously. The snow is extremely obvious on practically all the channels they carry.
My other big screen, a 29" Mitsubishi VGA monitor (also has composite/S-Video input) has major problems syncing properly to the signal produced by the cable box, (has no trouble with Playstation/VCR/DVD signal)which makes me wonder just how bad the signal these clowns are broadcasting is.
Connecting my PS2 to the Sony via the RGB SCART connector shows me what a sharp, beautiful picture my 'low-tech, analog' display is capable of, but if the cable companies apply the same production quality to their HDTV signals that they do to their current 'low-fi' broadcasts, theres just no point in wasting the money on an HDTV-capable set.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
to read books and listen to talk radio.
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
Perhaps more to the point, who really wants to watch local news anyway? Personally I really don't care about it. Now, you might say that I'm insulated from my community at large since I'm a college student (and they make sure that we know about anything going on on campus by spamming us over and over and over again). But even when I lived at home, I didn't really care about local news. As far as I can tell it basically falls into three categories:
I guess sports might loosely be considered local news as well, but (and I don't think I'm alone among the /. readership here) I don't really care about sports. If I did, again, the 'net would probably be just as good of a source, if not better.
So, overall, I'm just not seeing the advantage to following local news. Maybe someone can enlighten me, but until then, TV news remains relatively useless to me except for the rare occasion like 9/11.
I metamoderate all Redundant and Offtopic moderations as Unfair.
I've not seen the opinion of the average consumer in any of this stuff. I've got digital cable and no plans to buy a new TV. I know a lot of folks who are completely happy with their current set and don't care to change. IF the gov't thinks that they can force consumers to buy something, then they've seriously messed up.
This isn't a tax. This is trying to get the consumer to purchase something they don't necessarily want or need. And the digital crap is too expensive to replace the old sets. No matter what the gubberment might want; or Hollywood wants, or the cable companies. Unless its forced as a tax; no way in hell they're gonna get me to buy anything that I don't want. The only thing that the gov't can do in this situation is require the manufacture of things that aren't wanted. The Soviets did this and look how well they turned out.
I see a lot of ruined businesses and unsold inventory.
'Course, I could be wrong.
As to the digital stuff being all DRM'd so that I can't change the channel during a program. How many phone calls about defective sets and remotes would have to be financed before the IDIOTS that fosted this stuff would change it back? Channel surfing is a WAY of LIFE. (Imagine the million couch potatoe march!) Joe Average Consumer may not have cared or understood when the law was passed, but that don't mean he won't "get it" when ya screw around with how he watches his TV.
Don't buy. Teach som
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
Oh well.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Wow---This makes me think I should be buying stock in the cable companies. Imagine all the adds they could run: Don't want to buy a new TV? Switch to AT&T/Cox/Charter . . .Get all your old channels, and more. . . .without that expensive upgrade.
My guess is people who watch broadcast television would prefer the lesser (but constant expense) of cable to the much larger expense of a new tv without vcr, while the larger budgeted 'tech addicts' will stick with their tivo's and old-school non-drm hdtvs and non-drm dolby digital 5.1. Perhaps if the FCC is really draconian about it this will turn the networks into cable broadcasters.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Otherwise we wouldn't have Macrovision.
Im quite shocked that so many of you are against HDTV. Any time some new piece of PC hardware comes out that offers mind blowing performance and better picture quality (a new video card for example. Everyone here jizzes themselves to scrape up the money to buy it so they can get 4billion frames per second at 2k resolution or whatever. Then next year when the card is obsolete they buy yet another one. Im sure you would get much more mileage out of an hdtv and STB.
/.ers arent the early adopters of this technology, we are usually on the cutting edge of everything. Many times we cry about the lack of good product, such as the case with overpriced CD technology. Here is something that is head and shoulders above everything else out there, and you reject the hell out of it. I believe you are in the minority here as many many people are dying for hdtv rollout. In fact I haven't heard of many people who have HDTV at home and are not happy with it and wish to see it fail. Is it the close ties with hollywood? the evil movie studios? the copy protection they seek to build into hdtv products? How is this different from DVD technology that we all have embraced the shit out of? DVD offered a much better product and improved viewing experience, it has copy protection built in but almost all of us support and love our DVD collections. bizzare.
Those who do not see the value in HDTV, I ask if you've seen a proper demonstration of HDTV and its capabilities? If you answer you saw it at circuit city or future shop or whatever I swear I will slug you. You guys do not buy your computers at circuit city and you shouldnt buy or compare TV products there either. I wonder how many of the nay sayers have seen an amazing HDTV like the pioneer Elite 520 or something similar properly calibrated to view hdtv? BY properly calibrated I dont mean factory settings which are proven to cause permanent damage to TVs. First step is using a disc like Avia or Video Essentials to adjust the settings for optimal performance and picture. FYI the settings from the factory are the direct opposite of these optimal settings.
Do yourself a favor and visit a nice mom and pop shop that specializes in audio/video see for yourself how hdtv blows DVD quality out of the water. See it as its meant to be, done properly, not in an overly lit mega-electronics store show room.
Im quite surprised that
As far as the lack of good programming for hdtv arguement goes. I do agree there needs to be more, but whats the point if you guys wont get into it for whatever reason? Are you aware that one of the greatest channels around has introduced an HD edition? Discovery Channel HD is available now and offers boat loads of excellent original programming and now in HD? Show of hands, How many of you like the Discovery Channel? Or what about HBO? Do none of you guys watch the Soprano's? Showtime is in HD as well.
This is something the consumers want. I think everyone should get involved, find out more about the HD offerings in your area, learn about the legislative/technology issues that are slwoing the HD rollout. Get involved, help shape hdtv to something you would like. Its still early enough in the game to voice your opinions and have them be heard.
I would also like to mention that many of the video cards we use in our PCs can handle HDTV feeds, there may not be a need to go drop $2000 on a new set after all.
I am biased, I do own one of the finest HDTVs available, it has been calibrated and tuned by one of the most famous and reputable ISF engineers in the world. Take it from someone who has seen the promise land, it is a good place to be and I would like it if you all were here.
"Assuming there are approximately 300 million Americans, with 2/3 having upwards of 2 TV sets, that amounts to close to 500 million or more perfectly functional TVs that will wind up in landfills or third world 'recycling' countries like China.
You're saying that 2/3 of Americans, including newborn infants, own two or more televisions? Too much TV has rotted your brain, my friend. Assume 300M Americans, and an average household size of 4 (which may be way off), then assume 2/3 of those households have 2 televisions and you might be a little closer the mark. Also you are assuming that none of these TVs are digital capable; in Europe at least, many modern widescreen sets are digital capable.
Who cares if your TV all of a sudden is an HDTV if the digital feed you get is of incredibly low and crappy quality? Most of what I have seen of digitalTV have horrible quality, hardly comparable to VCD.
When I get full resolution, 40Mbit/s peak MPEG2 with DTS (384kbit/s DD is crap after all) I will be happy to get an HDTV. Heck, I will run to the store and get one. But right now I don't feel like bothering to get any new channels at all since they look like crap (Comhem if you live in Sweden). I will watch VCDs and when the show is good and they release the DVDs, I will get DVDs and watch those shows.
Those who do not see the value in HDTV, I ask if you've seen a proper demonstration of HDTV and its capabilities?
I've been in lots of shops looking for a proper demonstration. Other than some looping demo channel on some subscription service, I have yet to see a demonstration. I have not seen a DTV demo of my local over the air TV in either DTV or HDTV. It's still being marketed to the elete HDTV group and not to the 6:00 DTV local evening news viewers. No need to get a $1000 TV (digital tuner not included) with a $400 set top box and a $40/month subscription to watch the evening news.
The truth shall set you free!
.....the more Star Sytems(in this case customers) will slip through your fingers".
-Governor Tark, Star Wars Episode IV
Evil is the money of all root....
from the do-lawmakers-think-about-this-when-they-make-laws dept.
Of course not. You assume that lawmakers think.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
I forgot to mention that my comments about Digital Cable don't apply to Time Warner cable, that is on the ball. Nobody else is offering good digital cable, everyone else is suffering through this overly compressed 480i garbage.
:) Hopefully the DSS companies will start carrying the local HD over their spot-beams. The bad thing with the merger is that they won't have any competition, the good thing is that there will be a LOT of bandwidth if they can merge satellite feeds.
I'm jealous that you got it all from one provider. I now have it from one provider, plus antenna.
That's great, awesome that you have everything. It took me a month to get everything together at my place, and you got it easily.
Awesome for you!
Alex
Why don't you record some of this on your HDVCR and send it to me? Oh wait....you can't!
There are other issues involved besides picture quality. Go read about it.
Life is too short to proofread.
Yes and no. Right now, Digital Cable has replaced one of DSS's major pushes, the zillions of channels. DirecTV and DishNetwork currently are fighting by offering lower prices and better quality.
I want better quality, period. Right now, I have 5 TV options: OTA, AT&T Broadband Analog, AT&T Broadband Digital, DirecTV, and Dish. Let's throw out the Analog service, because while the analog channels have a better picture, that A/B channel separation is SO painfully weird. I'll also throw out OTA because the Sopranos are on.
Right now, Dish, DirecTV, and AT&T all compete to win by business, that's 3 options. If RCN could get its act together, that would be 4 vendors. With the merger, there are 2 competitors.
See, with 3 providers, you get something like the current split. My assessment is that Dish offers the cheapest service, AT&T offers mediocre service without installation troubles, and DirecTV offers the "best" service (HD channels, hardware choice, big premium packages, the NFL pack, ESPN Gameday if I want it, etc.).
I don't know what a combined Dish/DirecTV offers. I'm not interested in the low-end price competition, I want a fight to offer me the most and best HD content. AT&T isn't in that space at all. Right now, I have two competitors, Dish and DirecTV. Merge them, and HDTV enthusiasts have ZERO competition unless they live in a Time Warner area.
See, what the FCC and I realize is that a certain market, the HDTV market that the FCC wants to nuture, remember, there are only two real players (Time Warner's region exclused), Dish and DirecTV. With them merged, their race to get more HD content will likely die.
Alex
Right now, people can take an analogue signal and run it through anything - and they do.
In fact most average consumers have boxes hooked up to a TV through the VCR.
But when they buy the cheap magic box to see HDTV signals on the ol' TV, they will find they cannot record anything and that in fact they can't even hook it up through the VCR, and they will not know why - they will just return the magic box and get another only to have the same results.
It already happens with consoles, I've seen this exact scenario played out in two different stores by people ahead of me while I was waiting to return something. That's just console owners trying to watch DVD's, where a console probably isn't a primary DVD device. What happens when you piss off 80% of Americans and tell them the signal coming out of the magic box can't be recorded all the time and that your VCR tuner does nothing now?
Either way, it's going to be a lot of pain and waste. Good thing I pretty much use my TV as a monitor for games and DVD's now!! Raw image projectors hooked up to a computer pulling video off the internet is the wave of the future after the smoke from the fiasco of HDTV clears.
It all could have been mostly avoided, too, if they had just left protection out of HDTV. Oh well, not my billions of dollars!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...as well as not being able to record the latest Star Trek because they put a copy-block flag into the digital broadcast.
Oh, I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I use my VCR to record music, I use my camcorder to tape my life. (Well, I should, anyway.) My A/V setup is mine. It is for my data.
I'm watching C-SPAN right now, where they are discussing HDTV. There is a serious discussion to end all analog input and output at a certain date. The idea that consumer devices are for the consumer is barely registering. The idea that consumer devices simply should work is not registering at all.
"Content will drive the medium." Whose content? How about mine?
The upside is, congressmen have a stake in this. While they may not understand the concept of home-generated content, they don't like the idea of obsolescence any more than you do.
Grow up and read some history books, instead of cliff notes written by the extreme left.
Thank you, Ann Troll-Coulter!