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Cable, TV Makers Agree on Digital Standard
shylock0 writes "Reuters has this article about the digital cable standard agreed upon today. Amazingly enough, it places little or no copyright restrictions on content -- and it even includes specification for 1394/FireWire output to PVRs. I think this is a victory for fair use. Let's hope the FCC approves."
Just because it's a standard doesn't mean that anyone will actually use it.
I can hope something like this becomes a standard, but more to the point, I should rather be hoping that companies actually impliment it.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Originally designed to be complete by 2007, the switch to digital has yet to take off due to copyright concerns, limited programming and high equipment prices.
And mostly because they don't want to lose their existing analog signal, so they are stalling. The know that spectrum is worth big money and they are going to do everything they can to either make sure they don't lose it or make a lot of money selling it.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
I'm assuming that this will remove the "analog hole" since there will now be encrypted digital signal right into the TV, correct? Does that mean recordings can only be performed in analog?
In that case, go pick up a few HDTV tuner cards for the PC before they lock those down. Currently, you can time shift and record the full HDTV stream. But its only a matter of time before those are regulated.
Or will they change the standard such that these will become obselete? The article isn't clear on this but this would also mean screwing over current HDTV customers, since they do not have an integral decoder...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Living together!
...obligatory credit due to Ghostbusters for this quotationary moment.
Mass Hysteria!
Copyright is a legal issue, not a technical one. The "copyright restrictions" on the content are the same as they always have been.
What appears to be the case is that it doesn't try to put a lot of technical DRM restrictions on the content, and that is nice. DRM generally restricts use of content much further than copyright.
If approved by the FCC, the roughly two-thirds of U.S. households that subscribe to cable-TV services would be able to enjoy digital pictures over high-definition sets without shelling out more money, as some consumers do now, for set-top boxes to read the signals.
Great, so I don't have to pay for the box. I still have to pay for the service. More channels of little or no worthwhile content and a fancy menuing system (yes, nice, but worth triple the cost... no).
I'm really annoyed w/recent changes in the cable system moving premium channels to digital only. I don't think that cable systems should be allowed to do that. That's DOUBLE charging for HBO. Although w/the recent "slips" by the censors (Cher anyone?) maybe regular-old cable will end up carrying much the same content as HBO... We can always hope.
Why can't this half of the world simply copy what already works?
DVB/S and DVB/T work very well for all other continents already. Why is it so hard to make it work for us here? Is it because of some sort of insatiable desire for HDTV that I've never actually seen?
Oh well. At least things will get more standardized, which is good.
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
I think the most important part of this article was this line:
So essentially, this "standards agreement" is meaningless.
My Ass hurts.
This agreement is obviously great for cable companies and electronics manufacturers, since it provides free added value to their products. But who's missing from this little equation? Ah, yes - Hollywood. They'll certainly do what they can to subvert this agreement. And they've got a few congresspeople. This agreement is obviously great for cable companies and electronics manufacturers, since it provides free added value to their products. Fair use may have won a skirmish, but it's not a victory until the products are available in stores.
That said, it's certainly a happy skirmish win.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Some guy once told me there was a time long ago when the people had strong opinions and powerful friends in government! Heh, fuck knows what he was smoking...
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Easy for you, ever since The Bandsaw Incident. The rest of us use a digital standard that goes up to nine or ten (depending on whether you do C or Fortran).
Mine goes all the way to 11
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Okay, lots of Slashdot whining, but if you haven't been following events, you're sounding like an idiot.
Okay, currently, DTV (digital television) has 18 transmission settings, some of which are HDTV, some are SDTV (standard NTSC quality but digital), and some are EDTV (480p like an Xbox, Gamecube, or Progressive Scan DVD player). For a few decades, television manufacturers have had to include VHF and UHF decoders. However, most Americans get signals from cable and/or satellite (something like 10%-14% of homes are OTA only). As a result, televisions became "cable-ready" which means that your TV can tune cable channels in. Those hold enough to remember pre-'cable-ready' televisions remember having a cable box that would output on channel 3 or 4, and you'd get your channels that way. Cable-ready benefits everyone. The cable company didn't need to provide boxes, and consumers were happier.
Now, DTV is available OTA. A small handful of regions have HDTV over cable, where your digital cable STB outputs an HDTV signal via DVI, Component Video, or RGB (VGA). Many consumers with HDTV use Satellite, where their HDTV Dish/DirecTV box includes an ATSC (OTA HDTV) decoder. In fact, most OTA decoders are DirecTV boxes as well. This is a matter of economics.
DTV is an MPEG-2 stream, so OTA STBes need to decode MPEG-2 to decode OTA. DirecTV and Dish send in MPEG-2 as well. As a result, adding DirecTV or Dish to an OTA STB is pretty cheap. Dish, however, makes all their own equipment, so many OTA STBes can also get DirecTV. In fact, normally the D* boxes are cheaper, because DirecTV subsidizes DirecTV hardware. Including an OTA-only decoder is a bit silly, so some televisions that are HDTV have a DirecTV decoder built.
While this is great for DirecTV, the 70% of the contry that uses cable is left out in the cold. The FCC mandate for including a decoder was coming, so the television manufacturers were in trouble. They could include an OTA decoder that consumers had no interest in (they get signals from cable, remember), so they couldn't really pass the costs on to consumers. (Manufacturing costs affect supply, not demand, so the price goes up and the quantity sold goes down, w/ manufacturers making less per box, that's no good).
So, while every television could include an integrated DirecTV receiver, that's less beneficial to the manufacturers than a Cable tuner. To make matters worse, the cable companies aren't terribly interested in buying equipment from Motorola to rent to consumers. While they may make some money on the boxes, remember that they have to put the money up to buy it (the debt levels you hear about in telecom), and the box rentals piss off consumers so some of them stay analog.
They are rolling out Digital and have no interest in keeping analog as well, they can get 4-6 SDTV (depending on compression) signals in the space of a single analog station, or ~1 HDTV signal (if the cable companies can compress it a bit more, maybe 1.5 HDTV signals).
Everyone hates eating the costs of two systems. While the television companies have "free" bandwidth, they can't use it. Right now they are maintaining a DTV AND analog transmitter (more money) for no additional viewers (so no extra money), plus they had to buy DTV broadcasting gear.
Everyone wants the DTV changeover to end, so they need to push us to DTV. Once we are all on DTV, they can eliminate the HDTV channels that were the carrot to move us over, and put 4 SDTV signals in the place plus "value added" service like purchasing shit, etc.
So, the cable companies agree to pass along whatever the broadcasters put in that spectrum (or most, or whatever), the broadcasters shut down analog and either offer more channels, services, or HDTV, or something, and the manufacturers get to sell us all new televisions. Consumers get more/better service, either more channels or better quality. Hopefully the satellite companies offer something impressive to compensate for cable matching their previous advantages, and everybody wins.
Of course, rates go up, but c'est la vie.
Alex