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Putting the TV Broadcast Spectrum to Better Use?
KoshClassic asks: "Recently, on the NPR show All Things Considered, an interview was broadcast with Thomas Hazlett, formerly the chief economist of the FCC. Although short on details, Mr. Hazlett raises the point that, with the high penetration rate of cable / satellite TV into American homes, broadcasting television over the air has (or soon will) become superfulous and that this portion of the radio spectrum could be better utilized for other purposes. What do Slashdot readers think of this idea and, for those who agree, what alternative uses of the broadcast spectrum would you like to see?"
wireless internet would be nice
how about using the frequency for handheld TV or is this just killing a gadget that has been useful for fishermen,sportsfans,campers for 30years ?
But I still use rabbit ears, you insensitive clod!
Cut broadcast radio, too! Let's trick those darned aliens monitoring us into thinking we blew each other up or something.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Sell it all to ClearChannel.
You never know who will get one.
Turn the airwaves over to geeks like me!
For news and emergency purposes on "legacy equipment"
Give it back to the public for them to use as they see fit. I think The Goatse.cx Channel would get quite a following, at least it's not Trading Spaces.
Trolling is a art,
What's the point? If anything useful attempts to use this spectrum, the FCC will simply sign it over to the corporations.
- Twilight1
I think the airwaves are still good for HD content (cable company here doesn't throw any our way). Over the air hdtv is still a reason to use the airwaves.
what do the people who can't afford cable do then? For quite a lot of people who work on minumum wage/on welfare, etc., the minimum package cost of satellite or cable is still too expensive.
From the "Plums" page:
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I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
...but I wouldn't mind "broadcast" 802.x wireless internet service. Would this even be possible, though?
keeping VHF for the time being and killing off UHF? I can still see VHF TV being handy for EBS (or whatever they are calling it now) -- not to mention in many urban areas, broadcast TV works fine and is a good backup when cable TV is out and/or for portable TVs (Sony Watchman).
Could be fun to open UHF to the public for amature low power broadcasts for a while, too.
The bandwidth for TV stations when used digitally is something like 18MB/bs (can't exactly remember). You could use that bandwidth to stream movies/music to receivers. I was on a project that was doing just that, but we got axed. The infrastructure needed for VOD over TV isn't as great as for cable or Internet.
This would be fine for a good percentage of Americans, but it would cut off access to many who can't afford the monthly cost of cable or sattelite.
What they might want to do is to reduce the bandwidth dedicate to TV by reducing the number of UHF channels. Outside the larger markets, they could probably eliminate UHF altogether.
Of course, that would limit the potential growth of broadcast TV, further supporting the existing large players by making new competition more difficult.
If they want to eliminate broadcast TV altogether, then they need to work out a deal where cable and sattelite companies give free access to a dozen or so local channels.
I am a little confused as to whether the suggestion is to eliminate broadcast TV all together, or just make better use of the space. Since things mave moved away from broadcast TV, it doesn't need all the space it is using anymore, so maybe he is just talking about condensing it.
I agree with those of you who think eliminating it is a bad idea for now. Uses of broadcast TV are still around (portable devices, local stations, pbs/etc). Broadcast TV could also come in handy in the case of an emergency...
no comment
free pr0n
_______
2B1ASK1
I think I'd agree to this if it were federally mandated that "Basic Cable" be 100% free. Including all the wiring to your house. Wires, wireless, what's the difference?
Good luck watching TV portably too... No more sports+BBQ in the back yard.
carrier pigeons of course! the best way to utilize the air waves without wasting those precious radio waves.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Something else to consider, since so many /.'ers are into the whole privacy thing: Brodcast signals are the only way you can watch TV without someone somewhere keeping track of what you watch.
Just some food for thought.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
why don't we use it for something that benefits humans? teach people how to find their spiritual nature as opposed to brainwashing them to buy stuff they don't need. educate the ignorant masses about what's really going on in life. the eff could have a show detailing the patriot act, total information awareness etc. could you imagine what the world would be like if instead of watching some dumb whore blab about the entertainment industry, you could listen to a top scientist enlighten you about quantum physics!
heh - good luck.
we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively - bill hicks
The most ubiqutous and cheapest wireless gear has been for the unliscensed ISM bands. The large chunk of bandwidth that the tv spectrum uses would allow all sorts of high speed devices to coexist because there could be a number of non-overlapping yet wide channels.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It is foolish to even consider this. Until last week I didn't have cable, or satellite. I got along fine with five channels, and I think that the percentage of the population who lives like me is probably higher than you think. Maybe shrinking the available frequency range would make sense, but doing away with it would be madness.
Like the 2.4Ghz ISM band for example. Keep the power levels low enough that it doesn't turn into one big interference mess, but high enough that you can actually cover some distance with it.
keep it for people who still have rabbit ears for their tv sets. Some people want to watch tv, but don't want to shell out 40 bucks a month for cable. I know I'm happy if I can watch The Amazing Race, and Fox from 7-9pm on Sundays.
I ended up watching far more tv shows per week when I had cable, just because I paid for it and felt I had to get my money's worth.
LPVHF and LPUHF similar to LPFM! I know the costs are going to keep a lot more people out, but I think it could be used for community broadcasting with ranges similar to that of LPFM (around a few miles radius). People could start hundreds of little TV stations all over the place as a vehicle for communicating to the people in their neighborhood.
How expensive would it be to setup a TV station that can be viewed at 5 miles?
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
but I can't. I don't like the idea of the FCC taking away broadcast TV, but I don't think there are too many markets that could justifiably be called "underserved" if the UHF spectrum was taken away. VHF is all we really need at this point, in my off the cuff opinion. I vote that UHF should be opened up to anyone with a broadcast booth and the balls to use it. Reasonable signal strength limits would be the only control I'd ask for. Otherwise let the porn rule, and let all the other good stuff that comes with unlimited free speach happen too. Broadcast would no longer be "superfluous" then. basically, I don't like the FCC, but I don't know just how necessary an evil they are.
I get the feeling that they should leave the spectrum in place for many years to come so that these people will always have access to the major stations. In Australia (I'm not sure if it's the same in the US), they forced the telephone company to service rural areas, because otherwise they simply aren't profitable.
As always, don't forget to remember the little guy.
The whole idea that commercial licensing of the RF spectrum would be allowed was a BARGAIN --- a BARGAIN which like copyright is being forgotten.
The deal was this: we'll license the spectrum so that radio (and later TV) stations play nice together. So they are protected walking on each other. That's the quid. Now the quo: broadcasters are supposed to provide a customer service -- that includes (DO YOU HEAR ME CLEAR CHANNEL?) occasionally broadcasting pertinent public service messages (LIKE "HEY YOU THERE'S A TOXIC CLOUD COMING, EVACUATE!").
Let's establish a new broadcast band where low power non-profit FM community stations are allowed to broadcast.
Return radio to the people.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Lease it out to corporations provided they offer wireless access priced competatively. Force them to offer national service by leasing the spectrum by frequency nationally not locally. This way it could help speed the spread of wireless internet access and help eliminate roaming issues.
So what about those of us who see very little use for cable? Why should I be forced to buy a cable when I generally don't desire anything on it except for the occasional sports finals, the educational channels (History, TLC, TDC) perhaps, some of the news channels (MSNBC, Fox News, CNN), and the Weather channel? The cost/benefit ratio is not worth it right now.
Load the airwaves with about 100 more NPR stations. I can't get enough of it.
I think options should be considered in this order: First, Open free communications, next licensed communications sevices, next broadcast.
If we decide to make it an open communication services with only power restrictions, then it would be much like the current open bands and give more opurtunity for different products to be created. If we were to license certain corporations or individuals to have exclusive use of the bands they should provide a unique service such as unviversal data communications at a regulated price. Or if we should continue to license these bands to individual actors for broadcast, we should have more say over the content that we want.
Using airwaves for somethng that is stationary seems to be a waste and an annomaly.
Help fight continental drift.
I found out from Tv Radio World .com that there really isn't any part of UHF in my area that's underused. Every other channel is a fox, tbn, 3abn, abc, cbs, nbc, upn, wb channel. Granted some don't come in crystal clear, but there are quite a few channels (at least 9) that come in better than some crap cable setups.
Along with the antenna I have a Dish Network Dish/Receiver setup with the America's Top 50 (few more channels than Basic cable and all the popular ones that aren't pay) for $15/month (check link for more details if you want in).
So I've got roughly 50 cable channels on the dish, 20 public interest channels (the ones that broadcast for free and don't whine when you rebroadcast them), and about 9 antenna channels for $15/month. I'm pretty content actually with what I have and the usage of the system at current. I think cable and stretching old technology will be the demise of television before underused spectrum is.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I seem to remember hearing a while ago that the FCC was trying to make HDTV support mandatory in a few years... could this be out with the old, in with the new?
no comment
Basically, the government is subsidizing terrestial broadcast TV by allowing a profit oriented industry free use of valuable radio spectrum. What should happen is that the users of the spectrum should compete for the right to use it with other industries. Since most people already pay to receive TV over cable or satellite systems, most people would not see the increased cost. By reducing the number of broadcast TV stations, spectrum becomes available for more interesting and spectrally efficient services. After all the information transmitted in a 6 MHz TV channel can fit in a much smaller amount of spectrum using modern communication technology.
And let's face it, if a terrestial broadcast TV station turned off it's over the air transmitter, what perentage of it's customers notice?
Philip
They should deregulate the airwaves while they are doing all this deregulation. Drop the fees or lower them to rock bottom prices to broadcast medium/citywide power levels and let the independent media use what was given by the universe to all humans to use as they see fit, and not as those with the deepest pockets and their sycophants in the bureaucracy see as most beneficial to their bottom line. Lets just even things out a bit by giving the airwaves back to the people
JAAC
I'm sure that "homeland america" will be reeeal okay with that. You know, those places where radio signals travel a decent distance, but no one wants to dig 4000 feet of cable to get to your house. Yeah, almost everyone out there has satellite. However, not everyone wants to pay a monthly fee to watch TV, and more importantly, the middle of nowhere are the areas most likely to want some kind of highly localized tv channel. You think that a satellite provider is going to carry WLCD, Frederick, Oklahoma? No. And *no one* in that part of Oklahoma, practically, has cable. This means if you cut out the broadcast spectrum, this area can no longer have local channels of their own.
I'm also sure that there will be bad consequences from the fact that using exclusively satellite/cable means that in many area, cable would be *it*. There would be a couple people willing to go with satellite, but satellite has some inherent problems in it and these would likely continue, as they have been, to be a minority.
These are privately held and privately controlled networks. I don't exactly trust or like the FCC, but at least they have SOME accountability to the public. AOLTW has none.
Realize that *MANY* areas have a literal monopoly, locally, on cable. Realize that this means we'd be removing the monopoly on who determines who gets a television license out of the hands of the FCC and putting it in the hands of an unaccountable, private, local monopoly. Don't like the fact that AOLTW Cable doesn't carry X Channel You Like? Want to start a public access public service station that at one time the FCC would have greenlighted, but AOLTW cable isn't interested in handing bandwidth to because it's not a money maker and they'd rather go with Animal Planet 2? Get reeeal used to it. And once everyone else gets "used to" this, get very used to any and all complaints being met with "hey, you have choice. if you don't like it you can always move".
Welcome to the new global Feudalism.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You WANT a goatse.cx channel? I've only seen the picture briefly, like 2 years ago, and I've been scarred for life...sniff sniff...every time someone makes faces in a window, I start to gag. Any time someone mentions goats, I get a cold shiver down my spine. I've had to stop eating middle eastern food.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I'd like to see more high frequency research. Its that thing in Alaska. ARPA, or HARP, something like that.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I heard Hazlett speak a few months ago. He talked about a company he was lobbying for which basically figured out a way to get twice the use out the sprectrum. He described it as having two satalites and pointing one ground antenna one direction and the other the opposite way. What did he want? He wanted the FCC to give the company rights to ALL the new spectrum!! Not just patent their technology or whatever. Does this sound like giving the inventor of a new dam, the entire river?
--
Twoflower
I think a portion of the UHF band should be handed over to the public for broadcasting their own video-audio broadcast. Limit the power to around 100 watts or so and bandwidth to current standards. Allow for maybe 4 channels or so. I suppose the cutting the bandwidth allowed to each channel would free up even more possibilities but what we have here looks and sounds bad enough as it is.
Just like CDs and floppies aren't going to go away any time soon, I don't think we're going to see the end of through-the-air television any time soon.
Sue me for not reading the comments yet, but has anyone mentioned SETI?
And how long have we been sucking down new x86 hardware? O.o
Ironically, the reception in my area is so bad - thanks to some local radio station - that half the time I can't even pick up local stations, and I'm virtually living next to the city.
Well, it appears I don't even get to read the FCC site, either:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but europe is transitioning to digital TV as well, but when a station wants to broadcast in a DTV format, it has to eventually give up the VHF frequency it was using for a UHF one. This way, once completed, the entire VHF band will be free.
That would rock...I'd love to see the look on the faces at Comcast if that happened...
we would mass broadcast Rush and O'Reilly.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
i think that is a terrible idea. i'm also confident that the rest of my fello /.ers will agree. you are clearly a sick individual and you need jesus.
you guys think this is a good idea?
The possibility of this actually happening is SO unlikely that is hardly worth a discussion â" I suppose that with the same line of thinking then the HDTV spectrum should be re-assigned to other uses as well? Never mind the interference of frequency usage in the border areas (unless you can get the Canadians and the Mexicans to also agree to do away with analog TV signals) I mean lets say that in some hypothetical idealistic world the FCC turns those frequencies over to some other use â" people living the border cities would be screwed with interference on those frequencies from the transmissions from across the border that the FCC just canâ(TM)t control.
I can see it now â" âoeMan killed in a tragic accident related to the former TV spectrum being used in a remote controlled personal airplane guidance system. Apparently the man did not realize his proximity to the Mexican border â" The black box tape reveals that the last thing that he heard was the voice of âoeLa India Mariaâ on one of her many funny skits.â
Gato
Why does it need to be put to another use? Let me remind ya'll that not everyone has cable yet. Some can't get it at all. Leave it alone. It's WAY to early to try to refarm the TV band. Lots of people still use it.I do every day. It will be at least 50 years until it happens.
Gorkman
...and do what with the extra bandwidth? Auction it off to yet another foriegn telecom company? Rename it the "Clear Channel band" and play the same top-40 music station on a coast-to-coast repeater network? Given the FCC's recent penchant for giving too much power to too few megacorporations, I don't think letting them restructure the TV band is a good idea.
0 1 - just my two bits
they can take away all the UHF bands as long as they give us the ability to broadcast something else...like network access
that's 460-890Mhz that could be used for lowbandwidth packet data...much like the original internet was used for:
text based
Well, most of the latest technological shifts have mostly been used to get free Pr0n to the masses. Why not this one?
We could even do the obvious thing and let the exec's at Fox handle it for us.
(1 Karma point for the first person to post the correct Simpson's ref.)
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
I agree. And if I remember correctly, when/if the broadcast companies switch to HD broadcasting only, they will be able to broadcast 6 HD channels with the bandwidth of the Analog channel right?
With broadcast tv you don't have to pay or renew, have people come to your house, be on some corporation's list of people to spam, etc.
And I've never seen cable tv return faster than broadcast after a power outage because of a hurrican e or other natural disaster.
Exactly. One of the reasons for broadcast TV in Canada is CBC, a government-backed broadcasting station that makes an attempt at keeping the people informed about public events. One of our duties in a democratic society is to keep informed, while there's obviously other means available this one is free less the initial cost of television.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
The thing that this gentleman forgot to account for was the loss of sales to electronics manufacturers. He's focused on the media companies, which are only a part of the equation. How many portable TVs end up at sporting events, fishing trips, etc.? Though I haven't been able to find hard statistics, Circuit City carries five models and Casio even has a section for portable TVs on the front page of their website. I don't think he understands what a lobbying power the electronics industry is. Without broadcasts, every one of the portables out there would be useless and a revenue stream for manufacturers would dry up. How about anteanna sales and such for companies like Recoton? I'm sure they would join the fight ageanst any legislation destroying the boradcasts.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
UHF would be great for wireless internet, especially in rural areas. The "wave" would be able to travel farther than it does using 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz technology. In my area, no one will ever use the high UHF TV channels, so let's use them for wireless internet. UHF also has better penetration through trees & stuff, so you'd get better connections.
HD Broadcast TV is a waste of time. If you can afford a HDTV you are going to be getting your signal from CATV or DSS.
I think the entire TV spectrum should be reused. However, if this happens some kind of basic lowest common denominator cable service should be mandated or subsidized (much like basic phone service is subsidiezed in some cases for the poor).
Jeesh, open up some space and everyone wants to fill it. Why not leave it empty? Isn't anyone curious to know what life would be like with LESS RF waves passing through our bodies?
...".
Give it a rest. As it is, we are being bombarded by cell towers, 802.11a/b/g, etc. Our society is reduced to a pack of sea gulls ala Finding Nemo - "Mine, mine, mine
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
I know several people in suburban areas that do not have access to cable and do not want to subscribe to satellite television.
Several family members living in a large city refuse to pay $60+/month for basic cable with a lot of garbage.
1800:French quote: If they don't have bread, let them eat cake.
2003:US quote: If they don't have cable, let them use satellite.
Heads will roll again!
I think its a bad idea.
with that assessment. Unless Cable/Sat access becomes price-competitive with air, e.g. FREE there will always be a niche for the air stations.
Well, he is an economist, after all. He's thinking in terms of the economic opportunities inherent in this admittedly underutilized resource. However, this is just one of many perspectives.
I think some readers have rightly pointed out that not everyone has cable or satellite. I would argue that there are millions of people that have access to network television programming that don't have the economic means to have access to subscription-based TV services (cable and satellite).
Aren't there valid uses for that spectrum that don't boil down to maximizing profit? What about as a public-service infrastructure like radio?
IMHO, some things shouldn't be handed over to corporations. These include public parks, sidewalks, streets, town halls, the air we breathe, and some segment of the radio spectrum. or am I being to hippy-dippy radical?
I would liek for it to dispense soda. That is my sugjestion. Like a fountain soda?
Crist I spent a small fortune on a antenna a Terk tv35 There is NO way to get local HI DEF other then a antenna. Anyways over a couple years even this monster is cheap comparied to cable.
"think of it as evolution in action"
Who listens to AM radio anymore? Why not open that up to the public.
With the phone, there are discounted rates for people that have difficulty affording it, and there are laws mandating that it must be delivered even to areas that aren't profitable.
In the 15 years that we've been living at where we live we have yet to be able to get cable TV.
DSS came along and we got on it, but that runs a minimum of $20/month, doesn't include local channels, and doesn't include the hardware cost. Reliability isn't too hot, and if you have multiple TVs, you need to have multiple recievers. 3 TVs? You'll need at least two dishes. And each of those TVs has a service charge.
Now take broadcast TV.
Almost every station has local news. It's very portable, some areas can get by on rabbit ears on a portable TV. There is no monthly charge.
This would in effect be telling people who are not willing to pay $40 to watch the local news (which is slathered with ads) that it's either they pay or they get no TV at all. Cable companies would suddenly be able to charge "rural" rates that before people would not have even thought about accepting.
The biggest gainers would be the cable/satallite companies. The biggest losers would be the casual viewers.
Just because you pay a subscription, doesn't mean there will be any less ads.
--
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
...is pr0n. 81 channels of pr0n. 11 channels of luscious, VHS pr0n. 70 channels of "tit"tillating UHF pr0n. Hell, expand the spectrum and give me some phreaky microwave pr0n, too. Re-dedicate the unlicensed band and make it the MHP band - MegaHotPr0n.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I don't have cable, you insensitive clod!
Oops, sorry, thought this was the weekly poll.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
24/7 broadcasts of geeks/antiM$people/Slashdotters ranting and raving about the new Great Satan. We could have weekly code compares with ANY *nix, hosted by Leonard Nimoy.
Hourly updates about the zillion lawsuits spreading throughout the world claiming ownership of linux. The Iraq InfoMinister could interview SCO Veeps and they could all deny or assert whatever seems appropriate. Sundays would have Linus leading us all in prayer that SCO dries up and disappers. Oh, and NO M$ or MSN commercials! I hate rainbow-colored moths!!
We could use the extra bandwith for the government mind control rays.
The Limbaugh broadcasts you!
Interesting article timing.
With the likely consolidation of most of the US broadcast/cable media looming, it occurred to me last night that instead of lamenting how much more crappy everything's going to be that I should just embrace on-demand entertainment exclusively. Video rentals, streamed audio/video, downloaded audio/video, borrowed-from-library audio/video, etc..
TV generally sucks, cable generally sucks. The "best of" shows like the funniest/most amazing/most interesting videos have a few clips interlaced with lots of annoying filler and artificial build-up.
With BitTorrent (and other technology) it's now easy for a momentarily popular clip to be quickly and widely distributed. Late examples are movie and video game trailers, but think of old favorites like the exploding whale or the liquid oxygen barbecue...things like that can now spread more efficiently than joke emails.
In fact the FCC has already decided sideband usage for DTV over broadcast waves, I am sure there are other unique uses in this band, especially if two way communication were eventually allowed. In fact DTV broadcasters will be able to squeeze a lot into a current "channel". I think I remember reading somewhere that four channels could be compressed into an existing one.
Truly the slicing and dicing of this spectrum is antiquated. We should be like the British and cut our ties with backwards compatability, like when they moved from B&W to Color.
What about heavy usage of UWB in that spectrum. I am not sure how far our TV signals travel in a low wattage scenario, but I am sure you could cram a lot into UWB that included this spectrum.
What about truly interative TV and or features? Maybe high grade digital audio?
There are 3 spectrums out there, and UHF is way underused. Lets get some more bang for the buck!
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
What I wonder is this: Why can't I watch my local high school or local college's sports teams on TV? Why can't I watch the town meeting/local gov't on TV? (Yes, I know about public access cable, but that isn't available where I live.)
We have all sorts of TV, but all of it is controlled by large corporations, and all of it is funded by large corporations. It stands to reason that we're going to get biases from those controlling powers in our media.
The FCC is looking at the picture all wrong. They assume that there's something to watch on TV and that people are satisfied with it.
I, and most of my friends, are in now way satisfied with TV. I'm in the process of moving and my semi-new (only several-months old) 27" TV won't make the move -- I'm dumping it.
If the FCC wants to do something, why not open things up for hobbyists, citizen groups, NGOs, and non-multi-national corporations?
When my local high school and college both have AV departments, it amazes me that I cannot watch their sports games or cultural events on my TV. Instead, I get homogenized crap fed to me by large, out-of-touch media monopolies.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
This is a terrible idea. Broadcast reaches places where cable doesn't. Sattelite requires too much hardware and is hard to use in obstructed areas. For example, at my cabin (where broadcast works - usually).
For a very long time the FCC was criticized that it was unresponsive, too deliberative, and an example of a staid, entrenched beauacracy that did very little good for the people. Somewhere that was turned around and now they are overboard in almost exactly the opposite direction! Frankly, I'd prefeer an FCC that took lonmger to deliberate.
The airwaves require regulation, they are an extremely valuable, very public resource. They are crowded and need to be managed in the public's best interest. The FCC does not exist to make mega-media companies rich, it exists to protect a resource - in much the same way that the National Park Service exists to protect our national parks!
Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, the mega-media has gained an inordinate amount of influence over their regulators. Somewhere along the line, the FCC started to manage markets more than resources. We the little people are shut out of the process and even when we complain loud and long, we are ignored.
The FCC has finally become what everyone said it was - an example of a staid, entrenched beauacracy that does very little good for the people.
With the recent FCC decision to allow big monopolies to own more stations, there is less and less interesting programs on the public airways. This spectrum should be redeployed for something more useful than the propaganda of these monopolies. As for me, I stopped watching TV long ago. That time is now spent on the Internet.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Soon we won't be able to watch free TV, we will all need to pay mega $$$ to watch, and that is when I will stop watching.
All I watch now anyway is Enterprise and Cowboy Bebop
First they have a multi-billion $$$ spectrum giveaway. Then they tell us to go buy new HDTVs because LDTVs will be obsolete in 2006 (mandated broadcast HDTV). Now they're positioning that all TV's will be inoperable in the future.
This feels like a conspiracy that is going to cause joe consumer to get screwed.
It's very difficult to get the people to march in the streets in the USA. It should be interesting when joe six-pack turns on his TV in 2006 and nothing happens.
Cut the ads, kill the reruns, ban cross-promotion, and cut the crud programming.
Quality US broadcasting would then fill 2 VHF channels, freely up tons of spectrum, and let millions of Amercian get a life.
On television! The drug of a nation...
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
On television! The drug of a nation...
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation!
I know many people don't subscribe to cable TV nor satellite TV.
There are still a lot of people that depend on broadcast TV for their main form of information input. In addition to the places in the middle of nowhere that have absolutely no chance of ever getting cable, there are those places where cable just isn't necessary.
In my home, we don't have cable, a) because we don't need it and b) it's not available. All that we use the TV for is watching the evening news on the local CBS station, and watching concerts/documentaries/etc. on PBS. I might watch an episode of Star Trek or something on Fox. I know that a lot of people in my area do the same. If they cut off broadcast TV, we'd be fairly well screwed, because cable just isn't available, and our local selection of radio stations isn't any good. I suppose we could get satellite or something, but that's more cost and hassle than most people want to deal with.
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
For my money, we're already heading in the right direction with the switch to digital broadcasting, since that change involves moving all of the TV broadcasters up to UHF. The big VHF give-back is, IMHO, the important part. There are 12 channels of VHF TV. At 6 MHz each, that's 72 MHz of space, or more than a quarter of the available VHF spectrum. VHF is prime real estate that could be much better used than for a fixed-point broadcasting service (most TV receivers don't move).
The larger point, however, is that networks of terrestrial broadcast stations are already obsolete. Back before widespread adoption of cable, it was the only option. But now, having NBC programming come out of a few hundred transmitters scattered across the US is wasteful, given that just about everyone gets TV programming from a satellite (directly or indirectly from their cable company). NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and PBS should each have a single channel on that satellite, just like Comedy Central, and the local broadcasters should use their bandwidth to serve local needs. It's just common sense.
I see it as less Radio Noise in earth's vicinity. Makes some aspects of Astronomy easier. :D
73 DE KE6ISF
This sig no verb.
What does TV provide that 80-year-old widows need? They can get better news and entertainment from the library. If their lives really do revolve around TV, they'd be better off losing it anyway.
Give the rest of it away to NexTel and the cellphone giants. Screw the "public trust" crap in the FCC's charter, they've been ignoring it for years anyway.
Once this is done, the amount of bandwith required will be reduced by nearly an order of magnitude. The saved space is then to be re-allocated.
Well they could use it for some awesome gigabit WiFi, but you know the FCC, they'll prolly just use the entire UHF/VHF spectrums for newer garage door openers.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I agree with the top post. But one can say that at least most people that cannot afford cable have colour TVs, so the question is what is next... Maybe when MPEG4 becomes standard and cheap hardware exists then oblige broadcasting in that format and those with enough money to buy a cheap converter will be able to access it, and I imagine that it would become standard within any new TVs from the bottom end all the way up with time... not much either, how much silicon does it take to decode MPEG4 now? I doubt its much at all, imagine in a few years.
is that lower demand will result in lower spending on broadcast towers by the stations. The impact is already being seen. I live in a major metropolitan city, and with my amplified rabbit ears I can only get one station, and occasionally two more, depending on the weather.
Back in the 70's and early 80's, I lived an hour away from another big city, and generally had no problem picking up 7-10 stations most days.
While keeping the access available for people like me who don't care to pay for cable is nice, it's obvious that the cost:benefit ratio isn't there for the stations to keep pouring a ton of money into this. The market has already made the decision not to keep pouring money into this black hole.
Oh my god! The FCC is actually saying this!!! Having already given the cable monopolies the right to gouge the public to extreeme excess and also letting the a large cable interest (Time Owner) have ownership of one of the major satellite systems, they now suggest that there should be no free alternative, even if it is only a few channels? And what better use could there be for this spectrum? Putting it all in the hands of fat cats who can over charge for it like they already do for cable TV!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Since I don't watch a lot of TV, I didn't want to pay the price for cable and Digital Satellite didn't offer the local channels at the time (this was early 2001). I invested in a large ChannelMaster antenna and an inline amp. I mounted both in my attic and hooked the antenna to my home's cable plant. After a bit of tuning, I can get about 10 channels. Six are clear, the other 4 have some snow, but are viewable. It took 4 months to pay off (assuming $40/month cable or satellite service). I'm happy with it and would resent being forced to buy a service I don't need. My TV viewing would probably drop from 3hrs/week to 0/week at that point.
Chris
Seriously, using MPEG-2 and compressed HDTV, the bandwidth currently used by one analog channel can support 24 standard definition or 6 high definition broadcasts.
Leaving out a few of the extra compressed channels and you have a nice data stream for interactive content.
Consider a sporting event broadcast this way:
This is currently possible with the bandwidth available for one broadcast channel and would be a very good use of the spectrum.
One other thought: consolidating on sats/cable could have the nasty side effect of eliminating local programming altogether.
-Chris
is television a right?
The current modulation technologies are much too inefficient at delivering content. At some point analog TV will have to die, and then they can grab it and use that spectrum to deliver digital content using spread spectrum technology to make a super clean, high bandwidth medium.
If we don't funnel them toward this now, while broadcast TV is still somewhat viable, then this spectrum will end up getting repurposed for pay-per-service uses like cell phones, pagers etc. The media companies have already tried this with their HDTV bandwidth, breaking it up to deliver multiple digital chanels and other services for a fee.
I don't have cable or a satellite dish. I am strictly a "rabbit ears" consumer, along with the other millions of people who do the same. "American Idol" and "Joe Millionaire" were Nielsen rated hits, and they weren't on cable. "Friends" , "Crime Scene Investigators", and "Frasier" are all top rated non-cable shows. In fact, was there ANY prime time cable show that penetrated the Nielsen's top 10? Would Dave Letterman or Jay Leno be so successful if they were cable-only? I think not.
My favorite channel is a PBS station (although I don't always agree with what they have to say or some of their programming choices); you can't go wrong with "Nova", "Nature", "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer", or "Scientific American", which are all quality shows.
For the past decade, I have been struggling with whether to buy cable or not. $40 per month seems like a big investment, especially when cable seems to have a lot of reruns -- that's half a grand a year! If I want to see a movie, I rent a Blockbuster movie from a franchise store literally within walking distance. And there's NO way in heck that I'm renting $40 per month worth of movies from Blockbuster.
If I have received a license to broadcast programming to a certain market, my programming (whatever it might be) is "must carry" content for the broadcast spectrum of my market area. If someone (intentionally or not) intrudes on my spectrum and prevents my potential viewers from receiving my programming, I have a course of action against whomever is causing the interference.
Contrast this with the other media outlet formats mentioned. For both cable and satelite, the owner of the service decides what content will be carried, and how much extra will be charged for it.
And anyone who thinks the Internet is a replacement for broadcast television is off their rocker. Not only can an ISP (or anyone along the pipe, for that matter) choose to block access to a selected web site, we have laws requiring libraries and such to perform exactly that function.
We need to ensure that there are platforms for free speech to ensure our democracy. The closest thing we have for that right now is the Internet, but even there sites are getting disconnected left and right.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
That's a good idea!
Use all that spectrum for a wireless network fundamentally designed to be a high speed, low latency network for data packets. That would be super cool.
HDTV is a stupid waste of spectrum anyway.
There's no f@king way I'll be paying $40 a month to watch commercials all the time. There's simply no freaking way. I use a simple non-amplified Terk antenna to watch local TV channels for free. I still watch commercials but at least I don't pay for them. I can watch news, I can watch Simpsons and my wife can watch Friends and that's all we need. Sorry, but no matter how hard Drirect TV and Comcast advertising departments try I don't feel that TV entertainment is worth $480 (or more) a year. I'd rather buy another (used) guitar for this much dough or go somewhere.
Shouldn't take more than 2 or 2 channels.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
the TV spectrum is fine the way it is. if you want to shoot other things through it, then send the HDTV signals!
Over a year ago I tossed the cable in favour of having 2 clear channels and one slightly snowy one. I found with cable I had a vast quantity of TV viewing with the same, if not less quality as I did on my rabbit ears. Personally I would like to see it stay the same, or maybe loosen restrictions so more small indepedant stations can get going.
6 HD channels with the bandwidth of the Analog channel right?
No. HDTV requires a 40MHz IF, analog NTSC needs something like 5 or 6 MHz (can't remember). This is because an HDTV bitstream can be up to ~20mbits/s. HDTV needs more bandwidth, but it's worth it. I think that if the spectrum is given to digital broadcasting, they should be forced to have a minimum 10mbit stream at a minimum resolution of 1280x720P, not like the local Fox and WB affiliates that only broadcast at 704x480i.
A solution to the problem with music today
In Germany, they're planning on broadcasting only digital signals over the air by 2010. That way, you'd get dozens of channels over the air.
There's a pilot project underway for this in Berlin right now.
I rue the day I moved into a house with no over-the-air reception (there's a big hill between me and all the TV transmitters here in Phoenix). The picture quality on Cable sux compared to the over-the-air picture quality. Even though our cable plant has been upgraded with fiber to the neighborhood, digital cable, high-speed internet, all of the analog channels (2-70) are quite grainy compared with normal over-the-air broadcasts. Digital channels? THEY were pretty good, but none of the local broadcast stations were carried digitally! Satellite TV? fuhgeddaboutit. It provided me a crystal-clear image of a grossly over-compressed picture. The compression artifacts drove me nuts on many movies (try watching "The Hunt for Red October" on Satellite. There are a lot of shots of submarines under water, and the background breaks up into bands and just looks like hell). Both Satellite and Cable operators keep customers happy by maximizing the number of channels available, not by maximizing the quality of the picture. So, they compress the hell out of the channels they broadcast in order to maximize the number of channels they can fit into their channel. Saying that cable is better than over-the-air is similar to saying that Cell phones are better than wired phones. Sure, there are advantages (more channels for Cable, carry your phone with you for Cell), but there is a painful tradeoff (picture quality, cost for cable/satellite, voice quality for cell phones). Give me a full-bandwidth analog picture any day. /frank
And the worms ate into his brain.
Strangely I'm actually considering going back to broadcast. I'm extremely sick of the "quality" of the digital cable signal I'm getting. It's significant worse visually (artifacting, and the occasionally complete loss of picture when the signal hiccups). Re-allocating the broadcast spectrum is a interesting idea, but it's also a fairly bad idea to get rid of it completely. The new HD specs should let them combine everything into a single HDTV band with several SDTV channels, which might be an acceptable compromise.
...as long as they don't take away the private/amateur portion of the radio spectrum. Even though I'm not a HAM yet, I do think that personal communications without the service of a big corporation is important.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
what do the people who can't afford cable do then?
The logical answer would be that we pass a point in society where it's so valuable to those among us (who, incidentally might not be me) who want to "move ahead" that they will pay to bring the others up to speed. People are so stingy, though, I don't see this ever happening.
For example, when I was a student in Boston years ago, I was told that the Boston subway system operated at a greater loss by paying state employees to collect tokens (at $0.25 back then) than it would if it were free (with no tolltakers to pay), but that taxpayers liked to see money coming out of the riders' pockets and that's why they continued to charge money. I never did find out if this assertion was so, but it had a ring of truth to it.
Perhaps it's just as well, though.
Personally, I have a little black & white TV that is battery powered and that I can turn on during power outages (e.g., due to hurricanes) to find out the weather. Is someone going to offer me a replacement--and better yet, buy it for me? Not only would a change be inconvenient for me, but I worry that it will make our society fragile against catastrophe.
Although we can make one big all-in-one digital information device, I'm not sure that it's wise to. I like the idea of separated systems so that if one breaks down, another might continue to work so I can find out what's going on...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I'd be happy to see TV signals that I can actually tune in without getting cable or installing a huge arial on my roof. I don't have enough excess cash to spend $50/mo on something that I watch maybe 1hr/mo, but it would be nice if I could at least pick up my local broadcast stations. Maybe broadcasters are faring so badly that they're reducing their signal to cut costs?
I do like the idea of digital cable, but I don't see any big benefits to me, unless maybe it lowers the barrier to entry for some other tech and maybe makes my phone or ISP bill lower. I'm not going to get a new TV until they're selling them for $49.95 at a local retail chain, and if I have to make do with borrowing movies from the library until then, so be it.
Woah, I sound so cheap. Who cares, dag nabbit!
The requested URL
This is actually a very interesting and far reaching proposal. I very much like some aspects of this proposal, however, in practice I think that the idea suffers from some critical flaws.
What is most attractive about this proposal is the potential to separate fixed portions of the spectrum from specific uses. I would love to see a system in which bandwidth, be it wired or wireless, was used to carry undifferentiated data. End users should have the option to download whatever they bloody well pleased over their pipes. Freeing up spectrum from fixed broadcasts towards undifferentiated pipes is intuitively attractive to me. At the same time, this type of analysis presupposes that media companies have migrated towards new business models that are no longer based on âoebroadcastingâ uniform data to the public at defined intervals; but rather customers are able to download whatever content they want from the great TIVO in the sky.
My expectation is that we there will be a gradual shift in spectrum allocation. Some data such as stock quotes, breaking news, sporting events, etc has value in real time. If large numbers of users require simultaneous access to this class of data, then there may be a sustained requirement for broadcast portions of the spectrum such as conventional TV/Radio. Over time, as progressively larger shares of information becomes time insensitive, we should expect to see more spectrum shifting towards undifferentiated usage.
VHF broadcast towers are horribly expensive, to get decent saturation.
I would rather see basic cable be offered as a free service, but have the resident pay the one-time cost of the installation.
As a vehicle to wrestle our American government away from corporate interests I would like to see it used for publicly funded, political discourse and campaigning. I think all debates, party presentations, platform, town hall meetings etc, should be available (and probably limited to) any of the parties through a publicly funded broadcast network. The point being that the money spent by political parties on access to the airwaves for campaigning is very tied to business interests due to the extremely high prices paid for access to that medium. It seems to me that removing a business interest from our country's political discourse would drastically help.
So if this happens, what will I do with my 9" b&w?
Pong?
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
The should reallocate the UHF spectrum for wireless IP connections to ISPs (or even P2P to your neighborhood WAN). Anything that cuts into the local telco monopoly can't be all bad.
I can't even begin to count the ways. Portable TVs? No more. My parents live 20 miles from the nearest cable provider, so they'd have to get a dish. Oh wait, they don't have a view to to the south. Oh, and it costs $40/mo for channels you didn't want in the first place.
How the hell is this a GOOD thing? In ANY way???
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I know a lot of people that refuse to pay for TV. It's not that they can't afford it, they'd much rather use the money for something else. I am one of them.
Others refuse to pay for crap too, but don't mind free crap. Cable channels seem a lot more ad heavy too with more annoying ads, so the thought paying for more ads is just horrible to me.
It seems that too many people think that cable/satellite is a given. It is pretty d@mn arrogant to assume this.
Maybe the world would be better off without TV, but I don't think it is a good idea to force a bigger divide between people anyway.
Erm. No. You've got that completely wrong.
It was decided years ago that digital TV broadcasts (whether HD or not; that hadn't been decided at that point) would occupy the same slices of spectrum we used for analog broadcasts: 6 MHz channels. So a single HD channel occupies the same amount of spectrum as a single analog channel. Which is why HD has to be so highly compressed for broadcast. (HD starts out at over 1.3 Gbps, and gets MPEGged down to 19 Mbps.)
The 6X figure comes in when you start talking about subchannels. Inside a 6 MHz channel, you can broadcast as many subchannels as you want, dividing up the channel's bandwidth among them. A SD broadcast can be squeezed down to about 3 Mbps (1 MHz) and still look acceptable, so you can put 6 SD subchannels inside a single digital broadcast channel.
This is not HDTV, however. In order for a broadcast to be called HDTV, it has to have a vertical resolution of at least 1,000 lines. (That's the ATSC's definition.) Broadcasting SD digitially is not the same as HD.
A subsiquent comment on NPR pointed out the actual cost of cable subscription, and the lack of real choice, as: One must get a "package" of up to ~40 channels, while only really watching 3 or 4 of them. The only reason I have cable is as a hang-over from my computer/video work. That's long gone. Until the job-market improves, it's back to rabbit ears for me.
...during one of the meetup talks, we got to talking about HDTV & legacy TV. One of the guys at our table worked for the cable company. He scoffed at the idea that the FCC would take back the legacy frequencies. Simply put, there will be a ton of Chicago Cubs fans pissed off at WGN if they ever cut their broadcast of WGN on anything other than HDTV.
I'm sure the exact same thing holds true for millions of television viewers around the country.
"If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because hey, free dummy."
-- Jack Handey
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Here's the link to the ATC segment in case you want to listen to it.
"In reality, the major spectrum hog is analog broadcast TV transmission. In the US and to an extent in other countries a spectrum analyzer will find much of the allocated VHF and UHF TV spectrum unused, even in big cities. The UHF television band is punctured with vast empty holes called "taboo channels". These channels are left unoccupied because of the frequency selectivity limitation of early era television receivers. Today we know how to build far better receivers than when this early rule was adopted and when those frequencies were set aside.
We should never forget that any transmission capacity not used is wasted forever, like water over the dam. And, there has been water pouring here for many, many years, even during an endless spectrum drought."
from here
Low-cost, non-digital satellite dishes (the big ones) for people in rural areas. Bounce the five broadcast stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS) off of it using four channels, and then convert the rest to wireless networking bandwidth.
I think the concept of doing away entirely with broadcast television is absurd, or at least, highly premature. While I've had cable for years and couldn't fathom why anyone would _prefer_ broadcast ("wireless") television, I have to say that I know people without cable.
I don't believe for a second that every home in America has a cable line, and I don't believe that 30 years from now 'wireless' TV will have been phased out. Not only do some people like 'free' TV, but I can't tell you how valuable our small battery-operated TVs have been in horrible weather. Trees have taken down all the wires -- we have no power or phone, and turning on an emergency generator proved that cable TV went down, too. But with a small TV, we were able to get live information on the storm. Will this ever be replaced?
I agree -- the TV Broadcast Spectrum can be put to better use. But by that, I mean a more spectrum-efficient way. I see no benefit in phasing out broadcast TV, but there are plenty of reasons not to. Plus, as we continue to move toward more spectum-efficient technologies (2-way radios are starting to move to 12.5 kHz bandwidth; spread spectrum use is ever-growing...), I find it difficult to believe that we're ever going to run out of spectrum for radio. I hope that 20 years from now I'll be watching 'spread spectrum' TV or whatnot, but I sincerly hope that I'm not tied to a wire for my TV.
It's really ironic, too -- everything is moving toward wireless. Need a network? Why not go wireless? Want a new phone? Why not just get a cell phone, or at least a cordless phone? It won't be long before the Internet is as ubiquitous wirelessly as cell phone service. But when it comes to TV, why would people want to move _away_ from the wireless trend?
Yes, cable TV is hugely popular, and I certainly prefer my cable TV. But the concept of replacing it entirely with cable is about as ingenious as noting that everyone has a cell phone now, and shutting off residential phone lines to all homes, because the wires can be used for something else. Sure, some people might never notice. But there will always be people who still depend on their regular phone.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
That's funny, I was at Wrigley Field on Friday (After the Toe injury, before the cork, but Sammy struck out each time at bat, anyways). There were no screens stopping the (many) local apartments from seeing the game. In fact, many of then had bleachers setup with people enjoying the game!
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Yes, I'm talking to you...
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
to follow around the 100 hottest/horniest supermodels/actresses 24 hours a day. It's my god damn right to see that shit.
I'd like to see that trainwreck when everyone's signals are bleeding all over the place, rendering the whole thing useless.
Next, let's try getting rid of air traffic control!...dumbass.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Look at this chart from the FCC Radio Spectrum page.
Oh, so we should put all of eggs in the cable/satellite basket? Then there would be even less competition. Then we shouldn't complain that AOL/Time Warner/Comcast are too large - we gave a chunk to them.
..if you can't afford cable, should you really be spending your time watching TV in the first place?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Let's be honest, neither you nor I can figure out the all of the wonderful ways that this spectrum might be used and then decide among them what is the best way it should be used.
Rather than setup a command economy for spectrum, let's put it out there as a common that people can use for various ideas with relatively low barriers to entry. For example, we have for the last several years been discussing how intelligent tuning, spreadspectrum, etc., make a myth of spectrum shortages. If this is the case, then let's put it to the test.
I propose that we let any "service provider" use this spectrum for a small registration fee and a small monthly rental payment (say on the order of 5% of revenues, which could be used for a number of purposes, including giving poor people cable if we decided that is the best way to spend it) for use of the spectrum, as long as they use a technology that 1) doesn't interfer with any other use of the spectrum using "intelligent tuning" technologies and 2) that doesn't demand exclusive use of the specturm in question.
What would this achieve? Well, it would give us a commons (where multiple service providers might exist) for creative us of this spectrum at the same that the people get to share in the benefits. By running multiple different applications of the spectrum, we would be able to determine what is the best use - in terms of demand - without looking out other miniority uses of the spectrum. Another cool thing about this plan, is that it could be rolled out over time. We could start by taking channels 3 and 4 off the air across the country (moving existing broadcasters to open holes that are no longer needed due to the improvments in transmission equipment since the advent of TV), see how it works. If over-the-air TV continues to be less and less important, then we could roll up more and more of the spectrum available for the "spectrum commons".
I am not going to pay for Satelite or Cable TV, just because I do not feel like paying for ADS. So until this llittle problem gets fixed the best way for me to get my TV is from the air-waves. Otherwise no TV for me.
If you love your spectrum set it free.
If it doesn't come back to you it was never yours to sell in the first place.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
I don't have cable. Not because I'm poor, but because nobody needs to watch that much TV. It rots the brain. Also, I've heard many stories from landlords about deadbeat tenants who might have not paid in months, but they have cable-television with all the channels still. Maybe, the much of the poor stay generally poor because they sit in front of the tube, instead of furthering themselves, and making better use of their time. Of course the rich and tyranical prefer it that way! Frankly, short of PBS I wouldn't mind if they did away with broadcast television.
cat sig >
I recall reading not too long ago about using direction-sensitive reception and having multiple broadcasts using the same portion of the spectrum.
It seems to me that you could put the dozen or so stations in my area on one frequency and free the rest up for public use - requiring only a new tuner for your TV, not a cable or satellite installation.
The airwaves aren't really public property; they're useless without transmitters and the transmitters themselves are and should remain private property.
I prefer look at it the other way. Transmitters are useless without open frequencies to broadcast on. The key word is open, which is why the FCC exists, to make sure that you don't end up with 2 stations transmitting on frequencies that interfere with each other.
First off, I'm all for liberalizing the rules for using spectrum, things like allowing people in rural communities where ther are one one or two broadcast TV channels to make use of the wasted spectrum in their area.
But, the guy on NPR claimed some stupid statistic like 90% of american homes get have cable or satellite so we don't need broadcast. One of the big groups he is forgetting is all those DSS subscribers who still have to have bunny ears to get local channels. The best had to be though when he was asked why there was so much lobbying to surrounding allocation of television spectrum if it was such an unused commodity. basically he said...well....um...there is always resistance to new ideas. they jsut don't realize how few people are watching.
NOOOOOO!!! Don't you dare let them take away my UHF!
Do not read this sig.
Rent out the radio waves and use the money to help finance a giant governemt cable program to get cable lines in to every house in america. the line would provide basic cable and internet and include a box used for voteing so everyone could vote on public measures from their home and we could have a true democracy!
:)
Im serious BTW, Im also a libraltarian with a strong communist streak
To free up the broadcast TV spectrum (as we know it -- there may still be a market for a spectrum using a different technology) will take a long time, too. First, the FCC will have to go through a lengthy hearings process to decide whether or not to do it. If they do, expect a process something like this:
FCC opens up a new broadcast spectrum (maybe); sales of new-spectrum TV receivers begin
FCC stops issuing new licenses for the old spectrum
FCC bans sale of current old-spectrum licenses to other parties
Sales of old-spectrum TV sets are stopped
FCC sets date when all old-spectrum licenses expire
EPA goes into crisis mode when all of a sudden millions of TV's end up in landfills, setting off an ecological disaster
Government bans the disposal of old TV's ("You must keep them in your attic forever")
Wally Shumacher, janitor and garage tinkerer, invents new use for old TV's, saving the planet from destruction and making a few bucks in the process (before getting bought out by Microsoft)
Oops, got a little sidetracked there. Anyway, expect it to be a LOOOOOOOONG time before the broadcast spectrum as-we-know-it goes away.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
This guy's right. Mod him up.
Last time I checked, over the air use of TV was between 10-15%, with cable penetration being close to 90%. It appears that folks highly value clear TV signals. The folks I know that don't have cable are folks that could afford it, but don't choose to have it.
That said, if we are truly worried about folks having TV access, it might be better to charge a monthly rental fee for the use of this spectrum and then use a portion of this rental income to fund "lifeline" access to cable and/or satellite TV. This would allow folks - on a sliding scale - to receive cable and/or satellite TV at a subsidized price depending on their adjusted gross income.
... that the internet is TV.
Nobody said 'now that we have TV, maybe we can get rid of those pesky libraries'.
This is just a reworking of the whole 'in a decade we'll have a paperless office' syndrome that swept the country in the mid 90s.
Photography altered the art of painting, but it didn't destroy it. TV altered the types of content provided over radios but didn't eliminate them. Communication technologies have a way of sticking around if they offer the slightest difference or benefit, and adapting to exploit that difference.
Maybe it'd be better to ask 'how will/has the internet change TV?'
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Since technology (spread-spectrum, digital) now makes broadcasts of many more channels on these frequencies possible, and since broadcast TV is still the best way to get a consistent message out to a mass audience, and since we'd all like to keep elections from being decided by amount of airtime bought, I think it's time to reslice the pie.
Either chop up and sell the licences in smaller pieces for shorter terms, or sell them to broadcast "utilities" that themselves sell the ability to broadcast, but can not create or edit programming. (I'm sure such utilities would quickly discover how many channels they can slice their limited frequencies into!)
Toss in some regulations about not owning too many channels in one spot, and some about providing free air to public-interest programming, political candidates, private citizens, etc. and you've created a more diverse, more accessible, free version of cable.
Why would this matter to politics? Well, this could be a great chance to reform the rules as a whole new game is created. Maybe you could ban selling political ads, and give politicians free air time instead. Maybe you could even give parties their own little channels. Maybe, if you dealt with the ownership/licensing rules correctly, there would be a natural diversity and competition of ideas and viewpoints, and less political influence wielded by any particular media company.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Lets broadcast the latest Kernel on the airwaves. All should benefit from it!
This is already done, and broadcasters spend millions of dollars per year on propagation studies so that they comply with the rules regarding maintaining their BTA (Basic Trade Area) so that they don't interfere with an adjacent BTA on the same channel.
While I'm all for getting free basic cable, I DON'T want that mandated.
...well, maybe they will just print money, but that wouldn't be much different from raising taxes to pay for it since it would fuel inflation.
If, whenever somebody builds a house (perhaps a long way away from any existing cable), the cable company has to run new cable lines out to them for free, the money to pay for that is going to have to come from SOMEWHERE. The cable companies aren't just going to say "oh, darn. more costs" and do it themselves. They're going to lobby for government subsidies.
And the government isn't just going to print more money to pay for it, they're going to raise taxes or cut programs.
On the other hand, if they can be convinced to cut something that never should have been funded anyway, cutting programs wouldn't be so bad (except that they'd just be cutting one bad program to fund another one). But that's a moot point, because the cuts would come from things that are already underfunded like education.
In short, I think the broadcast spectrum should be left alone.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
I thought we were busy transmitting propaganda about what badasses we were to the rest of the universe!
Where will all the Low Power Television stations go to. Most LPTV stations will never make it to cable or the transition to HDTV. Will there ever by LPHDTV?
Like the other posters have said, there will be people that cannot afford cable. Guess that they will have to go without TV because their TV is obsolete too.
That will insure big media will be the only game in town, until someone realizes a good percentage cannot view their content. Realizing that might take years.
What's wrong with finding spectrum that the government no longer uses?
What is the percentage in RV parks? One sees quite few TV's, and an increasing number in SUVs.
Force the television manufacturers to build satellite decoders into televisions instead of UHF/VHF receivers. A satellite dish is cheap, and for people that don't want to subscribe, the satellite companies simply provide free access to 3 or 4 local channels. In fact the TV should come configured this way and then you can call a satellite provider if you actually want to pay money for more channels.
And you get a rather good selection of FTA (Free To Air) signals on the North American satellites, including many viewable with regular DBS size dishes.
:)
These cards also allow to to directly capture the digital stream, ala Tivo, so you can save stuff pretty easily in native MPEG2 format.
There are also unencrypted services on some of the Dish Network birds.
Oh, and a certain software package from Russia is useful too
except that our current wired infrastructure is too expensive to replace/replicate. The cost millions of miles of cable laid here in the US is staggering in today's dollars. The same thing can be accomplished by wireless and the customers pick up a better share of the tab too. In many ways Iraq is better off being bombed back into the stone-age because they will get a modular system built with all the new toys: satalite TV, 3G cell phones, etc...all rolled out in the next year. who needs wires!
What we should do is lobby for allocating a ten channel slot of the UHF band for LPTV broadcasts. Where I live there are three stations to be had - five if you're lucky enough to live in a high spot and want to invest in a giant rotatable rooftop array. That's PBS, CBS and NBC - no ABC within 60 miles of here and no FOX within 60 miles. Pretty slim pickin's, although it's not like you're going to get that much more diversity even with the other networks.
That's what the FCC should be embracing: low power local TV. Let communities establish voices through existing, well supported infrastructure. Leave ten channels of analog UHF TV until those existing receivers are all used up and we have better made the transition to "digital."
Can't they just get rid of a bunch of the channels and leave the rest of them? For example, most people use 2-12 and then maybe up to 40. So free up 40 through 62 or whatever?
Can it be done like that or does it all have to go? I use broadcast TV in my kitchen, where it works just fine and also I use it sometimes as a means to carry the TV around on a summer day....move the TV outside, watch the game or whatever.
I think it's a terrible idea to get rid of broadcast TV but if they could slice it up, it would be good.
More Ham Radio!
Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
I don't know about all of the CATV companies, but...
I PMed an MATV system at a fairly large (10,000+ students) university in Ohio. Along with installing satellite dishes for receiving normal channels (CNN, Discovery, MTV, etc.), we had to mount multiple cut antennas on a broadcast tower, pointed in the right directions, to pull in the local broadcast stations.
In other words, though the campus population had access to the local channels without antennas on *their* televisions, there were, in fact, antennas *somewhere* that eventually provided the signal through regular broadcast means.
Having driven by a few local headends (or headend substations, at least) whose purpose was made obvious by the receiving dishes and antennas just outside of the little building, I surmise that the "non-broadcast" signal that a lot of homes are receiving actually are "re-broadcast" signals, originally obtained through the use of the normal television broadcast means.
what alternative uses of the broadcast spectrum would you like to see?"
How about licensing the spectrum to broadcasters to broadcast commercial content? They could profit by selling ads, but they would have to agree to accept some regulation and provide some public service in return, since after all the airwaves are public property.
Nah, it would never work.
The technology is intrinsically suited the other way -- RF for broadcast, wired for point-to-point. Yet we fight the tide.
"If it doesn't happen in San Antonio, it never happened."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why not just give the cable company even more of a monopoly.
But if you can afford an HDTV receiver then you can afford to just receive HDTV over cable or satellite. There's really no point to receiving it over VHF/UHF anymore. Content in the 21st century will be for subscribers only. All you freeloaders will have to find a new way to extract and pirate information from us paying customers. Want information? PAY FOR IT! God damn freeloading broadcast pirates.
I wouldn't expect all of the free over-the-air TV broadcasts to disappear. We're not talking about freeing up ALL of these airwaves-- but honestly, how many OTA TV channels do you receive? I get maybe 15 or so, including all of the religious channels and all of the ones that come in so faintly it's just barely more than static. (I'm in a large city, and have a 6' Helical antenna)
There are, however, a VERY LARGE number of unused-but-reserved TV broadcast channels carving up a huge chunk of our airwaves. Think about how far up your UHF/VHF OTA tuner will go. There are 60 or so channels, and I doubt that even half of them are being used in any given market.
So why not take 10 or 15 of these unused channels (this is a lot of bandwidth) and do *something* with them?
I think that if the spectrum is given to digital broadcasting, they should be forced to have a minimum 10mbit stream at a minimum resolution of 1280x720P, not like the local Fox and WB affiliates that only broadcast at 704x480i.
Why? Sure, it looks nicer, but isn't their business to make money? Why should the government be dictating what resolution they should use, if the standard supports multiple resolutions?!
The issue is UHF. All those channels from 14 to 89 or whatever, over 90% of them sitting there unused on a national basis. That's an enormous amount of bandwidth that can't be used for any other purpose. It just sits there like a stagnant pond or a weed-filled vacant lot.
ANY use you put that to would be better than the way it's being managed now. You couldn't do worse!
I heard the interview on NPR the other day-- the guy wasn't talking about getting rid of all TV spectrum. The simple fact is that there are 60-odd TV channels reserved, but only a handful are being used even in the largest markets.
We can keep all the channels we've got, reserve some for future growth, and STILL reclaim 30 TV channels worth of bandwidth to use for anything from wireless internet to community radio, or whatever else you can think of.
Wouldn't it be better to do SOMETHING with all that bandwidth (and it *is* a ton) than just let dozens of TV channel-sized chunks of our airwaves sit unused? The guy's point is that we're just not using much of it, and that people who want more channels aren't clamoring for more OTA channels, they're getting cable. So why not use the unused chunk for something else?
I believe the FCC currently has plans to begin phasing in required HDTV receivers on new TVs in the next couple of years. The long-term plan is, once the transition to HD is closer to complete, to take the (wide) analog spectrum away from the TV networks and give it to someone else (for wireless data, cell service, etc.) Although HD is pretty expensive right now, it seems like a decent plan overall.
Uhm, last time I checked, Cable and Satellite didn't do a very good job getting local broadcast channels in very clear. Cable just looks like CRAP. Satellite does a better job, but they just rebroadcast digitally the signal they pick up over the air anyways. If you live in a metro area, and put up a properly configured antenna, the signal absolutely will BLOW AWAY any cable or satellite feed you can get.
Barkeep, gimme a Molotov cocktail.
Hey, Turnip, drawing a parallel between wholesale deregulation of the airwaves and eliminating air traffic control doesn't work too well. Want to know why?
People won't die if the fucking TV doesn't fucking work.
Nobody seems to have actually heard the interview. I caught it-- the guy is not advocating shutting down all broadcast TV. He simply points out that we have 60+ analog TV broadcast channels, and that we're only using a handful. (honestly, how many channels do you get?)
We could take 30 of those channels and use them for whatever crazy wireless things you can imagine. The rest would leave us with enough room for all the existing channels as well as some room for expansion.
Heck, even using ONE of the unused channels (these are big chunks of bandwidth) for something is better than letting them all sit there unused.
So don't worry-- your free OTA TV isn't going to disappear. But maybe we'll have something useful to do with the huge chunks of bandwidth we're currently just wasting.
SCO purchased all the broadcast spectrum from Novell in '95.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
These figures are incorrect. The ATSC 8VSB digital TV signal has a 19.39Mbit/sec payload.
That will contain one HDTV program with current MPEG-2 encoding, or up to 6 standard definition programs with reasonably aggressive MPEG-2 encoding.
Using MPEG-4 or other advanced encoding, one might be able to get the 1.76Mbit/sec rate required to support 11 SD programs per 8VSB channel.
I don't know of anyone who believes that HD has much prospect of being acceptably encoded below 7-8Mbit/sec in the forseeable future. That means 2 HD programs per RF channel at most.
..is because they have rubber stamped the dominant broadcasters licenses from day one, and given them a license to print money and spew disgusting propaganda that on any given day is usually 10% truth, 90% lies. Not one time has a major network been told "no,you've had your turn,you abused these *public* airwaves severely, time to give someone else a chance at it" No matter how bad the shows got, or how biased or fluffed out the news got,or how many complaints they got, STAMP! License to continue. Jokeski, I think they suck .. Complete total generations long rubber stamped monopolies with ties into government and the same old cast of fatcats, now for generations. They are so similar to each other as to make them "the same" in practical terms,and very generally speaking.
But, the same bunch of bribed GOONS will jump all over some small guy with his 10 watt alternative news and views radio someplace, even if he isn't interfering on any "assigned" channel.
The FCC is a tool of the goons, the power/establishment "elite",and always has been. Now, it will just be "moreso".
Sure, let them take the publics property and once again sell it back to you, the public, somehow. that's what they have always done, why should they stop?
But you can't get always get HDTV over cable or satellite. I don't have HDTV, but apparently, my marketplace has HDTV for each of the broadcast networks except CBS. However, only ABC is available in HDTV over cable and there are no broadcast networks available in HDTV over DirecTV. If you want to watch sports in HDTV, the big events are locked to the major networks and you can't get them via cable or satellite.
No. ATSC tranmission is at a maximum rate of 18.39 mbit/s. This is encoded into a chennel bandwidth of 6.13MHz (same as NTSC) using 3 bits/symbol.
I think it's for every HD feed DTV sends out, they can afford to send out 8-10 standard def feeds in the same space. So you can see DTV providers aren't exactly jumping on the gun for what is likely less then 3% of the populus.
You will never get your local stations over satellite in HD, you may get a national feed as Dish offers from CBS, but as it stands neither DirecTV or Dish have plans to offer local markets HDTV feeds.
I'd love to pay for it, but I'm afraid I'll never have the opportunity.
Of course, it would mean people would have to buy an adapter or something to get the signals, but that's a small price to pay in my opinion considering the alternatives.
Well -yeah, actually under current law the airwaves ARE considered public property. In some cases the "public" being the government has chosen to lease/sell the spectrum.
Consider that radio waves don't pay attention to boundaries such as state borders, but only obey the laws of physics. That being said - any use of this resource implies that it will impinge on an individual's physical space - Should the individual be able to control the entire radio environment within their immediate vacinity - or does that entire concept eliminate the concept of broadcast services? I think it does. If you have broadcast services, SOMEONE needs to play traffic cop -otherwise you have chaos, at which point no-one is happy. What we have today is evolved from that very situation.
Others argue that you can make better use of the spectrum we have. Probably so, though I think there are political, physical, and monetary reasons that things won't change as fast as desired.
But that's just me.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Broadcast television is not free. It is consumer supported either directly or indirectly through advertising.
Broadcast television is not a right. Someone has to pay for it, and if it stops being economically viable, I do not want my tax dollars supporting it. As long as it is viable, it is a great thing for people who can't/won't pay for the alternatives, but if you can't afford it, I am not paying for it
I've often wondered why the gov't auctions off chunks of the EM spectrum rather than leasing it. Seems on ongoing source of revenue would be of more use than a speculative one-time shot of money. It would also be able to terminate the lease if the spectrum was not being used 'for the public good'
Is it that I'm just not cynical enough?
Why don't *we* all just *use* *bold*?
Cheap shots aside, why stress on every vocal note? That provides for unnecessary distractions. Additionaly, why the heck does one need to capitalize and use surrounding asterix the same time? That feels like that verbal equivalent of screaming at 130db of raw carnage.
Most people seem to have forgotten the TV money model:
Content providers don't sell to audiences (often misnamed media "consumers"). Content providers sell your eyeballs to people who want to advertise.
Funny thing is, someone got the idea that audiences would be foolish enough to PAY to be exploited for a corporation's profit. And we stupid Americans bought into it hook, line and sinker.
I have never paid for an input to my TV. I didn't even pay for my TV; it was a gift. If they take over-the-air TV broadcasts away, screw them! I'm not going to PAY to be exploited. If they don't give me content for free (free broadcast, free cable, etc.), then they just won't be able to sell my eyes to advertisers.
Civilization did just fine before TV. If I actually got off my ass to do some exercise, or read a book to exercise my mind, I'd actually be better off.
Frank Lloyd Wright *IS* credited for calling TV "chewing gum for the eyes."...
If I were a poor person, I would much rather have you spend that money on giving me access to education, job training, and better health care (in that order).
An australian University has developed what you are looking for.
See http://wwwrsphysse.anu.edu.au/bushlan/
Not sure if this was already stated, way too many threads to read through, but HD over the air as well as locals over the air is still needed for satellite subscribers. Satellite does not offer locals in every market, and when HD becomes more mainstream satellite TV just doesn't have the bandwith to rebroadcast HD to everyone. This is why a HD satellite receivers have built in OTA HD receivers as well. They don't have the bandwith to rebroadcast, and even if they did it would be the same amount of bandwith wasted. Unless they come up with a structure of have one set of HD streams for main content, then a smaller substream for local commercials and news, this won't work.
I still use Rabbit Ears, but here in DC even with about 10 on air channels we still have channels 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 and a host of UHF channels that are vacant.
When these frequencies have all been taken up by alternative uses, which I expect would take well past the cutover to Digital broadcast, then you can start talking about ending analog broadcast.
It was my understanding that analog broadcast was going to be phased out in 2006 anyway once the broadcasters had been given time to switchover to digital and consumer prices for digital receivers had come down to the roughly the same as analog receivers.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
More elitist bullshit, a hellofalotta people just can't afford cable or live in places where they can't get it. It figgers that some FCC bitch would make a run at this, think of alll the crooked profits the broadcast industry's pinstriped punks could make out of this!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
We need to keep broadcast television (and radio) for the same reasons we need to keep the postal service: to guarantee every citizen has affordabile access to basic services. Where I live, the least expensive cable plan is twenty-something dollars a month, and includes local network affiliates plus C-SPAN, public-access, (and not-surprisingly two home-shopping channels). If money is tight, there are better things to spend $250/year on. Broadcast television and radio ensure that I will always have access to news and educational children's programming (and of course all the other useless crap found on television), even if I cannot afford a cable subscription.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Maybe someday we'll see a switch, but if this idea carries any merit at all it is as a long-term prediction. At present, only about 67% of homes pipe in cable television; the growing use of mini-dish systems may add a percentage to that (I couldn't find any statistics on this) but most dish systems seem to just capitalize on anti-cable-company sentiments. Even if we account for the minority of people who don't watch TV at all, there are easily 30 million Americans who rely on broadcast television--many of which, for reasons mentioned above (poverty, unwillingness to pay, etc.) are not switching any time soon. If that number seems small, consider viewer statistics--the most watched shows in America are all on commonly broadcast stations.
In terms of a lot of the information (?) content, over-the-air, cable, and satellite bandwidth are all wasted. However, one isn't wasted more than another. I can give several reasons why it should be left alone:
1) Much of my home state is rural, and we aren't alone. There is no cable. If you want anything that looks like local information, it comes over the air.
2) Neither cable nor satellite are making more than a token effort towards HDTV or SDTV.
3) When I look at an off air SDTV station, it looks so much better than satellite, there's no comparison. That's particularly true on a wide screen set. I can't comment about how it might look on cable, because they (for the most part) haven't even bothered with SDTV.
4) In those instances I can recall in which the FCC reclaimed part of the broadcast spectrum, the replacement wasn't an improvement. The old 44 mHz FM broadcast band was given to mobile radio services, as was TV channel 1. When UHF channels 70-83 were taken away, they were replaced with cell phones.
Satellite service is a rip off. So is standard cable, IMHO.
I'll keep my friggin' antenna, thank you. I get plenty of radio and television stations already, and all I have to do is put up with commercials.
With satellite and cable TV service, I'd be paying to watch the same (if not more) commercials.
Why the hell would anyone want to pay a monthly fee that includes advertising? They don't even do that at Slashdot!
Yes, lets give Farmer Joe a 100 milliwatt UHF transmitter so he can check the farm channel.
I'm sure giving untrained people high powered broadcast equipment that requires FCC licensing a good idea. Yup...
Banaaaana!
If moving broadcast TV off of their current spectrum will free up enough space to provide fairly high-bandwidth wireless, then it would be worth it. The sooner all TV comes through a network where ANYONE can play the better. Right now, most users just don't have the bandwidth to stream high-quality video via the Internet, regardless of the quality of their content.
Cable companies have an effective monopoly in certain areas for non-network programming. This can be a free speech issue because they control, to some degree, the content. If they were regulated into providing unfiltered bandwidth only, then there wouldn't be the same free speech issue. You could choose to get your on-demand streaming video from anywhere in the world. The only restriction allowed would be QoS bandwidth limiting to ensure that all could get access.
If you're worried that this would prevent all of the really impoverished people from seeing PBS (yeah), you could make part of the regulations include a minimum level of services for Internet access, similar to current rules for telephone services. In fact, there's little use to having a telephone service as we have today if we can build out enough bandwidth, as telephony over IP (or it's successor) will outcompete POTS service.
I can afford cable, but I don't get it. Why should I pay for TV? It's fine as it is, and I don't need another bill.
Nobody seems to have better ideas for using the spectrum, other than: free for all. That's such a waste.
P2P by antenna.
I for one don't have cable tv. I don't like the cable internet service I had and so when I went to DSL I canceled my cable subscription to keep down on bills, (I'm just out of college).
I do security
I have a 55" Mitsubishi TV and I don't have satillite or cable. Why should I pay $50/mo for something if it's still going to be chucked full of ads? I can just pull it out of the air for free. Broadcast is here to stay, I hope.
more porn. :-D
I only watch TV 1-3 hours a month. I could afford cable without breaking the budget, but I still haven't signed up.
Maybe if I had access to the better programming that cable occasionally offers on one of the 5-6 channels that people actually watch, I would watch more TV... but why the hell would I want to watch more TV? I have little enough spare time as it is. Won't I get more out of going on a long walk with my wife and the dog than I will watching... well, anything?
Yes, we still watch movies, but we pick them out, and rent them, we don't just watch whatever happens to be showing.
I'm not really sure if I'd miss free TV if it went away. I get my news online (wow, there's a lot more out there than what FOX says), but of course that isn't a viable option yet for a lot of people.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
The FCC has dropped the ball so many times in favor of large corporations this would be the last straw in abandoning any future control.
Open airwaves are public airwaves, and the public or what is in it's best interests are what controls legislation. Cable and Satellite are privately owned and controlled. Eliminating the one agency that has the capabaility of upholding our legal rights of fair use is a bad move. For what? More wireless access at Starbucks?
The FCC in recent years has given in to pressure to give in to what's better for the corporations, not the public. They relaxed censorship not because it was outmoded, but because networks were losing viewers. Networks were once restricted to 9 minutes of commercials per hour, now they get 16, to make content cheaper and sell more. Now let's see, what part of the government should be defending our present and future rights to record HDTV and digital broadcasts? If it goes what will replace it?
It's not time to get rid of the FCC but give it back it's teeth.
I think you've fallen for the propaganda. The *real* reason they want to free up this spectrum is so they can launch the Mind-Reading Wave mark II, with it's new tinfoil-piercing properties. Be very afraid.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The reason Hazlett suggests that we switch completely away from RF television is the fact that the spectrum is being used extremely inefficiently (and always has been). For example we simply gave broadcast stations the HD spectrum for free. The process by which the stations got their original VHF frequencies was even less equitable. The best way to go about selling spectrum is to have an auction and sell it to the highest bidder that will be able to make the most efficient use of the space.
The biggest argument against abandoning RF TV is what about the people who can't afford cable or satellite, but Hazlett found that the efficiency lost by allocation the spectrum in the current system is in the billions, and there would be enough money from the auction of the spectrum (and from more efficient use of it) that we could subsidize those who can't afford cable for the next 50 years with plenty left over.
...
We're in that situation now in the UK. Our govt. is committed to switching off the analogue TV transmissions ASAP. They have a provisional date of 2010, last time I checked, they keep moving the goalposts on this one. Instead we have Digital Terrestrial TV. More channels (mostly trying to sell you something) as well as the existing ones. But it's crap :(
Most of the signals are too compressed, these are MPEG streams we receive, and artifacts are all over the shop especially when watching sports.
The sound quality is worse than the previous standard of Nicam Stereo too. But we're told this is good for us and the UK electorate doesn't have any influence over our current administration.
AFAIR they want 95%+ of the population to be able to receive DTT before they switch off the analogue signals. Apart from glib statements along the lines of "freeing up a large chunk of the spectrum" there's been no concrete plans as to what they intend to do with it.
Prolly auction it off and make a bundle like they did with 3G. How we laughed at that one!
There's the sensible answer! I knew that if I kept reading, someone would come up with something brilliant. If only I had mod points.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I'm posting late, so this probably won't make it above all the noise.
Anyway-- we're not talking about completely ditching OTA TV. The guy just points out that there are 60+ analog channels. You get how many, 6? 10? 15? Why not use a block of those unused channels for something useful? Each channel is 6MHz of bandwidth. That's a lot of frequency just sitting idle.
Anyway, why should the 20% of Americans who are too poor to move past outmoded, bandwidth hogging broacasting systems interfere with the 80% of Americans from making use of that spectrum in a way that is more productive and fulfilling than watching Love Boat reruns.
My God, I sound like Ayn Rand, but I don't really mean to flame. Better post this as an AC and get the hell out of here, even though I think my point is a reasonable one. -1 Troll here I come!
By taking the idiot box out of the porest homes society might start to normalise. People who cannot afford a television might find more productive things to do, getting (eventually) to a ste where the can afford one. Begin slow regression to dumb intellectual stupor.
It'll keep everyone on rougly the same level, and nicley halt the big downward spiral. Besides, if you get all your news off the internet at least you get more choice about where your lies come from than American broadcast TV.
Beep beep.
I think that this is an excellent idea! Although, it does not have to be an all or nothing proposition. Rural areas could keep more of the spectrum for broadcast TV while developed areas could use the spectrum for wireless netoworking. Or, what if we made TV "cellular," with content delivered to a station within a cell by fiber, and then broadcast at a lower power than TV stations currently use? I am from rural Iowa, which has a lower average income and education outside of the cities. But we also have a state-owned fiber network with a fiber end-point in every county. I think that it would be feasible here.
flaminghyundai@hotmail.com
Quote from somebody else: If everyone is thinking the same thing, then no one is thinking!
You may be right on the MPEG-2 numbers. I saw the setup I described in a friends lab and they may have been using something else for the compression or taking advantage of the proximity to their broadcast equipment.
-Chris
I'm not poor (although I'm working on it ;), and have had a cable hookup for some 20 years now. Last year I found myself in my attic, installing the dreaded broadcast antenna, as the only way to receive HDTV signals.
There won't be sufficient economic incentive/pressure for the cable/sat providers to dedicate bandwidth for HDTV signals for some time to come, meaning the number of people using the broadcast signals is actually likely to rise, at least in the short term.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Lets give the frequencies to nerds... ham radio.
Good. Use it for 802.11 style community based internet service. It would revolutionize telom and all information services. The internet was designed to be free, this specturm in the hads of the people could make it so. Imagine being able to host your own content with your own equipment without paying a fee for anything but electicity.
I think The Goatse.cx Channel would get quite a following
What you chose to look at and point to is your business. I don't visit your "dump" very often, nor would I recomend it to others, though it's really no worse that broadcast TV. No big deal, someone else might like what you do. (the fly is funny, To get closeups of a fly, use the eyepiece from a set of binoculars or a telescope) Dump or flowers the user can chose. One day everyone might be able to serve as well and there will be more intersting stuff in the world than a few dozen TV executives could ever imagine anyone would be interested in.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They had better not do this. I do not subscribe to cable because:
1. It costs to much - $40-$50 a month for basic? No thanks!
2. It just takes longer to realize there is nothing worth watching anyhow. I save a lot of time this way!
3. Cable / Satelite has commercials - when you already PAY to watch it. Why? Eliminate the commercials and they might have something.
4. What about emergency broadcasts? Hasn't anyone ever taken their little TV with them durring hurricane / tornado / floods to see what is happening?
5. Hey it's wireless with reasonably compact antenna support! Gee - what a concept. I do admit that a digital signal be better use of the spectrum, however.
It should be possible to utilize freed-up VHF spectrum to push audio and some crude video to dedicated client receivers. These receivers would be completely wireless. By making it a one-way system, we would be able to leverage our information stream. We could approach major companies and sell some time on our system for productions of their own.
The big problem is going to be content...
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
They're being given a public resource for practically next to nothing (relatively speaking). They should have to operate by some kind of standard requiring them to better serve the public in exchange for this public resource. They can use the other 8mbits of the stream to broadcast two 704x480i streams at satellite quality, or one stream at DVD quality.
A solution to the problem with music today
That would be really cool. Hopefully a few other bureaucracies would get the axe in the same bill as well. But I think that there will always be a big demand for broadcasting, and spraying a continuous stream of packets in all directions (instead of crowding them in with other information on a waveguide) is sometimes more efficient use of bandwidth than the alternative. I reason that ideally every house would have a satellite dish to receive broadcast data and a cable/fiber/twisted pair connection to handle upstream and downstream routed data. The spectrum would (of course!) go to whoever has the best technology.
I'd like to see uninterrupted telecourses.
Introductary and intermediary courses offered
on a wide range of fields and topics.
Just my two-cents and bandwidth.
Something like 91% of the households in the country can receive digital broadcasts of all their over-the-air TV stations if they have the equipment.
Can working-class American families afford "the equipment"? Can "the equipment" be feasibly shrunk down to handheld size?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Show me a poor person and I will show you somebody who watches a lot of cable.
This is absolutely true. I lived in a ghetto in Chile for a while, and people spent all of their discretionary money on alcohol, marijuana, or subscription television services. Dishes littered roofs that could barely support them.
That was in reference to Billy Pilgrim's enormous wang, wasn't it?
Well, I figure with all the old hams dying off their bands could be reallocated for oh say, wireless MP3 sharing devices. And/or possibly long range jappy electronic devices for people looking for dates in remote areas like the american high plains, and other areas.
We need the spectrum for our giant maser (so we don't interfere with our wifi when we fire it, after all, maser or no, I still need my porn) that we will use to zap all of those pesky brown people in the world who are obviously anti-american and therefore evil. We will show them some real American justice. Wait... damit... we need oil to power this thing. Oh well, I guess conquering the world the old way will have to suffice.
well, maybe they will. Maybe sometime, those quaint country bumpkins who need to do something productive, will. Maybe they'll get hip,maybe they'll push just one more stupid thing like the endangered species act or the "no, you can't mine anymore" act,or the "no, sorry, your wood cutting business you've had for three hundred years is no longer allowed, there's a small bug that will get squashed" act, or one of the multitude of various rural ethnic cleansing actions you have been pushing. All the things that constantly keep bankrupting rural people, kicking them in the face, and stomping them when they are down. And don't whine about "farm subsisides", they go to the top few percent international corporate farmers and such other leeches, we don't have any use for those folks either, it has nothing to do with poor people struglling to make a living in the rural and small town areas where your "global free trade" has bankrupted people, driven up cost of living, put people out of work,even entire small towns, driven up taxes,lost homes and other property, and then to boot get to see on TV about how they are all illiterate hillbillies.
Here's a clue, they aren't. And they have long memories, and are able to do things and accomplish tasks that you can't even conceive of. And if you think your fat city pigs with their shiny shoes can do it for you, or those elite west point morons who are leading 75% rural kids,who know their folks back home and their neighbors are always being shafted by urban jerks will forget who owes what to whom, well, think again.
Maybe eventually the rural people of this nation, with maybe a little help from out of work manufacturing joes, and now the truckers who got shafted with nafta and gatt,and a few others, will band together, and just stop food deliveries into the cities with zero notice, and turn off the valves on the water pipes that carry THEIR water leading into YOUR overly expensive and oh so sophisticated elite cities, and stop coal deliveries, and halt oil deliveries, and watch all you clueless idiot rich urbanite scum who are so superior because you "make more money" turn cannibal, and as you pour out of the cities when you find out your artifical lifestyles have no basis in reality, you can become target practice for sport.
What goes around comes around pal, you're an example of a complete clueless jerk in a nation of clueless jerks who only think of themselves and revolve around a culture of greed and maximum profits exploitation. That was really a foul but most typical statement you made, so I hope you appreciate who actually holds the real critical priority cards in this nation if they get pushed hard enough. Your laquered head suits don't. Your think tank academics don't. Your media moguls don't. Your business buddies and doofuses at the country club don't. Your trophy wife don't. those people on the train next to you don't.
You need to get real man see what's what in treality, not your eloi fantasy land you live in. The pig english mass exploiters got kicked out of India, remember? The big difference is, the country people here have a few more toys and skills.
You need to know this, country people all over this nation are medium whizzed off lately with the dictates from urban idiot land, they are really quite angry getting the shaft constantly because they don't have any pull anymore at all, tired of being treated like some third world colony to be exploited by morons who couldn't change a spare on their own car withoput having the vapors and forming a committee about it, and they are real sick of being ripped off by people like you and your policies that your urban oriented legislatures keep pushing. You can shove your cable and videogames where the sun don't shine, and eat your cable tv, and drink your ridiculous "stock options", and wallow in your hollywood "entertainment" filth. And enjoy burning your expensive furniture in your sink in the winter, because here's another clue, your fuel doesn't come from high rise downtown elitist
But thanks to binaries
What about broadcasting everything but alt.binaries.* ?
Will I retire or break 10K?
There's an underlying assumption that everybody has access to cable/DBS, wants cable/DBS, and can afford cable/DBS. The same questions apply to HDTV, with even higher up-front costs to the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers.
Do you live in a rural area, low-rent suburb, or other place where cable isn't obscenely profitable? If you can get it at all, the prices are higher, the signal quality is awful, and the channel offerings are sparse. It's a crummy deal, and if not for the Dizzy Channel (I have kids) that wire would be out of my grass as fast as you can say 4WD-Low Range.
DBS dishes? Check your terrain, and check the prices. Don't plan on watching anything to pass time during a blizzard either (snow absorbs the signal, and piles up on the dish). The equipment isn't cheap, and the service contract has penalties for early withdrawl. One company is making nice, promising not to raise rates again until 2005 if you sign up now. Gee, thanks for telling when the next hike is coming. Oh yes, no local coverage is included in that package--(drum roll) to watch the local news, you need an antenna for over-the-air reception!
So, it seems to me this is another trial balloon for the redeployment of NTSC bandwidth once HDTV/DTV takes over. This is assumed to be inevitable; somehow the market forces won't be allowed to decide this issue. Never mind that all your analog TVs will become obsolete (yes, I'm dismissing the set-top-box converters--there's no point spending twice the value of the TV set for yet another piece of living room clutter).
Obvious this person has never trieed to view satellite tv during bad storms..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Now here we went and brought our internet out to your one room cabin in Montana, and how do you repay us? posting nasty messages about us city folk on /.
if there was enough bandwidth.
You would just need something to send in your request, a phoneline just like with satelite TV.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
You might even see a situation where a broadcaster might make a deal to retain their cable and sat dial placement and then convert their channel (which remember, will eventually become a DIGITAL channel) to other uses.
This will make a change, but I'll bet the market will do it before the government dictates anything.
That's exactly what I need; another bill to go along with my electricity, gas, water, water and phone! While we are at it, why don't we make cell phones mandatory and change libraries over to a rental service?
Likewise, the multiple skipped channels in the UHF range were set up for the drifting, manually-set tuners of earlier TV sets. Most modern sets are good enough ("cable-ready") to handle closer channel spacings, but the allocations were made in the days of $500 cabinets with $50 worth of electronics.
Not to be overly skeptical, but...
I'm sure his opinion on the matter has nothing to do with which companies he might act as a consultant for.
Lets face it, Television is not Television anymore. Content has been siphoned so badly, with so much content exclusivity, some feel compelled to obtain Sat to get back what they used to have.
Failure of Media regulation is the cause, and some active steps to put content back on channels needs to be taken. A program exclusivity TAX would work wonders. For the public benefit is a has become a term for what the public looses these days.
Any cable operator who also has TV interests has an unresolvable conflict of interest. Thier solution was a slow by steady decline in standards. That trend needs reversal by sound FCC re-regulation.
I was working on an big (100m diameter) experimental weather radar in Rome, Italy. We got assigned a frequency right in the middle of the TV bands, and we noticed that it was used (illegally) by a TV channel for retransmissions to secondary transmitters.
We waited for several months for the confirmation of the frequency attribution and at one point my boss was fed up of waiting and asked me to turn it on for a little while for 'testing'.
Personally I hate TV, stopped watching it 17 years ago, I think it's akin to a brain rape. And you may have heard how italians are crazy about soccer. So I turned it on on friday evening, right in the middle of a big retransmission. Before leaving for the WE. Guess a part of Italy got their soccer fix with a lot of added lines that night... Or the TV channel had to scramble to change their frequency...
Hehehe, asshole ? Me ?
Wouldn't help.
Their minds are made up (3 : 2 -- corporation supporters to citizen supporters).
But if you can afford an HDTV receiver then you can afford to just receive HDTV over cable or satellite.
Yep, spending money always means that you have more left over. A person who buys an HDTV receiver will be better able to afford other things than a person who doesn't. Spend your way to wealth and fortune.
In any given area (other than, say, Manhattan) there will be many unused television channels. Just allow wireless networking equipment to use those channels. Any of several techniques could be used to avoid interference: detect a TV broadcast signal, or just use a database ("I'm in Phoenix, therefore channels x, y, and z are free").
0-day straight to my living room
A blog I run for the wealth
Here is an idea for re-use... I have noticed flipping channels in the LA area that 80-90% of the uhf band are unused... so why not consolidate. Move stations on the upper band down in frequency and take the upper 2/3 of the UHF TV spectrum and use it for DSSS IP access (think 802.16 tweaked) this should leave enough room for UHF TV broadcasters as some come and go and allow a HELLOFA lot more room for IP.
-OR
Loose all of the TV spectrum and require Cable providers to give a "basic" or "public intrest" type of access for free providing a similar type of service
I only say this because I hate seeing waste (this explains all my scrap machines rescued from the trash laying around running distributed computing software) and I see a BIG swath of spectrum going 80-90% unused
Now think about this... with the tiny slice given to 802.11 and the big impact it has made, think what could be done with the UHF TV spectrum...
cable and satellite service costs money. airwaves don't (at least no more than the advertising dollars already being collected).
stop broadcasting over airwaves and you'll leave lower income out in the cold. they'll start reading books, getting ideas, and rise up against you.
that's why the govt. won't let this happen.
Effective Radiated Power, as you point out, does include antenna gain. So of course the actual power consumed is very substantially less than 5 MW.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
A while ago, some TV channels in the 60s were reassigned to lower numbers to free up spectrum. To me, this seems like the most beneficial way of cleaning up the spectrum. Have ch 2-35 be allocated for TV, and any channel above 35 would need to be renumbered to a lower channel.
Or, start licensing TV station frequencies for other uses. Sell me ch 49+50 in City X and ch 52+53 in City Y, etc, and I'll get some wireless internet going. The problem is you need some sort of tunable Tx/Rx. A good application for SDR.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Here's what I wrote in my blog the other day:
3 9
http://randyrathbun.org/archives/000539.html#0005
We all know democracy lost the other day when the FCC gave Rupert Murdoch the go ahead to own every media outlet in the country.
Common Cause has a "write your congressperson" thingy up that you should sign. Not that the Republicans you write will do anything about it.
Also yesterday on NPR's 'All Things Considered', Thomas Hazlett, a former economist at the FCC, and, I might add, a total nutcase, said that free televison should be banished. What was even stranger is he sounded serious. I don't have a lot of time to write this story and try to explain on how many levels just how wrong and stupid this man is, but I owe it to you, the reader, to try.
First, the airwaves are public. I don't care how much 'campaign contributions' to the Republicans and Democrats say otherwise, the radio spectrum belongs to the public.
His entire argument centered around "well, 90% of the population gets their TV from cable or satellite." So what? Last time I checked you could not drive down the street with a cable or satellite dish strapped to the top of your car. I am not saying you should do this, but there are too many situations where receiving TV signals are a matter of life and death. A case in point are the recent tornadoes that ripped through this area. The local TV coverage has been credited with saving many lives during the May 4th storm. I do storm spotting when I can, and have a small portable TV that I carry with me so I can see either the TV station's weather maps. Without information such as this, Mr. Hazlett's plan would be putting too many citizens at risk. Ten percent does not sound like much, but in this past storm it meant that only one person died here in the KC area from the tornadoes vs a number I don't even want to begin to think about had free TV not been available.
The reasons behind free TV go way beyond just warning people about storms.
Oh, and according to Hazlett's web page, he is using a free email account at Yahoo. What a dumbass.
After writing that I got to thinking about some things in addition to my storm spotting scenario. Here in my area it used to be that every time it rained the cable went out because the cable company was beaming the signal over microwave from the receiving station to the head end that served our area. So, no matter what it was doing here at my house, if there was a storm anywhere along that path you got zilch from the cable. The same is true of what happens to satellite during a big storm - I loose sat reception for a while if there is any sort of big cloud between the dish and the sat. My only method of getting a signal from the locals is rabbit ears. If there is any sort of an emergency going on, such as a tornado, I would be left with only one recourse - my local NPR station. For now, that is. Chances are, if Hazlett gets his way that will go away too to turn all the TV and radio channels over to Clear Channel so they can broadcast sports talk and other drivel 24-7.
Hazlett is typical "big business rules" scum.
The FCC has a complicated set of rules that only allow certain channels to be used in a specific geographic area. Partially because of interference between adjacent markets and also because of the limitations of the receivers in consumer-grade television sets. This results in a great deal of wasted spectrum.
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superfulous, not even a word. Try http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=superfluo us&r=2
- first, pay a cable company to deliver TV programs
- second, endure all the commercials (a disgusting percentage of most cable channel's time is commercials) which pay for the TV channels anyway
I never watched sat TV in north-America, but I guess something similar happens there as well - ads+monthly fee. Or am I mistaken there?Why no free channels + lots of commercial (like in most of countries I've seen in the other continents) or public/paid channels with little to no commercials?
I'm not trying to be rhetorical, I'd really appreciate a psychological insight in such a situation. Thanks!
With local stations investing millions in HDTV, I don't think they'll be giving up their spectrum any time soon.
Ad Astra Per Asper
NPR offers real and windows audio streams of this June 3rd, 2003 program.
w fI d=1285880
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?
It might be great if some oes to Hams and other bits to commercial radio and unlicensed (low-power) data transmission (upper UHF freqs). [...] Granted, in the upper UHF region, [antenna size] gets better [smaller], [...]
Forget about the "upper UHF" TV band. It was ALREADY converted to telephone service.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't know if anyone else out there can relate but I know for myself and like 98% of the rest of the students in my school, we are dependent on broadcast television. I don't know very many college students who live in one place long enough or can afford to get cable or dish put in. I make do with a Tivo that records all the shows I want to watch in a given day and that is perfect for me. DON'T TAKE AWAY OUR TV!
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
primarily I would like to see more ham radio spectrum.
secondarily I would like to leave unallocated spaces for scientific uses.
third, wireless internet access!!
You proved the point. Thanks. To city people, everyone who isn't lives in a one room cabin in montana,and to which the barely veiled reference is noted, and most obviously rejected. That moron was a city slicker who happened to be so insane that's all he could do, mostly from the corruption he got from the indoctrination in the urban centric "university" he attended, from equally clueless city academics who confuse theory with reality. Pretty far from the truth, and an aberration.
You folks started it, kicked your neighbor when all they were doing was honest business with you, called people who provided you with food and water and energy and the materials for your homes lazy, how dare those hillbillies complain about 12 hours a day to gross 20 grand. I guess they are lucky huh? Oh wait, most of that has become illegal to do now,no even 20 grand, less than that, much less, or so restricted as to be a net loss every year.
Gee, thanks so very much massah.
You reap what you sow friend. Kick your neighbors enough,when all they were doing was offering incredibly cheap deals to you, and only asked for a modicum of respect and the ability to keep working, so don't be surprised when they decide to boycott and shun you and your not very necessary "products" if it gets to that. Other nations have done it before,when their rural peoples had been stripped bare and colonised and exploited, so if you think nation wide strikes are impossible, just keep believing that, the shock and awe value is better if you keep believing that.. Rural people can live without the net, or tv, if it gets to that. A whole lot of them do now, BTW. They could just decide one day to say, "hmm, no, just don't think I want to send all this food into the city anymore, when they won't even pay what it costs to even grow it". It's just business, remember? And you think those foreigners are going to feed you, and it will be just as cheap as now, when they bingo to the fact that then they will know you are stuck and need what they got and they have a monopoly on it? It will be just business to them as well, and they won't care if your food bill goes to 50% of your net, tough luck for you then. It's just "business" then, "capitalism", so that will all "just work itself out somehow".
Your choice friend, your choice. Be neighborly and stop being a jerk,stopping forcing theft as "law", don't begrudge people who work 3 times as hard as you just a small token of relaxation at the end of the day,and it gets returned in kind. People can be very reasonable when they aren't insulted, degraded, and thieved from constantly. and you really won't find many places in the world where colonization is appreciated by those colonised. And if you don't think that has happened here in the US, well, I'll tell you- "it has".
If you don't think this sentiment is real,or that colonization is real even though it's not called that, get out of the city, go for a drive for a weekend, don't talk, just shut up and listen, read some small town papers, listen to people, see what's really going on,listen to people who have gone broke, lost everything, families watching property that was in their family for generations gone, title transferred to something with an "inc" in it's name that has no discernible humans connected to it except for robot looking things in suits, families told they are worthless in the "new global economy", you'll hear the stories, the real anecdotals, because I can tell you, you aren't seeing it or hearing it on your cable TV news, NPR isn't covering it, nor the BBC nor FOX or any of the others. And if you don't care about your fellow americans, tell us again, why should they care about you?
Your choice, your move, you go first, after you.
Baltimore uses 2, 11 and 13. Washington uses 4, 5, 7 and 9. Channels 3, 6, 8, and 10 are adjacent to existing local stations. Channel 12 would cause interference to 11 and 13 in the area in between Baltimore and Washington. There are no "free" VHF channels in the Baltimore/Washington area. Even in the UHF band, there are not as many "free" channels as you might think, after taking interference between geographic regions into account and channels that are not allocated to protect low-cost television receivers from interference.
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The European standard for digital television, DVB-T, is well suited for this broadcasting model. The American standard for digital television, ATSC, only works well with the "big stick" broadcasting model due to the modulation technique (8-VSB) that was selected for the standard.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Ha!
Sirius petitions the fcc to restrict 2.4 ghz band.
Well....close enough.
I figure that if the government sold off all the TV (VHF/UHF) spectrum, minimally subsidized and launched several spot beam Ka Band satellites to hold the 1600? or so TV stations, and then provided receiviers and dishes (which are cheap) for anyone who couldn't afford one. The problem would be solved.
So, everyone without cable would get their local station from Ka-band satellite for free and your 80 yr old on a fixed income could still watch TV -- for free.
Live on the fringe of town, no problem the spot beam is plenty big enough so that everyones digital picture still looks great.
Terrestrial broadcasting has been a hinderence for far too long. It didn't make sense to do this in the 1930s when TV was in its infancy -- but with current satellite technology I believe it makes sense today.
Maybe we could finally move into the 21st century.. Nahh, why would we do that?
Had to shoot the damn rabbit!!!
Put 'im on the grill to watch TV!
Ooooh Wheeee!
(Rabbit ears don't work hear, must use grill)
If the purpose of the FCC is to manage a public resource then I don't see cutting off 10-15% of the public as good resource management. Consider that the EBS, the AMBER alert system, and other Broadcast news/law enforcement cooperation schemes (that just don't work as well without pictures) would become less effective to the point that it would cost lives.
Let them eat radio you say? Well, if this flies it's only a matter of time 'til the like of XM or Sirius "talk" some ousted FCC insider com "industry consultant" into suggesting that there may be a better use of the FM band than bandying about the latest Brittney Spears tune.
It also seems like a really bad idea to cut off 15,000,000 plus from PBS for any length of time, we're badly informed enough as is (take my post, please.).
P.S. Did we mod down the FCC?
not broadcasting so much absolute SHIT...
TV is a big, filthy sewer. There is very, very little of anything that is of value.
I try really hard to not watch TV. Sometime I turn the news on and I listen to it while I work.
Sometimes at night I watch old movies on TCM and AMC in bed to fall asleep. But really, TV is a waste of life. People use the TV to live another life they don't have by proxy.
How sad. I wish they had never invented TV, the world would be a much better place...
The first choice is "Must Carry", which means that the cable system must carry the station on their cable system. This is a popular choice with low-budget TV stations that carry the Home Shopping Network or other unattractive programs.
The second choice is "Retransmission Consent", which means that the cable system must negotiate a contract with the broadcast station if it wishes to carry the station on their cable system. This usually involves cash payments to the broadcast station or an agreement to carry additional cable channels owned by the broadcast station's owner. For example, a station on the Fox network may demand that the cable system also carry the Fox News Channel in addition to the broadcast station.
Small stations, that otherwise might not get carried by the cable system, pick "Must Carry".
Large stations, like affiliates of the major networks, pick "Retransmission Consent", in order to get cash or other valuable considerations from the cable system.
This puts the cable system operator in a bind. His customers expect to see all of the major local stations on the cable system. To do this, he has to negotiate contracts with all of those stations to get permission to carry them. Even though the station may be "free" to people receiving it over-the-air, the cable system operator may be paying the station cash for the right to carry it on the cable system.
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Passive: Recently on NPR a report was broadcast.
Active: NPR recently broadcasted a report.
The report didn't just broadcast itself -- NPR purposely broadcasted it.
Jeez! Get out of the tenth grade.
Guess what? For once the goverment has it's act together. The whole move to HDTV is supposed to free that portion of the spectrum for all kinds of new devices. It's going to be the equivalent of Europe expanding in to North America. The frequency bands taken up by TV is HUGE.
Write the FCC and tell them to kick your local TV station in the pants and get them moving.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
In Australia analogue television broadcasting will cease in 2008. By this stage, all stations will be broadcasting digital television. In fact, the Federal Government already requries that the free to air television stations broadcast _some_ of their programs digitally.
The digital channels have already been assigned spectrum. As the analogue channels cease to transmit, the VHF spectrum will indeed be freed.
There are many proposals on what to do with the available spectrum. Australia is seriouslly looking at using the spectrum to provide long distance internet access. People in rural regions that do not have access to cable, dsl, etc, will have faster, always on wireless connections.
While such a system is unlikely to be mobile, infrastructure costs are kept to a minimum.
The end of free visual entertainment is coming to an end. So much for free-loading with my 13" Samsung.
There's a huge difference between what two directional antennas pointed at each other can do, and what two omnidirectional antennas, one in a lousy location, achieve in practice.
What a lower frequency buys you is the ability to go around, or through, obstacles.
Boxer-Allen opened up the 5 GHz band, adding 255 megahertz in the 5 GHz band. The FCC noted that it was "increased competition with other providers of broadband service, including cable and DSL broadband services."
Well maybe.
None of it can be used for the "last mile".
Power is limited to 1 watt EIRP from 5.25-5.725 GHz. That's far weaker than what's available in the congested 2.4GHz band. Directional antennas at 2.4GHz and between 5.725-5.825 GHz are allowed to use more power. At 2.4 GHz, directional antennas can utilize an Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) over 60 watts while 5.8 GHz directional antennas can reach 200 watts (EIRP). That's what makes Vivato a contender. They utilize "pencil beams" for higher EIRP (in the 2.4 GHz band).
Unfortunately, FCC regulations allow a maximum power - AFTER a directional antenna - of only ONE Watt between 5.25 - 5.725. That won't connect you to a community tower. One watt isn't enough. This FCC policy is inconsistant with their 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz band policy. It will effectively minimize "last mile" competitors, and eliminate all but the 100 MHz from 5.725-5.825 Ghz. It may eliminate 5 GHz as effective "last mile" competition.
It will take the United States out of the broadband loop. Out of intellectual property development. Out of the global marketplace. This was our best shot and the FCC has taken it away. Intel, Microsoft and Cisco now will take their marching orders from Samsung.
The FCC says the proposed rules were developed in concert with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which administers federal government spectrum, and the US Department of Defense.
The FCC also adopted new spectrum leasing rules on May 15th. It affects both mobile and fixed services, including cellular, personal communications services (PCS), specialized mobile radio (SMR), and local multipoint distribution service (LMDS). If a wireless ISP like IP Wireless or Monet Wireless wanted to lease spectrum from a cellular carrier to provide "wireless DSL", that's good. It allows more competition and uses spectrum more efficiently.
C/Net says the FCC is working to allow spectrum in the 5GHz band to be leased for cellular services. That might allow phone companies to "shut out" competing unlicensed Wi-Fi with pole-mounted incompatible systems that run roughshod over the spectrum. A license to kill.
BushCo needn't worry about "4G" competitors using 802.16e. The FCC will take them out.
but you can't watch that while in motion..... satellite takes a while to dial in when you are still.... how are you supposed to watch the tv you have propped up on your dashboard?!?!
If you could just give up channels 5 and 6, FM broadcast range could be doubled. Currently it is 88-108 MHz. TV channel 5 alone uses 76-82 and channel 6 uses 82-88.
There would be minimal pain because there are far more broadcast stations than are actually being used, even in large markets like LA. On the other hand, there are not nearly enough radio stations to meet demand. Everyone wins, except for some cost to broadcasters on channels 5 and 6. Hell, here in Houston, the third largest US city, those stations are totally unusued along with 4,7,9,10, and 12 in VHF alone.
FM receivers would then be required to carry the new frequencies just as TVs were required by law to carry UHF.
check out the TV broadcast frequencies if you are interested.
you prove my point exactly. see how pissed everyone got towards sirrus? "they should just use another frequency", "this will affect all of our stuff, how dare they?", etc.
Deregulate the space, and let the porn industry figure out how to utilize it.
As soon as my existing battery powered portable TV can be plugged into a cable outlet anywhere at the beach or in the mountains, I'll consider broadcast TV outmoded.
...
As soon as I can replace that portable TV with a similar-size, weight, and battery use satellite set at the same cost, I'll consider my old one obsolete.
As soon as Cable and Satellite cost the same to view as broadcast TV (Think FREE), I'll consider moving exclusively to them
--
Tomas
of at least 6 middle class families that don't have Satalite, or Cable. They can get them, but the only TV they want is provided over the air from pbs and local news.
Quit frankly, If things don't get wither a lot cheaper, of a lot better, I may join them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First off - Over The Air broadcasting is going nowhere. Period. Your local affiliates will exist well into the future. We need local news and local TV competition... and as much as some affiliates suck, they're absolutely necessary.
Now, what about idle TV spectrum? Metro and/or Suburban Area Networking. Meshed, fast(?) bla bla bla. I'm no technical genius, and I'm sure that a good protocol for this doesn't even exist, but remember, 802.11x didn't exist several years ago. At any rate, Make it commercial. Make it public/free. Do both. Do whatever is needed to make it happen. It'll never be a replacement for fiber to the home, but maybe it'll allow for the holy grail of telecom competition... wireless VoIP. Even better, maybe it'll allow everyone to have a small chunk of bandwidth out in BFE rural areas. Who knows. At any rate, something is better than nothing, which is what is going on with the majority of TV spectrum.
Finally - "3G" radio. Satellite radio isn't local which IMHO is its only drawback. Current regulations and standards for AM/FM need to be updated for more efficient use of spectrum. But fuck it. Lets just go all out and make an FM2 or something. Yes, I know there is a technology in the works to "digitize" local radio, but they're going about it in a legacy-supporting way. By going about an upgrade in this manner, the FCC is preventing smaller players from going live. UHF was over-allotted sand box, and FM is an overcrowded ClearChannel clusterfuck... and the FCC needs to fix it... starting over from scratch. Hell, let ClearChannel keep FM... but give us another way to broadcast and receive local content... digitally. "FM2" should have about 100 medium-power channels for everyone to use... requiring an FCC permit, but unlike AM/FM, it should have very low or nonexistent broadcaster fees. It should be what LPFM strived to do, only much better.
Of course, if we had a good Continental Area Network (ho ho!!) we could just use that to power 3G radio. But I think I've already shot at the stars at it is.
OK someone's already prob said this, but I can't be bother the search the 700 odd messages..
The reason why the US govmt is pushing hard to get DTV everywhere is because right now there's a frequency conflict between analogue TV broadcasts and the new 3G phones.
They need to get analogue TV moved over quickly (hence the 2006? deadline for cutover from analogue to digital TV) in order to be able to role out the frequencies for 3G.
Of course the local TV stations aren't very happy about being ordered into this as they have to spend lots on new equipment. Also Joe Blow will have to by new TVs/set top boxes as well.
The interview could be part of the FCC's effort to put FUD into the TV stations argument..
Yeah, I heard Mr. Hazlett's interview on NPR. I think he, like Michael Power of the FCC, is a shill for the cable TV-Telephone-Data industry. He conveniently failed to discuss how broadcast media is still accessable to people capable of obtaining a broadcast license (might not be profitable business, but it's available), yet they may well be locked out of the local cable monopoly to transmit their media content whatever the cost. Any so called "economist" trying to advocate a better collective good without considering monopolies should be taken with a grain of salt.
If cable TV has won the battle, as Mr. Hazlett implied in his statements of vast majorities of households receiving cable TV over broadcast, then let's just accept it. The task for our government is to resolve the cable monopoly juggernaut and allow competition to work it's magic in improving cost, choice, and freedom. Hazlett argues for continued whipping of a dead horse.That said, here in Los Angeles, broadcast TV continues to be a better value for me over cable TV. HDTV is available now on the channels I watch and it's free. Signal quality for most LA residents is supurbe with the direct line of sight to Mt.Wilson's anntennas. As for pay-per-view movies, I'd need to rent a bunch more DVDs each month to cost nearly as much as basic cable + the PPV cost. If I should add asyncronous TV capability (TIVO, Replay, MythTV,...) that would greatly ease the "nothing worth watching right now" problem in spite of the more limited channel choice on broadcast TV. Not that cable TV doesn't have the same problem with many more channels.
Low Power TV
Let anyone who wants to set up a low power TV(under 20 watts) do it. They would create a community TV network.
They already let people do it through radio via Low Power FM. Why not the same for TV minus the regulations of LPFM? Of the standard 'don't braodcast copyrighted material' be put into place.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Actually, that's not true. There's a dish made for RV's and SemiTrucks thats self-tracking. It's called the Motosat AutoTrac In-Motion System It's inside of a 'dome' and tries to track the satellite as much as possible. In fact, when I was a truck driver, we had (like most carriers) 2way satellite communication and email and that dish too tracked the satellite in real time. I didn't have to stop the truck to send a message to my dispatcher.
And as for How are you supposed to watch TV...
Well, in RV's there's usually more then 1 person, and as a truckdriver my wife teamed with me, so she could of watched TV while I was driving, and vice-versa.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
So why do HDTV tuners still cost $300-$500, and no HDTVs (which cost $2000+) come with HDTV tuners yet?
If there are no more broadcast TV stations, the "must carry" rules will no longer apply. This would mean that the cable companies will no longer be required to carry local programming, other than county or city mandated (and controlled) channels. Cable TV programming will become nothing but satellite network programing, city council meetings, cable company (with final approval from local government) controlled "local" channels, shopping channels, and premium movie channels. This means that the cable companies and local governments would have TOTAL control over the news that the majority of American see. The cable companies will gain enough control to cause the satellite networks to only provide news that won't upset the cable companies. How would you like AT&T, Cox and Comcast to have the ability to totally control TV news?
What are you going to do for the 10s of millions of Americans (not to mention elsewhere) who don't have cable lines run within miles of their homes?
It is really not that hard to get that cable to your TV in the middle of the room, and it won't damage the carpet either. You will need to rent one inexpensive tool from the local tool rental place, called a "knee kicker" or "carpet kicker". They run ~ 7$ a day or so, inexpensive.
Now your carpet is held down along the walls by nailer strips, small pieces of wood that are first nailed to the floor right at the edges, then the carpet is stretched and pushed onto the top of the nailer strips, which have hundreds of small tack points sticking up. That's it, that's how it's held. You can usually,if the baseboards aren't all that smashed down onto the carpet wiggle under there with a screwdriver or something and get an edge pulled up and out, then the rest of the carpet will be free. Pull it back to slightly past the place you want the cable to come up at. To mark that spot in advance, just use a razor knife or exacto knife, go with the grain-or nap it's called-of the carpet, make a very small slit that is just slightly larger than the end of a cable.
OK, pull the carpet back past that spot. Now you'll see the carpet pad. This is the only weird part. If you just flop the cable down on top of it, or snake it under the pad, you'll have this noticeable tunnel-bulge looking thing where the cable runs, you don't want that. You stretch out the cable that you want to run, nice and straight, directly to that small cut you made. The cable itself is now your marker for the next step. Again, take your razor knife, or if you have a set of heavy duty sharp scissors you can use them. You want to cut out and remove a narrow strip of the pad, that just clears the width of the cable, from your wall bear the outlet, to the small slit you cut, just a very narrow strip so that the cable can settle down in that little trench you cut and sit flush with the floor.
And that's it. Pull enough slack from the coax out of the slit, leave enough to make it to the TV and just a small amount more to give you some adjustment room. Perhaps you might need just a few small pieces of duct tape to hold the cable in the trench you cut. Fold the carpet back over to the wall. YOu use that knee kicker, with it's adjustable fingers exposed just enough to get a purchase on the carpet but not so much to dig down into the pad, to "kick" the wrinkles out of the carpet back to the wall. You do this on hands and knees of course. At the wall, re-stick down the edge of the carpet back to the nailer strips, tuck it back under the molding with your flat screwdriver. That's it. Putting the coax in that little trench you carved in the foam pretty much will eliminate any bulges that are noticeable.
If the knee kicker doesn't interest you, there's a slightly more expensive tool you can rent, called a "stretcher". that's a long adjustable pole that you brace one end that it has a jack handle type thing you pump to do the stretching, I think they might run 25$ or so a day, but are easier to use than the knee kickers.
It's really quite easy.
If you want the ultimate cheap and even easier, and don't care about a small bulge in the carpet, you just scrounge some old steel banding strips, or use your electrical cable snake (or rent one) under the carpet and pad, run it from the small slit in the carpet where the tv is, over to the wall where the coax receptacle is, fish it out, attach your "appropriate sized in length of course) cable end with a pig tail tape wrap, then pull the snake out, it drags the cable with it,right under all the carpet and pad, right to the tv area. You can do that one in probably 15 minutes, tops.
Hope that helps you, and don't be afraid of playing with the carpet, it's really extremely easy to do, and doing that cut out the strip of pad method will result in a very neat job. Most of the time you won't even see any evidence of the cable, and if you ever move and want to remove the cable, that small slit in the carpet if you cut it correctly will more or less stay disappeared if it's small enough and cut ex
If they put TV over wireless and an internet connection, then I can stop them from passing on the FCC tax like i did with my cell phone.
gota tell them every month, but even for a dollar its worth it to screw the feds.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
THe poor people can get a job. give the spectrum to people that can use it to further technological advance.
doug
-a.thought.crushed.my.mind-
Let them use a satellite for their Free TV.
Sure, it costs $5 in gas to find someone who has a C-Band dish who doesn't want it, but in all honesty, how can you afford a TV and the electricity to power it if you can't afford $5 in gas money for the guy in town that owns a vehicle?
If we wouldn't have jumped the gun on requiring existing stations to get on the HDTV bandwagon (which was a 10 year old technology at the time) we could have used a lot less bandwidth by going to a compressed signal that offered the same benefits. With technologies like ReplayTV, MPEG, and better hardware, theres no reason we need to waste the amount of bandwidth we've allotted to a technology that very few consumers are willing to shell out the cash for. When a majority of the television programs being offered on broadcast stations (reality TV, game shows) do not require cinema viewing conditions, is it any wonder why the HDTV market hasn't caught fire.
Instead of TV shows we'll have real art!
The requirement is for DTV, not HDTV.
Currently 90% of Americans get TV from cable or satellite. For the remaining 10%, FCC/taxpayers are giving away free not one but TWO bandwidths, one for digital transmission and the other for analogue. FCC says they'll re-auction the analogue in 2007. But the broadcasters (arguably the nation's most powerful federal lobby) are saying that's a maybe. AOL/TW, GE, Disney, Fox... they are planning wireless internet or subscription use alright, but not free.
Gently reply
Who wants some free HBO??? $50 a pop, right now!*
*only in the north Texas area. Gas money not included.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
But if you don't do your thing, then we'll just let some immigrants in. They'll gladly take what you've got, I've seen it with my own eyes. Then you'll die. Life's a cruel bitch, isn't it?
You don't like the way things are and really want to fix things rather than just bitching about it? Go complain to your senators or representatives. They're not doing their part? They're in the pocket of corporations? Great! Elect new ones.
No good candidates where you are? Do your fucking civic duty and run yourself. If things are as bad as you say they are I think honest hardworking people would be jumping at the comparatively good wages made by a member of Congress.
Can't get elected because you're not from one of the two major parties? There you go, pal. The revolution certainly isn't coming if you can't even vote in unison.
To be honest, I don't want the working man in the Midwest to be resentful of me. If he's in dire straits, I really hope he gets that shit worked out. That said, if he comes complaining to me about his circumstances he's barking up the wrong tree and I begin to find it harder and harder to feel bad for him.
Wow, as a city slicker I am really sorry to hear about the plight of the rural American. I feel compelled to help.
I didn't finish my plankton...
I know it's not much, but I want you guys to have it.
Game... blouses.
How about using some of the proceeds from the public auction of the bandwidth to subsidize cable or satellite companies to provide 2-13 for the non-payTV set?
Cable companies already charge us an arm and a leg. If we get rid of broadcast television, we'll have even less competition. Cable will start costing 100 per month, and I'm sure the Dish companies will follow suit.
The only way I'd be ok with this is if they forced the cable companies to give basic and extended basic for $5/mo.
One of the big parts of the current FCC digital TV push (forcing all stations to go digital in the next 2-3 years), is that in the process of the digital migration, TV channels will be getting rearranged.
The FCC plan is to take a lot of the "dead space" in the currently underutilized TV broadcast band and consolidate it, freeing up quite a decent amount of spectrum for other services.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The idea is poor and impractical. I don't have cable. I can't get it. I've tried. It's ~400' from my house, dangling from a telephone pole, but Comcast won't hook it up. Eight calls and still nothing. I went with DirecTV, but numerous peopl ein my neighborhood (very wooded area) don't have the same luxury of a southern sky exposure.
But on to the real problem: logistics. Believe it or not it's very hard to find free TV frequencies. Call an RF engineering firm and ask - you'll be surprised. That's because although only 7 of the 83 channels may be used by you, they have a wide radius of interference. They can't just say "everyone use channels 14 through 20" or ever "use 14 through 60". It just doesn't work like that. While people in Baltimore might *think* moving PBC to channel 15 is fine, people in Philly might get interference on their channel 15. UHF and VHF have quite a range.
And that's part of the problem. The lower the frequency, the longer the wavelength, and thus the lower the effective bandwidth, so don't think you'll get MMDS across VHF. Consider the costs for every station in america to retune their transmitters, for VHF channels to buy UHF transmitters (yeah, you can't just swap crystals on those), for everyone to buy and retune their antennas, etc... Fuggeddaboudit.
The most practical way is to do precisely what the FCC originally considered - mandate everyone must broadcast in HDTV by XX/XX/XXXX and then reuse the old VHF and UHF frequencies - ideally, put a good portion of them into the unlicensed and HAM bands for PUBLIC use. Getting RID of broadcast is ridiculous, and there is obviously a *market* for broadcast TV or else NBC, ABC, CBS, etc would have abandoned it YEARS ago and created cable-only channels. But they haven't, and cable-only channels just don't have the same "quality" programming.
I agree and I have long believed that since would be a great idea. We need some space to spread our wings.
maybe, eventually, the entire spectrum will be a commons. colors are free!
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
Cable at least has the option of finer granularity, and real high-speed Internet streaming could put individuals in complete control. Broadcast stuff has to be of interest to the masses, or it doesn't work.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
dssrookie.com
i bet you buy cds too.