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Court Upholds FCC's 2007 Deadline For Digital TV
phil reed writes "According to this article on Digital Spy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld a Federal Communications Commission ruling requiring that all TVs with 13-inch screens or larger must be equipped with a digital tuner by July 2007. FCC press release here (warning - PDF document). The Court specifically cited foot-dragging on the part of the industry, and noted the chicken-and-egg problem. Here's the Washington Post story." sdriver writes adds a link to CNN's coverage.
here
Geminatron
Actually, at some point, the analog signals will be shut off.
Then none of the older TV sets will be able to tune in OTA signals. But by then (2007?), set top box receivers should be much cheaper, and then there will still be satellite and cable.
It really isn't a matter of phasing out all of the old TVs. It is about phasing in all of the broadcasters. When everything is only available in digital and all new TVs carry the new standard, then digital will be mainstream. And it will not take 20 years.
Once it's required in all TVs it won't be anywhere NEAR $400. For example, basic satellite set top boxes are available in the $100 range. Of that, the vast majority of the cost is the box, power, connectors, video encoder, DACs, etc that are not necessary (ie are already a part of any TV). Only the digital tuner and MPEG2 decoder would be necessary - probably less than $20 in parts TODAY. By 2007 it's going to be pretty insignificant.
33 centimeters = 12.992126 inches
1/9/2003: TiVo Unveils New DVR Design That Supports HDTV.
Once the transition is complete, some band segments will be auctioned off for new communications services and other band segments will be reserved for public safety use. The UHF TV band will become smaller, losing some of the high-numbered channels. This has happened before, when the FCC reclaimed channels 70-83 for other uses.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Aren't you confusing HD and Digital? All HD is digital, not all digital is HD.
If it's 480p, 720p, or 1080i, it's HD. If it's 480i, it's non-HD digital.
A HD Digital tuner is expensive these days, but a regular every-day non-HD digital tuner should cost a lot less, especially since there will be more made for the TV manufacturers and component costs will drop.
for broadcast television, even the largest cities don't have enough stations to need VHF channels. In Chicago, for instance
Really? I think you need to look at a local channel listing again.
According to Yahoo! TV Chicago has 6 VHF and 16 UHF broadcast stations. That would be exceedingly difficult to fit into the 13 VHF channels you currently have, and that's ignoring bleed over problems (which were rampant in older equipment but much better now -- but still not so good that you want to have two VHF stations adjacent to one another). There are 3 duplicate channels, but that still doesn't reduce the number sufficiently.
At the time UHF was mandated it was absolutely necessary if you wanted more than 4 stations in any one region. The bleeding was simply too bad. To call it stupid 30 years afterwards is the worst kind of monday morning quarterbacking.