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.

Comments

I love how they try to cast this as pro consumer..

[MadAnthony02]

From the Post article "Consumers buying TV sets will know that the receivers they buy will continue to receive all broadcast signals, even as broadcasting changes to digital," Fritts said.

Yup, the government requiring consumers to do something that they don't want to do (because if they did, they would be selling more TV's with the equiptment now) is real pro consumer.

Another quote The FCC has said the increase was more likely to fall between $50 and $75, an estimate the appeals court found reasonable.

That doesn't seem reasonable when we are talking about 13" TV's. That DOUBLES the price of a cheap TV. Heck, I got a 20" Apex for $100 a few months ago. And since I only use it for video games, I don't care what signals it can recieve and don't want to pay for it... and would be shocked if it still works 7 years from now when there are digital signals for it to recieve.

Don't get excited, this has happened before

[Nom du Keyboard]

Don't get excited folks, this has happened before. The FCC mandated that UHF tuners (channels 14-83 for our younger set) once upon a time. There weren't many, if any, UHF stations at the time but they were looking ahead.

Later on they mandated that UHF channels must be tuned exactly the same way that VHF (channels 2-13) are tuned. For the younger set, once upon a time TV tuners had two dials. The first selected channels 2-13 or UHF, while a second dial that worked like the old analog radio tuners (think grandfather's car radio) and tuned a single UHF channel.

Did manufacturer's complain? Did it raise costs? Did people complain that there were no UHF stations in their area so why should they pay for it? Was it a good thing?

Yes. Yes. Probably. Yes.

Sometimes someone needs to take a club to the chicken and break some eggs.

And why do I only say that some people probably complained. Because if they did, no one remembers it now.

And that's how this change will be too in a few years.

And yes, when you have to do something in the millions of units produced, people will find a way to cost effectively implement it. It seems they always do. I don't expect TV costs to go up much at all, except that some manufacturer's will try to jack prices for the premium features. Another won't, and prices will come down. Life goes on as usual here on planet Earth.

Re:Don't get excited, this has happened before

[iggymanz]

You ignore a couple of facts:
for broadcast television, even the largest cities don't have enough stations to need VHF channels. In Chicago, for instance, you could take all the UHF channels and stick them in unused VHF channels.
Now, with the advent of cable and sattelite TV sure you could use some extra channels - but already there's many cable channels that have frequencies that are not UHF nor VHF.
Conclusion: the goverment, ever stupid when dealing with matters technical or scientific, made people & manufacturors WASTE MONEY to have UHF capability. IT IS, and WAS, STUPID!