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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.
Can someone please explain to me how this is an issue?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Because so far, it's done nothing to get in compliance. I'd really rather not see my TV go to jail.
... start seeing a wide selection of 12.9 inch televisions starting in 2006?
here
Geminatron
At last, a government entity who did the right thing (hopefully) by putting the cycle of chicken (digital tuners) and egg (programs) in motion. Although let's hope this doesn't open a can of worms.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
The government has actually mandated that an industry make progress?? Hey, FCC, how 'bout sticking your nose in the RIAA's business for a little while? If you muzzle them then I'll forgive you for the V-Chip.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
My grandma has had the same TV since 1934, in them days tubes was measured in metric so was classified as a 33cm. Does this mean that she has to upgrade 'cause I'd hate to be bequeathed summat what was illegal. Plus I've been told that digit TV makes you impotent.
So analog TV broadcasts are to stop on December 2006, but putting digital tuners in TVs isn't required until July 2007, and electronics manufacturers are resisting the requirement to put the tuners in? Something doesn't make sense here!
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
As shown recently with the MIT cable TV music system, there are huge differences in the legality of copying/broadcasting, solely because the content is delivered in digital or analog form.
Is this to force all TV broadcasts to digital and thereby enforce the much stricter digital laws?
On the Digital Spy website, an article states that the broadcast flag is necessary, and without it, high quality programming will migrate off of free television.
My question is, didn't this happen years and years ago, or was it even there in the first place?
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.
I have blog like everyone else
You see, after they (FCC) shut down the analog side, they can sell all that newly vacated spectrum for wireless services. For billions and billions.
...when analogue broadcasts are switched off in the UK, TV licensing won't be able to claim possession of an analogue-only TV is cause for obtaining a license, just to own a set for gaming or watching tapes or DVDs on.
I wonder if anyone has sussed this yet? I'm sure console manufacturers will continue to produce aerial adaptors, or someone else will...
I know the article pertains directly to US broadcasts, but it's an interesting parallel.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I'd be glad to see Congress tell broadcasters that we're going to take back the free spectrum they were given if they don't start using it for digital TV in the next n months.
In other words, use it or lose it.
I'm sure there are folks out there that would be happy to start up digital-only stations if they could get free spectrum to do it.
It's great to mandate the sale of digital-capable TV's, but increasing the amount of digital broadcasts will give consumers a reason to demand these things.
It would be more cost effective to levy a small fee to the broadcast stations on the air spectrum (owned by the public anyways!) and simply give the damn decoders away to the minority of TV watchers that will need them.
Stats:
107 million TV households.
94 million cable or satellite subscribing households.
13 million only use it for VCR/DVD or maybe they watch broadcast TV with rabbit ears.
Why are 94 million people paying an extra $200-$500 PER TV SET for the benefit of less than 10 million broadcast TV viewers?
GRR! bureaucrats!
Does this remind anyone else of the toilet regulation where, in order to save water, now you can't buy a toilet in the US that actually flushes anything down. So, in order to use these new tiolets effectively, people have to flush 3 times (or make trips North of the border)... all in the name of saving water. This digital TV crap is just another example of an attempt to regulate something that doesn't need regulating. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
My guess is that consumers will not go for this at all. I predict that TV sales will slump in the short term while some people won't want to buy anything until the digital stuff comes out. And, TV sales will slump in the long term when people refuse to replace a perfectly good existing TV with something where they don't perceive any added value. Honestly, with how often I find myself flipping channels aimlessly waiting to find something good on TV, if this went into effect right now and I couldn't watch anything on my existing set I'd probably end up just reading more rather than running out to the store to get plugged in to nothing again.
What am I missing here? TV is given vastly more importance than it merits. I suspect this is only a big issue for those with big expensive TV altars in their living rooms.
Personally, I'm planning to buy a projector by then. Today you can get a brand new XGA resolution 1000 lumens projector for under a thousand dollars. I should think that full-HD-res 2000 lumens DLP projectors will be only a couple grand at that point, or less; And XGA 1000 lumens projectors will be about $500. Two of those and a video card that does dual monitor spanning will get you a 2048x768 display, not too shabby. Now all I need is a bigger wall.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's an interlaced 720x480 so it's pretty ugly even for that...
And once you watch a couple things in 1080i or 720p you'll see just how bad 480i looks. A friend of mine has a plasma (a 1024x1024 one, not a crappy 852xWhatever one). It's still not at native HDTV resolutions, but holy shit...The difference is staggering, especially on live events (it really shines on sports). And it's picked up over a little antenna on the roof (pretty much all of the broadcast channels in the Bay Area are broadcasting ATSC already and probably half of primetime and 1/2 of sports are in HDTV)
The only problem with it is that now whenever any of us try to watch something that's in analog we have to turn it off because it looks like it's out of focus. Yes, this is even compared to the "DVD Quality" directv (dvd quality my ass, it's full of compression artifacts...but better than digital cable, that's for sure)
The FCC should mandate that all over-the-air broadcasters begin broadcasting blah-format by some date. The FCC has direct province over what gets broadcast. Mandating device design is kinda odd. I think I have the right to receive any format I please.
Start Running Better Polls
...than a judge that wants his high definition porn.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
How much did NTSC tuners cost at first? Come on, say it. Probably hundreds of dollars.
An NTSC tuner module (rectangular metal can you get on PCI tuner cards and inside VCRs & TVs) doesn't cost $5 now. Try finding a television without one.
Do you honestly think that an ATSC tuner will still cost $200 a set? Once you sell ten million or so of these things, I believe the cost for the chips will probably go under $10.
By the way, there is a loophole. Call it a _monitor_, not a TV. That way there aren't any internal tuners required of any kind. Nor is closed captioning, v-chip, etc required. Not that those are expensive either, probably a couple dollars a set.
By the way, please give a source for those stats. Those stats also don't say how many of those subscribing households have _all_ TVs hooked up to a cable box.
I'm living in Japan right now working for a major electonics manufacturer. Over here the trend is moving toward something they call Broadband Television (BBTV - the Japanese truly are obsessed with snappy acronyms).
The idea is that compliant TVs would be able to received digital data both through traditional channels and by streaming content from the internet.
I'm not absolutely sure that it'll fly, but I'm under the impression that almost every one of our competitors is racing toward the same goal of having this consumer-ready by next Fall.
Maybe the US government should contemplate waiting until this next generation of broadcast technology is tested before passing final judgement on what is or isn't required.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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
Personally, I think digital broadcast TV could be a Bad Thing if it ever reaches the point where it pushes analog broadcasting into the trashcan of history.
:)
When a digital signal is disrupted, the affected segment of the broadcast is toast... no video or audio. Consumer-grade equipment can not pull a usable signal from the garbage.
An analog broadcast on the other hand, can take quite a bit of interference and still provide a reasonable (you can understand it) video and/or audio signal.
I prefer a durable system to one that is more advanced but fails completely when it runs into a bit of interference.
Then again, I am probably not the person to listen to regarding home entertainment. I only have a b/w tv that can run off of a car battery... when I want to watch color cable/dvd/etc. I have a nice PC/meida setup that is up to the task. If I want to see a movie on a screen larger than 19", I go to a theater.
Why waste money on home electronics when I can spend it on computer equipment that provides the same functionality?
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it. ~A. Perlis
Yep, just ask the ghost of Emperor Diocletian about the effectiveness of decreeing that things shall henceforth be less expensive.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I agree that TV is stupid, and I myself don't watch programming, and I didn't watch DVD's until I ran across Greencine.com. But empirically speaking, Americans who don't own TVs are really snooty.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Cite three examples of HDTV 1920x1080 with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound receivers that are cheaper than otherwise identical NTSC receivers.
Identical?
You make a good point, they are more expensive, in the year 2003. However, the price will come down. For the majority that uses plain old cable or satellite, this will be a non-issue. It's only for those people who use the airwaves for reception of local channels that this is a problem. Even then, we have to upgrade at some point. Cable has upgraded to digital, satellite is digital, and people don't bitch about that, but suddenly when OTA switches to digital, it's a big deal. Why is it ok for the cable company to charge you for digital cable, but not ok for the government to promote progress on the public airwaves? It would be kind of like complaining about roads that allowed transportation to move 6 times quicker because you might have to buy a new vehicle to use them. "I like my old car, I've had it for years, screw progress."
... it's the aerial. In the UK, the govt. wants everyone to be on digital by 2010. Clearly, that ain't gonna happen, and one of the major reasons is that a lot of people will need to have a new antenna fitted just to get a good enough signal.
Unlike analgoue TV which is still watchable with poor reception, with digital it's all or nothing: perfect picture or blank screen. I don't have exact figures but I know quite a lot of people will require a new "broadband" antenna, and every digital TV or STB comes with a big warning message about it (the situation may be better in the US). Talk about a good way to put people off!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What it means is that you won't be able to buy a 13" TV anymore. You'll buy a 13" MONITOR, ie no tuner at all, just inputs. Which is fine with me, I never use the tuner anyway. I use the cable box/DVD/VCR/Satalite box/TIVO/Game Console. I don't really need a tuner IN the display device. I just need a seperate component tuner.
=MikeT