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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.
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?
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.
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.
Two words: broadcast flag.
Besides which, it's meaningless anyway. Most people have cable. I fail to see what wonderful future digital broadcasts are intended to bring us to, besides DRM.
Last point, it'll take 20 years plus before all the old-style TVs are phased out. Upon my approximate checkout date of 2030, maybe then digital TV will be mainstream.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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
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.
Dude, i've been alive quite a while. I have never seen a case where the US government was able to politically sustain devaluing existing citizens' property on a mass basis.
I draw your attention back to the leaded/unleaded gas issue. The switchover happened in 1975 as I remember it. However, no one required that the older vehicles get off the road. You could still readily find leaded gas as late as the early 80's. Even then, the older vehicles without catalytic converters are still on the road to some extent (most of the people who own them have changed the valves, I think. Something about copper being destroyed without the lead-based lubricants being there). Point being you can still use your car.
I guarantee you those TVs will still be useful in 2020 and maybe even 2025. When a sufficient majority of the public no longer owns an old-style tv set, that is when things will change.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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
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."