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Court Upholds FCC's 2007 Deadline For Digital TV

Posted by timothy on from the fiat-is-a-four-letter-word dept.

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.

3 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Someone better tell my TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because so far, it's done nothing to get in compliance. I'd really rather not see my TV go to jail.

  2. so i guess we'll.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... start seeing a wide selection of 12.9 inch televisions starting in 2006?

  3. Stupid stupid stupid by Schmucky+The+Cat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    They just legislated that I must pay, and pay dearly, for a device I, and the majority of Americans, will never use. These will ONLY be used for over the air decoding. The majority of Americans get their TV signals from cable or satellite, which do their own decoding.

    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!