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Is The Public Stuck With The Broadcast Flag?

Posted by timothy on from the sure-looks-that-way dept.

peeping_Thomist writes "The only company that sells HDTV tuner cards for Linux has run out of cards to sell, and they are now missing deadlines for new getting new cards. Linux users who want to view and record HDTV face an uphill battle. Meanwhile, the dreaded July 1, 2005 deadline for manufacturing DRM-free HDTV tuners is fast approaching. MythTV supports HDTV tuner cards, but so far no one has made a move to, as the EFF puts it, "buy, build, and sell fully-capable, non-flag-compliant HDTV receivers" prior to the July 1 deadline. The current combination of MythTV and pcHDTV (assuming pcHDTV cards become available again) may, as the EFF says, be "great for geeks," but it is a far cry from the TIVO-esque simplicity a mass market demands. Unless someone can get bring a DRM-free hdtv recorder to market before the deadline, it seems the general public will have no chance to avoid the broadcast flag."

12 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Pirate TV Stations by diginux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What would be a better time than now?

  2. What about Windows? by glrotate · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since most of us on /. use Windows, are there any flag-free HDTV cards for it?

  3. In light of the lack of Linux HDTV cards - by thewldisntenuff · · Score: 3, Interesting

    *Couldn't there be a startup project to get existing windows-compatible HDTV cards to work within Linux? I mean, there's a good sized community out there, and with the right motivation (recorded HD for all?) couldn't this be done?

    As far as DRM-disabled tivos....I doubt it will happen....Even if someone rolled out one, no doubt it'd be stopped before it hit the shelves.....

    *Disclaimer - I don't know much about HDTV cards..Know how they work and all, but I don't know what's available on the market.....

    --
    My MythTV HowTo
  4. What about Europe? by k98sven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Europe doesn't have the broadcast flag (as of yet), right?

    And HDTV is HDTV, right? A common standard, unlike NTSC and PAL, right?

    So will we see Americans buying HDTV cards from Europe in the future?

    Is there a chance this will go the same way as DVD region-protection?

    1. Re:What about Europe? by k98sven · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You mean in active use right? Because most DVDs I run into are region encoded. You know that most people don't know what region encoding is right? You know that most people don't give a shit either right?

      That's the situation in the USA, that's right. Because the USA has decently cheap DVDs, and it's the primary release market.

      In Europe, it's not like that, because the DVDs are more expensive, and they hit the stores much later than in the USA. So there's a market there for import-DVDs.

      The result of this is that most europeans buying a DVD player do know what region-encoding is, and they do give a shit. DVD players are marketed as "Region free!". It's almost difficult to find one which does have region encoding.
      (Not quite true, they're usually sold with region-encoding, and they'll tell you at the store how to disable it.)

      Right here is an example for you, a UK DVD player merchandiser. The region-free ones are clearly marked.

      So yes, I do think that if the USA enforces this broadcast flag, and Europe does not, that you might end up with the same situation, except reversed.

    2. Re:What about Europe? by DrVxD · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > Americans will continue to be unaware of their rights...

      More accurately 'Americans will continue to allow themselves to be stripped of their rights'.

      --
      Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
  5. How to make criminals of the market.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    These cards are going to same way as DVD's.
    The market will demand DRM free cards to access media that is not copyrighted yet fails to play because of DRM restrictions.

    We will see cards that can be reflashed, making us all criminals that do such, to be DRM free.

    Go that market pressure.

  6. Re:How about just not watching TV? by enrico_suave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "agreed. TV is just boring. the only good thing is news and bbc.co.uk has that covered. anything else that's decent can be bought on DVD and watched when you want.

    the benefit/cost of TV has been plummeting sharply for some time now."

    Ah, but you are missing the point... what if DVD's go away and you are only "allowed" to watch DRM'd discs or downloads on a "per viewing" fee structure... and you couldn't make backups of the content (ok the DMCA ships already sailed, but still why let another one sail)

    Right now PVRs/DVRs etc give you the advantage of watchign what you want, when you want... furthermore the problem isn't there's nothing worth watching, is that there's sooo much crap, on sooo many channels is that you need a willing guide (PVR) to help you sort through it... so when YOU are done mounting climbing for the day you can kick back, fire up your PVR and see all sorts of stuff that will interest you (no doubt Outdoor life network rugged how to "climb better shows" )and oh by the way zoom pass the commercials to nearly halve your coma couch time.

    But back to the point of the article... you lose some of core abilities to manage content how you'd like (in the US) once it's been DRMd...

    Between the broadcast flag, and the INDUCE act (oh and toss the patriot act in for good measure) we will soon (in the US) have less freedoms and transfer all the control to the MPAA/RIAA/etc...

    all our content are belong to them.

    blah

    e.

    --
    Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
  7. One Possible Solution by Thunderstruck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Recent supreme court cases such as Morrison and Lopez stop federal regulation of activities that are "non-commercial." This means if nothing commercial is transpiring, the activity cannot be regulated under the commerce power (this is the same authority used to establish the flag in the first place.)

    Open source software that is not sold, is freely available, and freely modifiable is very much non-commercial and therefore not subject to this regulation.

    Thus, and IAAL (I get sworn in TOMOROW) but not a techie anymore, it seems that if there is any way to get a signal to your computer, a free, open source software program could render it - and no laws would be broken.

    --
    Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
  8. NO! Join a theatre group by michaelmalak · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A theatre group is the moral equivalent of the peer-to-peer Internet philosophy (and here I mean non-server based -- I'm not talking about file sharing P2P networks) in the drama world. And it's a great way to meet babes. I'm so sick of seeing Slashdot editors and users hang on for every last Hollywood announcement and release, especially given the MPAA/RIAA abuses.

    Don't be a victim to the broadcast flag -- be creative and make your own entertainment.

    (Also beware of performing copyrighted scripts -- you're not even allowed to videotape such performances. Be creative in the script department as well.)

  9. Nobody will care soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I doubt that broadcast television will be around in 20 years as a mass market thing anyway.

    My prediction is that it is going into a death spiral caused by the following :

    1) There are many other things to do that watch tv all evening unlike 20 years ago (dvd, internet, games for example)
    2) The programs they are increasingly producing are aimed at the lowest common denominator to reduce costs and increase audience share for that program. But that's causing an increasing number of people to find *nothing* they want to watch at all.
    3) It takes a few years of inertia for people who on't actually like any of the programs to realise this and turn off.
    4) An older generation from 20-40 years ago who watched the peak of mass market tv are slowly being replaced by a younger audience who don't have that shared culture of watching tv every evening, instead gaming and the internet are important.
    5) There are a lot more channels making it almost impossible to get huge audiences for any particular show.
    6) As audiences drop the amount of money available to TV companies will drop. They'll panic and stop producing more fringe stuff and concentrate *even more* on the lowest common denominator stuff which is turning many people who don't like that stuff away.
    7) As the audience drops more and increasing number of children who already have alternatives will not be "educated" in the culture of watching mass broadcast television.

    I firmly belive that there is a death spiral here which is almost unavoidable. I predict that mass TV will have an audience reduced by at least 25% in 5-10 years time, and will have dropped to below 50% in 15 years time as todays children grow up without the culture of watching all that TV.

    I can see television being a quaint old fashioned thing in 20 years time...

    On the other hand I think that movies and DVDs and perhaps internet broadcast shows have a good future ahead of them. The demand for quality entertainment isn't going away and I believe that it won't be long before we start seeing produced for DVD shows happening that are never broadcast.

  10. Why not record the signal directly? by thanasakis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Would it not be possible to record the actual broadcast signal at the time of transmision, and then replay it in front of the HDTV equipement when you want? Would the DRM-enabled equipement have a way to know?

    I realize that to sample the raw HDTV signal at double its frequency would require enormous amounts of storage available, but storage always becomes cheaper and bigger.

    I may be completely wrong here, but I think if DRM enabled equipement becomes too ubiquitus (I am not talking only HDTV here) analog methods of aquiring the information could become rather usefull. The information could then be stored in non-DRM formats. How big would be the loss if I capture a song from a decent sound card using the built-in A-D converter? And if the degradation using a sound card is not acceptable, there must be better equipement available for a reasonal price.