Build Your Own TV Without Broadcast Flags

doom writes "An account of an event sponsored by the EFF, a "roll your own television" build-in. The San Francisco Bay Guardian has coverage in an article entitled Build Your TV!". From the article: "According to the FCC, the flag is going to ease the nation's transition from today's analog televisions to tomorrow's high-definition televisions. What exactly does it mean for a government agency to "ease" the transition from one kind of TV signal to another? In this case, it seems to mean making the entertainment industry feel very warm and fuzzy inside." The EFF's efforts against the flag have been covered before on Slashdot.

Comments

surely this is unnecessary?

[dhbiker]

I thought that judges told the broadcast regulator that the flag was unlawful? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4290315.stm

Hence rolling your own tv would be entirely redundant?

Re:surely this is unnecessary?

[kinema]

The way I understand it is that the broadcast flag isn't illegal but the way it came to be mandated. The court said that the FCC doesn't have the authority to require it's implementation. This doesn't mean that Congress can't pass a bill making it law. Disclaimer: IANAL

Re:surely this is unnecessary?

[cpt kangarooski]

They didn't say that. Slashdot managed to misreport what happened several times.

What happened was that the lawyer challenging the FCC went before the panel of judges, and they asked questions attacking his position. Then his time was up, and the FCC lawyer went before the panel, and the judges askwed questions attacking the FCC's position.

Judges do this all the time. It forces the lawyer in front of them to respond to questions he wishes no one was asking. If he has a good argument, he can provide good answers to the hard questions. It's just a technique to elicit information. It doesn't indicate anything about the judge's actual position.

Plus the court won't issue their ruling on the matter for several months still.

So the big hubbub was over nothing.

Kit TVs

[necrodeep]

Seems to me that this could be the begining of a Kit TV era. Kits that would include a broadcast flag 'chip' that could be mistakenly left out by the user. At least that would be one way to skirt the system - albiet legal ramifications would likely exist with this model - I'm sure others will be fourthcomming.

Any Canadians know...

[grub]

... if we can buy non-BF ready TVs in .ca after they become illegal in the US? It's ~10% the size of the US market but it'd be nice to have HTDV for watching DVDs etc.

Mod Chips

[mkraft]

So when do we start seeing mod chips for TVs?

I wonder

[rbanffy]

How long before the broadcast flag is used to avoid recording news? This government seems more than a little bit inclined to consider images of, say, Guantanamo bay or prisioner torture sensitive information...

I only hope this idea doesn't catch.

Mass system integration on chip

[awfar]

To be economical, HDTVs must shoot for massive integration on chip. Digital TV means exactly that.

Unless you have access to xray machine, the ability to open a chip and identify and inspect traces, and just generally reverse engineer the chipset, and then reprogram it, it is a sealed component and will be very difficult to circumvent.

Not saying it couldn't be done, but a frontal assault would be extremely difficult, so as always, a backdoor located would be the approach.
But they know that.