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FCC Speeds Up Digital TV Signal Deadlines
sbinning writes "The FCC, in a 4-0 vote decided that all medium-sized televisions, screens between 25 and 36 inches in diagonal, must be able to receive both digital and traditional analog signals by March 1. This is four months earlier than the commission had decreed three years ago. Now if they just mandate more intelligent programming."
that even governmental interference can't get it accepted, something is very wrong.
I still don't understand why the FCC feels like they need to interfere with the standards of television. Can someone please explain why this is a necessity?
Never happen.
I hope they also mandated them to include metadata in their broadcasts.
If you dont know digital sets are able to recieve special content like the name of the program all off the air.
This is going to hurt America's poor the most.
Well, it wasn't clear from the article but from some reading I assume they mean March 1...2006. Yeah sure, may seem obvious to some but a date with no year can mean many things.
While trying to confirm that I found an interesting page:
http://www.hdtv.net/faq.htm
Does anyone know the stats on how many stations are digital?
The Bush administration is re-organizing its cabinet departments and Powell would make a good candidate for the deputy secretary post in the Commerce Department. However, he needs the Digital TV vote to leave the agency on a good note. The FCC's new plan would set a firm deadline of 2009. Regardless of how many residents have Digital TVs, local broadcasters would be forced to switch all signals from analog to digital. To ensure that Americans would not lose their TV signals, the federal government would launch an educational campaign on the benefits -- and necessity -- of going digital. In addition, Congress would likely approve subsidies for low-income residents who can not afford to buy a new set. They could use the subsidies to either buy a new TV or get a converter box that would transfer digital signals so they could be watched on an analog set.
After all, I am strangely colored.
If you believe the 90% number for cable/satellite homes, then only 10% get their TV over the air. I get mine via DirecTV, so a switch in the local stations won't affect my home TVs at all, just the little Sony LCD one I have. Cable TV doesn't have to switch over then either.
So of the 10% getting their television over the air, I'd sure guess that a large percentage who aren't interested in cable or satellite also aren't buying new fancy TVs every couple of years. Their choices are probably going to be buy a new TV or switch to satellite or cable and continue to use their old TV.
So is it only a portion of the 10% that would be affected when the big switch happens?
Now if they just mandate more intelligent programming.
Anything but that! Programming is none of their business. You should know that by now. Especially after the "Janet" thing. Technical standards are the only thing theFCC should be messing with.
What?
If the FCC really wants me to switch to the new Digital TV, I figure I should be able to get an equivilant system for an equivilant price.
I'm willing to update if I get something better, I'm NOT going to pay a ton of money just so that I can get the same service with more pixels.
My requirements before I buy a new digital television:
If I can't get this, I don't see why I should switch. Why should I pay more for less?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Somewhere around 1500 stations (almost all stations in the bigger markets) broadcast digitally as well as analog. Here in San Francisco bay area, we get CBS,ABC,NBC,PBS,WB,UPN,FOX,UNI,SAH,TEL,PAX networks and a few independants. Few know about it though.
I also found this link at GoodGuys to be pretty informative:
http://goodguys.com/hdtv_faq.asp
Now, these are both Pro-DTV sites.
What I'm also looking for are criticisms of DTV-- other then the obvious arguments about DTV being expensive.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Because sometimes the free market doesn't work speedily in the interests of the consumer and common good, you asshat. This is why there are pollution regulations, automobile crash tests, minimum wages, and class-action lawsuits.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I don't know. I'm worried that televisions will get too intelligent in the future. I have a recurring dream that I am watching my new LCD "Buck Rogers in the 21st Century" TV and a commercial comes on, so I get up to make a sandwich but as soon as I start to leave-- the show comes back on. Then when I sit back down to watch it the commercial comes back. Every time I try to get up this happens again. So I give in and run to the kitchen while my show is on. But it's a dream so, you know, I'm always running in slow motion. Finally I make it and I can hear my show in the other room while I spread peanut butter and jelly on two slices of bread. It sounds really good. I can tell from the laughtrack that I'm missing some really funny shit. I literally throw the knife in the sink from four feet away and run as fast as I can to the couch. My show is still on. I made it. My butt touches the couch cushion as I take a bite of my sandwich and fix my eyes on the screen... just in time to see the commercial.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
The pricing situation is a bit tricky. Right now the equipment is pricey because relatively few people want to spend money on it. As you say, existing TV is good enough for most people. (Especially since most people get their TV over cable or satellite and therefore this won't help them, but I'll get to that in a minute.)
The FCC is hoping to tell everybody, "Look, we're going to DTV, start making it," which should drop the price to the point where an adapter for your existing TV is $50. (The manufacturers keep claiming it's going to add $100 to the price of a new TV; that figure seems bogus to me. It's basically a bottom-of-the-line video card.) Remember that the FCC doesn't really give a rat's ass about the quality of your picture; they want you to switch so that they can reclaim the bandwidth.
In the end a DTV will cost more than an equivalent analog TV, because they're compressing the signal more and you need more sophisticated equipment to read it. That's what lets them reclaim the valuable bandwidth, and pass the cost on to you. The carrot is better reception, better resolution, and the 16:9 ratio, as well as a few other fancy digital features. (You'll pay more for a 16:9 TV, too.) But that's just the incentive, not the reason.
You're not paying more for less; you're paying more for more. That sucks, since you'll see the benefits only very indirectly (the new wi-fi and cell services that will gradually take over the old TV bandwidth).
But if you're unwilling to pay for it, eventually you're gonna lose. They're taking your analog signal, and you're free to stare at your old TV from 8 PM to 11:30 PM every night, but there won't be anything on except static.
Fortunately, instead of buying a new $300 TV, you'll be able to by an adapter, which right now costs $150 but will hopefully be closer to $50 by the time this is done. That's why the FCC is pushing the switch: there will be a lot of people in your position, wanting to adapt their old TV to the new signal, which should make for cheap adapters. It won't happen until the cutover gets near, in 2008.
As far as I can tell the ones who really get screwed are the cable/satellite viewers, who never really use the tuner in their TV set. And that's 90% of everybody. They use the tuner in an external box, which they usually rent from the cable/satellite company for around $5 per month or pay $100 to $200 for.
I'd like to see them start selling $200 21" TVs with no tuner in them at all, for those people. I dunno if that'll happen or not.
I'm recalling the situation about the broadcast flag for digital TV and how a judge ruled that the FCC doesn't have the power to mandate such a thing because it's hardware.
Now we have the FCC mandating that TVs must provide digital reception as well as analog. What am I missing here?
I can't say I disagree with either decision, but there seems to be some level of conflict between the two activities here.
Because until all the broadcasters switch over to digital, they can't use the extra frequencies for something else.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> Surely I'm not the only one who believes they'd be better off if
> the damned box went black and they were forced to pick up a
> book
Am I the only one who is a little disturbed by seemingly classist statements like that above? I'm reading the above as "the poor are too lazy!" They should open a book and get real jobs!
Sure there are lazy poor people. There are also lazy middle class people and lazy rich people, too. Being poor doesn't mean someone is lazy. Sometimes it's just nearly impossible for someone to get out of poverty on the jobs available. The book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America apparently does a pretty good job of illustrating this (although I haven't had time to read it yet!)
Sometimes if you're having to work two jobs the only thing you want to do when you get home is numb out in front of the TV. It would be a hell of a lot better if that weren't true, but we don't live in a perfect world.
Aside from that, one reason why television is important is to alert citizens about storms and whatnot. So it is up to the government to either keep the standard the same or providing a method for all citizens to have a way to decode public broadcasts.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
As long as they're upping the deadlines for TVs to support digital broadcasts, they should also be putting regulatory pressure on broadcasters and content makers to provide digital HD content, even if there's no mandated DRM yet to "protect" said content from evil people like us who want to commit the heinous crimes of skipping commercials and time/space/format-shifting the shows we watch.
What I'm also looking for are criticisms of DTV...
How about all that horrible pixelation in low contrast areas of the screen because of the extreme compression being used? I'm not the least bit impressed with digital or DVDs. My old 12 inch video disks looked just as good...better to me. If you want real quality, you need a 1 inch VTR with component video out. It still makes the best picture I've seen. And it's analog. So searching rapidly through the tape is easy. Besides, DTV is expensive..., but then, so is the 1 inch. I do like the idea of other data bieng put into the signal. We were promised that with CDs, but so far hardly anybody uses it.
What?
I've thought all along that the switch to all digital broadcasts is a bad idea.
What is the main reason that people in the US watch broadcast TV? Because they can't afford cable or satellite.
After the switch people are going to be unable to get any television at all unless they fork over hundreds of dollars for a new digital set.
But we do have an option, since so far the FCC hasn't ruled that every home is required to have a TV.
What we really need is more intelligent viewers.
There's not too much to criticize. Everyone knows it's an inevitable step in the right direction.
You can complain about artifacts of digital video, but it's still better than the artifacts of analog broadcast. You can complain about the reduced broadcast range. You can complain that they didn't go further, making 1080 progressive. You can complain that they didn't choose a better codec, such as MPEG-4, VP3, VP6, wavelet-based codec, etc. You could say they dedicated too much of the bandwidth to audio (or you could say too little if you're an insane audiophile).
What else is there to criticize?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I know you're kidding, but are you really sure you want THIS administration to decide what constitutes "intelligent" programming?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
They already do. It's part of the Closed Captioning space known as XDS (extended data services). Mostly it's used to set the clock in your VCR.
However, if your TV supports it (on some TV's it can be found near the Closed Caption menus), it will show you such information as what is currently being shown, and depending on the television, the genre and run time of the current broadcast.
But didn't the courts just get through telling the FCC that they had no power to create regulations regarding receivers?
Did I misunderstand the ruling regarding the broadcast flag, or is the FCC ignoring the meaning of it?
Many stores have marketing deals with DirectTV and the like taht discourage them from marketing atsc boxes.
As for connectivity, my atsc tuner has outputs for composite, Y/C, component, RGB, DVI, and IEE1394a , so it can be used with most any modern televison. Add an RF converter and one can even connect a coax only TV. However, the higher resolution signals (480p, 720p, 1080i) are only output through RGB, DVI, and component.
I bought the new digital-capable TV, check. I'm now getting both analog and digital versions of channels for the stations already broadcasting in digital (a majority of the 20+ broadcast channels I pick up, actually) While the digital channels look really nice, and the HDTV broadcasts even nicer, there is a basic problem. The weaker of these channels routinely break up, pixelate, or freeze and are totally unwatchable in digital, where in analog, they are a little snowy, but perfectly OK to watch. In bad weather, some channels may have a little snow or ghost in analog, but the digital signal breaks up in a hurry.
When this switchover happens, I'll go from getting like 20 channels to maybe 2, and those 2 will not be very reliable.
So people who still rely on broadcast TV are going to have a tough time with this I suspect, even if they can get a cheap digital TV.
The potential is huge, but the broadcasters don't seem to get it. They're still sending a single subchannel at full bandwidth to people who have wide screens but can't display all the pixels. More content - even just weather and channel guides would be more valuable to most.