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FCC Says Analog TV Lives Until 2012

Posted by samzenpus on from the and-flip-books-for-another-5-years dept.

walterbays writes ""The FCC voted 5-0 to require that cable operators must continue to make all local broadcasts available to their users, even those with analog televisions." I don't understand how AT&T manages to deliver U-verse without any analog channels. Did they get it classified as not-cable and exempt from existing rules? Or as a result of this vote, will they suddenly have to drop 50 SD channels to make room for 5 NTSC channels?"

2 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. This Article Confuses The Hell Out of Me by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So the FCC is requiring that the cable companies carry analog broadcasts of local channels until 2012, but then what's this:

    or they can offer digital SD only and roll out converter boxes to all their subscribers (which could be expensive).

    It seems like they'll pick option #2 here, and then either charge legacy users a fee to get a box, or just jack up everyones' rate by $5. Everyone is going to end up with a box either way, it's the only way to watch cable given that CableCARD so far is a bust and the cable companies seem anxious to start doing SDV rollouts.

    And then there's the fact that the cable industry's main association is happy about this. What's up with that!?

    The National Cable & Telecommunications Association applauded the decision, thanking the FCC for "engaging so constructively and fairly with our industry."
  2. Re:What happened to 2009? by N1ck0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So the FCC is insisting that all OTA broadcasts are digital by midnight on Feb 17 2009. They are so confident in this deadline that they are already selling off the spectrum used by analog TV.

    But now cable providers are required to provide SD, signals to analog sets till 2012? Isn't this now an unfair double-standard?