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US DTV Patent Royalties Are $24–$40
shiroobi writes "Wow! $24-40 USD a pop? This would seem to mean that every TV is already marked up with this cost now that ATSC tuners are required. Looks like Vizio is fighting something like this already against Funai."
ATSC added to the already large sum of patent royalties required. ATSC is under the "Mpeg2" header, since MPEG-2 is part of the ATSC standard. the "MPEG-LA" header is for all other licenses owned by the Licensing Authority that are required in DTVs.
There's a thing that has nothing to do with ATSC called Wi-LAN in there too.
Look at the chart -- Wi-LAN charges $0.65 per TV to put in a V-Chip, which is federally mandated in all new TVs.
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If you think DTV is bad, you should check out HD Radio. Rather than use one of several much more open standards available to them, the FCC requires that digital radio be in ibiquity's crappy format.
Want to transmit in digital? You need to use ibiquity's software, there is no other option. Oh, and you owe them a few grand per year per transmitter as well. Building a receiver? You get the decoder chips from them, and pay them fees. I hear they've finally let some other companies start building chips since they've been too inept to make one that will work in a portable device.
It's too bad, I think digital radio could be pretty valuable as far as keeping radio relevant, but the FCC decided to screw everyone instead.
All it takes is ONE manufacturer seeing their sales slip to cut their profits. Then the rest follow.
I've been in the wholesale, retail AND manufacturing businesses, and I can tell you that profit margins are flexible in things such as this. The moment one company does it, while still being profitable overall, they all do it.