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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."
If the FCC mandates that all television must be broadcast in digital they either A) Need to remove that requirement, B) Have someone invalidate the patent or C) Buy the patent and release it to the public. This is nothing more than government assisted extortion.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
MPEG is counted twice. There's a thing that has nothing to do with ATSC called Wi-LAN in there too. Wonder how useful the table is in practice?
This has to be the worst summary I've seen on slashdot. I'm sure if I had any clue wtf it was talking about it might be alright, but that's not the point of a summary now is it?
It is well established that public airwaves are subject to strict regulation, for example to exclude obscenity. It doesn't make sense to allow private entities to charge fees of their choosing to anyone who wants to receive these airwaves. It would be fine to patent one particular implementation of the decoder, but not all or most realistic implementations. The standard should have been chosen with royalty-free interoperability in mind. Now that the die is cast, the patents involved should be nationalized under eminent domain and owner compensated for development expenses and risks, but not $25 for every TV in America.
I don't know if there is a real issue here. I don't know if the converter boxes have to pay the license fee, if they do it is certainly at the low end. I don't suspect you have to pay the fee to cable companies to use your old tv. This seems to be the case of early adopters paying to adopt early.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think this might finally explain something I observed when preparing for the switchover. I was trying to find a VCR/DVD recorder with an ATSC tuner so I could record programs. (A converter box->regular VCR setup doesn't work well because the VCR doesn't have the ability to tell the converter box to change channels.)
I couldn't find anything in a low end VCR. All of the low end VCRs or DVD recorders were all tuner-free. You had to go up to the mid- to high-range models before you found one with a tuner, and even then it was hit-or-miss. Contrast that with VCR buying 3-5 years ago, where even the lowest of low end VCR had an integrated NTSC tuner.
At the time I thought it was a reflection of changing viewing habits, that no one was using VCRs to record television shows anymore, but it makes sense that if you need to spend $25-40 on just ATSC licensing fees, you'll just drop the tuner, or would only put it into more expensive models.
(BTW, I finally went crazy, bought an ATSC capture card and converted an old computer into a MythTV box. It's slicker and arguably better than a VCR, but with more headaches and frustrations.)
The government is footing the bill for the patent fees. The consumer then pays the actual cost of the device.
Work Safe Porn
Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence?
There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work.
-- Gallagher.
Number of stations I received via analog: 25 (across three markets - Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philly)
Number of stations with digital: 12
I basically lost half my entertainment. Yes some of the analog signals may have degraded to black-and-white over 80 miles distance, but at least I could still catch the football or baseball game, whereas with digital I merely see a blank screen! :-( Thanks FCC and Congress for giving me less variety. This could easily be fixed if they boosted the digital signal to match the power level of analog signals (basically twice current DTV levels), but they won't bother to do that.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Looks like most of the patent fees are in the 'confidential licensors' category. That's the *only* category that increases as the screen size goes up.
And that category, being 'confidential', doesn't describe how, exactly the fees fit into Digital TV.
MPEG2 and MPEG-LA are fixed fees, at $2.50 and $5, respectively, no matter how big the screen is.
Somehow they "estimated" that the 'confidential licensors' category ranged from $6.15 to $20.65. Which looks like blowing smoke. They don't actually know, they just made up a number based on the price of the TV.
(I'd also note that bigger, fancier TVs tend to have more features, including more advanced signal-processing features, so that also would explain why manufacturers might pay more, unspecified patent fees on larger TVs.)
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
The first US color TVs in 1954 cost the equivalent of nearly $8000 in today's money, for a 14" screen.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
People even say a computer is junk without a bluray, and as a toy it probably is.
If Blu-Ray has become important, the geek really ought to be paying attention. Because it implies a lot about the future form factor of the home PC, the convergence of the home PC and video game console, PC audio and graphics, and the prospects for OEM Linux.
Did I miss something, or are we or are we not talking about television? From all the outrage being flung around, you'd think we were talking about something vital and necessary, like food or medical care.
Requiring people to pay extra for access to lowest common denominator spectacle -- and actually getting them to do it by the tens of millions -- isn't an outrage, it's a hack. With extra bonus points for genuine irony.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What if I did license some spectrum, ensured that my emissions were always at least attenuated -80 dB outside of my bandwidth, and ran a non-dictated service?
It should never matter HOW the licensed spectrum is modulated so long as other licensees aren't affected.
Sheesh. The Vizio thing is about Funai using Vizio LCD panel patents without a license.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Sadly this summary has no information at all, provides no description of the issue to be discussed, and provides no content other than links to other sources. Perhaps the submission could have contained:
- A description of the issue at hand
- A reason why an uninformed reader would care about patent royalties at 24-40 dollars (per what?)
- An explicit argument about why this is or is not a good thing
I have been a member of this website for years, and while I am as guilty of not reading the article(s) as the cliche suggest of most readers, I still do so if the summary has some, any, information as to why I should. This summary provides no context whatsoever to evaluate the article's worth nor describes in any way it's content.
I think I'll stop here.
Some frequency bands DO regulate the permissible modulation as a term of the license. In the "TV Bands" broadcasters are required to use the patented ATSC system, which includes patented MPEG.
The issue isn't mandating technical standards at all. What IS an issue is mandating the use of something that requires a private-party royalty payment.
Perhaps a better model would be something similar to bidding on a public contract. A patent adopted as a public standard under such a system would revert to the public domain in exchange for a payment, which could be collected from licensees as part of the license fee, but must remain free for use in recievers.
of THE emergency broadcast system.
translation = if your not watching TV during the emergency your not going to be informed and you will die a horrible death as a result.
Ages ago I came across a CCTV technician's video catalog with had a CBS color receiver for sale.
It was a massive thing - even for a kid who remembered his grandad's console radio.
But the screen was tiny - much smaller than the screen on which his older brother might have watched Kukla, Fran and Ollie or his mom and dad The Honeymooners, or Amahl and the Night Visitors.
With the back open, you could see this huge, muscular, electric motor and giant belt driven fly-wheel thingy.
Tactically, it was a disaster.
Summoning up all the failures and frustrations of mechanical television.
---and another reminder, if anyone needed it, that funding and corporate support for R&D at CBS was shallow.
There is nothing fundamentally flawed in sequential color. But it implied a big investment in color-only TV at UHF frequencies.
VHF gave you very deep - commercially viable - penetration beyond the major cities without building an expensive network of repeaters. The consumer-grade vacuum tube UHF tuner of 1952 was a downer as well.
The Wikipedia notes that Goldmark's 1940 color demo had a resolution of 343 lines. Peter Carl Goldmark That's a little disappointing, even by pre-war standards.
http://www.dtvpal.com/ -- It supports switching channels and scheduler for VCRs.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This is really an old story, actually a continuation of the NTSC/PAL battles. VSB is the acronym for vestigial sideband, a variation of the modulation scheme used for NTSC. Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) is a different and more complex modulation scheme used by Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) in Europe and Japan. The general consensus at the time (way back in the last millennium) was that OFDM was better for penetration but the receivers were more expensive. VSB had a greater service area but could not handle noise (especially reflections) as well. In Europe and Japan, there are more large concentrations of people and DVB/COFDM made more sense.
THE REAL REASON, however, was that European companies owned the patents on COFDM, and Zenith had the patent on VSB-8 (some say 8-VSB, 8 for the number of levels of signal amplitude used, there is also a 16-level version for cable that was never used). So, America "bought American" and chose Zenith's solution. Later, LG Electronics bought Zenith. LOL!
Note: Bell Labs patented OFDM in 1966, but Philips and STM wrote patents covering DVB COFDM in 1987. I am sure there are others too.
Mod Parent Up
Exactly. Since everyone here (I assume) is used to getting news via the internet, it is easy to forget that important notifications go out via OTA television, and often times this is the only feasible way of receiving these notifications.
Everything will just migrate over to the internet even faster.
Got an FM radio?
How and Why are you turning a patent/television/broadcasting thread into a advertisement to vote republican ? And since you brought up voting for republican's as the 'sensible party', did you know that all this forced upon us by the government TV signal stuff all happened as the republicans were in power over the last 8 - 12 years or so ? As well as the crash of the economy - do to ignoring and striking down regulations designed to prevent such a crash ? ( Never a sensible idea to put the rich in charge of even more money, is it ? ) And let's not forget about the republicans getting all fired up about starting a war against a country that hadn't attacked us ? Whilst the person responsible for attacking us is still at large, and not in the country that we decimated and occupied ? BTW, I am an independant. I vote for who I believe will do the best job, regardless of their 'good ol boy party' affiliation. Just had to ask you if you there isn't a section in /. for politics and voicing your support for your favored party ?
Do you think that you actually voicing a new revelation to slash doters reading this article ?
Cause your post added nothing to the topic at hand in my opinion.
Have you considered writing oped columns for Fox news or Rush ? For the good of all people, of course.
If it has tires or tits, it will give you problems.
I don't ahve TV, so this explains why I never heard of 9/11.
Oh wait, I heard about it before it was on the news.
Now with twitter, we will hear about it before the news director.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why not "use any method you like and let the market sort it out"?
This is government mandating you MUST go to a single business and that is NOT "just how it is".
Because that'd be even less efficient. The key factor isn't the TVs, it's the broadcasters. You think it'd be great if stations had to choose between several expensive digital TV standards, install it, and then hope they picked the one that wins in the end? If they didn't, they'd have to scrap the expensive gear and buy all new stuff.
You think you'd be happier if people were stuck needing several different televisions, each of which could only receive some of the local TV stations, because the stations were using different standards?
Do you really think American consumers would be better off if watching digital TV were like the early 80's computer industry? "Hey, did you watch American Idol?" "Couldn't watch it. That's on Commodore 64 and I bought a Coleco Adam. I only get PBS and the religious station. My parents suck".
That doesn't sound like a great situation, does it? Certainly doesn't sound like a good alternative to just buying a digital TV product that carries a $14 patent fee load.
PS: Chances are any digital TV standard would have carried some level of patent license load. If you want to keep using analog TV, your beef is that the digital TV standard wasn't like the HD Radio standard and able to coexist with the existing analog TV spectrum. As it is, broadcasting in both analog and digital is not economical, simply from the electricity bills, and that's ignoring the benefit of freeing up the analog TV spectrum for modern uses.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
It means that the market chose to not buy the CBS product that the FCC had mandated as the new color TV standard
There was no CBS consumer product. But closed circuit CBS color broadcasts of operations were were a staple of medical conventions from 1948-1956. 1948 Zenith - USA