Appeals Court Hears mandatory Digital-TV tuners by 2004 dispute

September 18, 2003

GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us
that a consumer-electronics trade group has made a dispute to an appeals
court about being forced to include expensive digital TV tuners in their TV sets
starting next year.

The Congress has ordered TV broadcasters to switch to digital transmissions by the year 2007. All existing analogue channels will be shut off around then in a bid to free up airwave space for other uses. Over a year ago, the FCC also ordered TV manufacturers to start implementing digital tuners in their largest sets from the beginning of 2004.

While a digital tuner would be required to receive digital over-the-air broadcasts, it is not required for most cable and particularly satellite TV services since the 'digital decoder box' supplied by the provider decodes the digital signals in most cases. Only 15% ofU.S. households rely solely on free-to-air broadcasts. Some other households that have cable or satellite still have one or more analogue sets that are not connected to the satellite or cable TV connection. If the remaining consumers are forced to purcahse a TV with a built in digital tuner, but don't plan on watching over-the-air broadcasts, they would paying a large unnecessary cost for something they do not use. It would be like forcing PC manufacturers to include at least a 'top-of-the-line' graphics card to make sure that consumers would be able to play the latest games. That would be of no use to a consumer who purchases a PC solely for E-mail and word processing!

If television manufacturers where forced to implement digital tuners in their TV sets, this will force a $ 200 hike in the price of a TV set. Currently, the market has failed to educate the consumers that analogue-only TV sets may be obsolete from the year 2007. Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg had suggested that the government would need to subsidies the digital tuner cost.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Television makers should not be forced to include expensive digital tuners in their TV sets that few viewers will actually use, a consumer-electronics trade group told an appeals court on Tuesday.

But
without such prodding by the government, the television industry will not
switch to digital broadcasting, countered a lawyer for the Federal
Communications Commission ( news - web
sites ), which
has mandated the inclusion of digital tuners starting next year.

"You
can't just rely on market forces to pick up the slack in a government
ordered transition," FCC ( news - web
sites ) lawyer
Joel Marcus told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia.

Congress has ordered TV broadcasters to switch to digital
transmissions by 2007, in a bid to auction off the current airwaves for
other uses and bring greater picture clarity to viewers.

The
FCC over a year ago ordered TV makers to start building the tuners into
their largest sets starting next year, drawing a legal challenge from the
Consumer Electronics Association.

Such a
move would jack up TV prices by at least 0 for a feature that few viewers
would need, CEA lawyer Jonathan Nadler said. Buyers who subscribe to cable
or satellite TV service, who would not need the over-the-air digital
tuner, would be effectively subsidizing the 15 percent of U.S. households
that rely solely on free, over-the-air broadcasts, he said.

In Ireland, I remember back in 1998 when the government said that digital converage would be available throughout Ireland by the millenium and analogue transmitters would be shut off one by one. So far, the closest the government has got to digital was putting the four Irish channels encrypted over Sky Digital. To receive the Irish channels on Sky, one must subscribe to Sky Digital! The BBC expect to have a complete digital service by 2010 from what I recall. They have both terrestrial digital TV and digital satellite TV. Their Satellite Digital services have been made free-to-air during the summer and anyone in Ireland and the UK can pick up the eight BBC channels using a standard digital satellite system with a dish pointing at Astra 28.2E. There is no word so far that British or Irish TV manufacturers must begin implementing digital TV tuners by a certain deadline.

Finally, do not confuse digital TV with HDTV (High Definition Television). Digital TV just means that the signal sent between the broadcaster and receiver is totally digital. Digital TV does not mean that the picture must meet the resolution of HDTV. In fact, digital satellite TV is one-quarter the resolution of HDTV, but as the picture does not suffer from noise like analogue, the picture is generally much clearer and sharper than analogue TV.

Source: Yahoo Technology News