FCC Commissioner blasts new TV standard as a 'household tax' Jessica Rosenworcel, a commissioner at America's broadcast watchdog the FCC, has criticized a proposed set of TV standards as a "household tax," due to its lack of backwards compatibility. Addressing a conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington DC this week (we have no idea why either), Rosenworcel complained [PDF] that the …
Indeed, as eyesight deteriorates with age, the benefit of 4K is grossly overrated for many people.
Low RES is (mostly) OK.
We don't watch much telly, so have small screen TVs, what we do watch is recorded on PVR and watched some time (often weeks) later. On smallish telly, not really much advantage in recording HD compared to SD (when HD option available). SO we only record SD as space saved more than outweighs the minimal laity advantage on our low end TV hardware.
Is 3D really still regarded as a selling point?
3D was a "nice to have" when it didn't add more than a few quid to the cost of a TV. Passive systems had their problems but they worked really well and in particular the glasses were cheap (and compatible with RealD cinemas).
We have such a TV at home, and a reasonable selection of films. The main problem we find is that you have to "watch" a 3D programme - it's impossible to have it on and do something else at the same time.
As far as I'm aware there isn't a single manufacturer offering a 3D TV in the UK domestic market at the moment, so I really don't know what we'll do when our TV dies. Perhaps by then it'll be back in fashion.
3D seems to be hanging on in cinemas, the problem there being that they charge too much extra. People might be willing to spend it for a big action movie, but 3D adds relatively little to a RomCom.
At work we show occasional films to the public. We have a licence which allows us to do so, so long as we don't charge. Some of these are 3D and while people don't seem to be put off by a 3D film, unless it's a special event they don't seem to go out of their way to attend our 3D screenings.
We are in the middle of a system upgrade at the moment. Our existing passive 2-projector system is being replaced by a 1-projector system. The polarising filter for this system retails at around £4,000 ex VAT.
M.
Alan Brown:
"And thus we satisfy the maxim that it's pornography which has been the real driver of consumer adoption of video standards over the last 50 years."
Hmmm... I don't ever remember that anyone could easily get any porn on my 50 year old dual standard Bush CTV 167 25" colour TV when it was new, nor for quite a long time afterwards! One could now of course, if one is prepared to put up with the intermittent frame jitter it is troubled with! ;-)
"I don't ever remember that anyone could easily get any porn on my 50 year old dual standard Bush CTV 167 25" colour TV when it was new"
You can thank Mary Whitehouse for that. Early 60s UK TV was quite racy before she and her mob got involved.
In the case of _broadcast_ standards, you get what the government of the area dictates. In the case of _consumer_ standards, you get what has the most purchased content.
Martin an goff:
"
Passive systems had their problems but they worked really well and in particular the glasses were cheap (and compatible with RealD cinemas).
"
The problem with 3D on domestic television, is that it simply wasn't good enough and gave the whole thing a bad name. Especially with the frame based active system requiring battery operated glasses.
Recently I bought a 55" 4K OLED TV with passive 3D, and the 3D performance on that thing is simply stunning, and for 1080p content you get full resolution. Watching Avitar looks exactly as I saw it in the cinema, but smaller. There may be hope for 3D (for enthusiasts) but only on passive 4K systems.
I also have two Samsung 1080p LED screens (active 3D) and my kids have a Toshiba 1080p screen (passive 3D) and the Toshiba is by far the best, but still nothing like the 4K screen. The Samsungs, good as they are otherwise, are a complete waste of time for 3D content. Horrible in fact.
... and good stereo speakers nothing else counts. If you have less it will still be sufficient for the usual American TV production standards. Shenzen will have a set top box for $35. Where is the problem.
No, I have no idea what the new (US) standard entails and no intention of reading it, I think my comment has some merit despite that.
My folks, in their 70s/80s want a TV with TV shows on it. The fact that their device, which they chose without intervention will show all sort of internet and handle internet TV too is irrelevant : its all too complicated. When i put something on youtube on their tele it is met with "what channel is that".... every.time.
My nephew and niece, < 8 are hardly aware of the TV, its just another screen and its the one where touch doesn't work to boot.
Me, ~40 ... just dont care for all the contracts. I can get my stuff streaming or torrented on the big screen or a tablet.
The cable companies are here to see out the older generations. The only driver for any cable is sport and even that is covered by IP TV companies now. Why do i need either cable or a new TV?
I do have a subscription capability, though I have yet to watch anything via its 'services'. I thought that the 'entertainment' was the hunt for something to watch. After about 20 minutes or what feels like a lifetime I give up.
I get regular e-mails inviting me to see the latest totally non interesting offerings so really what is the point? I simply PVR anything of possible future interest and watch whatever I can find to pass the time, when I need a time filler. This has the huge advantage of allowing all the adverts for total crap to be bypassed. As for subscribing to another advert channel with periodic inserts of non advertisements - that is for birdbrains.
I am told that there is also something called radio or wireless, (cable co clowns please note), no 'k' but it often has programmes
"When i put something on youtube on their tele it is met with "what channel is that".... every.time."
I'm tempted to call BS on this. I'm in my 70s. I don't know any of my various older friends and relatives who would be in the least fazed by this although personally I wouldn't have an internet connected TV in the house; something I can control goes between the net and the TV.
I'm tempted to call BS on this. I'm in my 70s.
To be fair, you're obviously slightly unusual as you are reading El Reg.
I don't know many of my various 70+ year-old friends and relatives who wouldn't be fazed by this. I do know one or two who would manage, but they have the eminently sensible attitude that if it doesn't "just work", it's rarely worth doing(*).
Switch TV on, select BBC1, watch Countryfile. Works every time (unless the Magpie's playing see-saw on the aerial again).
Switch TV on, find the menu option that allows you to run the YouTube app or the iPlayer app or whatever, wait an age while it connects (if it connects at all), tediously type something into the search box, hope that what you want comes up in the first page, select it to play, wait another age while the thing starts loading and buffering and then, insult to injury, two thirds of the way through the programme the blasted thing stops working and it's too much hassle to reload it and find where you were in order to catch the end.
My parents have a STB that allows them to scroll "backwards" through TV listings. Sounds fantastic, but they still have the "wait while it connects and buffers" problem and also the problem that not all broadcasters are on the system, and not all programmes are on the system.
Until the thing is as quick and reliable as Ceefax used to be (and Ceefax wasn't particularly quick), it's all sort of "meh" to them.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, won't even have an internet connection in the house, not even if it meant she could make a video call to her BSL-using daughter, or her distant grandchildren.
:-)
M.
(*)I have to admit here that I do have many older acquaintances, whom I only know through a mailing list, who are quite thoroughly tech-savvy
"I don't know many of my various 70+ year-old friends and relatives who wouldn't be fazed by this."
My father, for one. I only found out recently that he was _scared_ of computers in the 1970s but gritted his teeth and took ~7-11yo me to various university workshops because he could see where things were going, then put up with computers in the house through the 1980s. He can just about make a skype call to me (after a decade of encouragement), but switching away from that to anything else is impossible.
On the other hand, as an early ISP (back in the early 1990s before the telcos parked their tanks on everyone's lawn) I noticed that most of my enthusiastic technology adoptors were 65+yo retirees.
"My mother-in-law, on the other hand, won't even have an internet connection in the house"
If she's getting on she'd pretty well need one now if she lived round here. The local doctors have stopped taking requests for repeat prescriptions by phone so it's either online or a personal visit and, although it's less than 3 miles, that's a change of buses if you don't drive.
What people forget is that Intel introduced the first generations of microprocessors in the '70s, rapidly followed by the 6800 & 6502, and the IBM PC* and Macs came out in the early '80s. Those of us who were in our 20s & 30s then, 60s & 70s now, were the generation who recognised the potential of this stuff as working tools. They were around for half or more of our working lives. It's almost as difficult for us to remember a time without them as it must be for you to imagine it.
* Before they effectively hi-jacked the term everything was a PC - Apples, PETs, Trash 80s, various S100 beasts, the lot.
My parents are 84 and 81, they own an Android smartphone, two tablets, two Kindles and a desktop PC. They regularly watch streamed content without any help from me; I'm 250 miles away. Their service of choice would be BBC iPlayer though, I can't imagine them finding ANYTHING worth watching on YouTube since I can barely find anything other than game or movie trailers myself.
So not all old timers are ignorant luddites.
Personalized content means the TV people own your identity and can do what they like with it, all the way to Google and Facebook and back. An OTA broadcast won't be allowed on equipment you thought you owned because you paid for it, not until they verify your personal details, which are not your own any longer.
Wanna bet? Wait until (1) they get whispernets installed, so they don't need to piggyback on you, (2) they become standard issue so ANY appliance you get in future will have them, like it or not, and (3) they're on suicide circuits so that you can't break them without breaking the appliance (oh, and that'll be considered tampering, so no warranty for you).
> My television is never getting connected to the internet.
I don't connect mine either. It seems as if most television manufacturers stop producing firmware updates after two or three years. I have no faith that they will remain secure. I have almost no faith that they were ever secure in the first place.
What scares me about ATSC3 is that there will be a large push to have televisions connected to the internet for authentication, interaction, and personalized advertisements. Yet I've heard almost nothing about data privacy, data retention, encryption, and firmware quality.
I dread the day that I have to run antivirus software on my TV or have to jailbreak it to run privacy and ad blocking add-ons.
In SOVIET RUSSA [read: modern USA], TV watches YOU!
how many set top boxes will contain a barely visible camera hole that uses various "patented by Micro-shaft" (I kid you not) technologies to determine HOW MANY PEOPLE are watching, maybe even attempt to guess at sex, age, etc., and SLURP all of that info to market commercials DIRECTLY SELECTED FOR YOU, etc. etc. and even figure out when you go to take a whizz or grab something from the fridge...
forcing a NEW round of "smart" TVs and set top boxes may just be another way of slipping THIS in. yeah. Think of it as political Astro Glide...
It's always been different? PAL vs NTSC (probably why Japan tried to get HD asap). As for why, no idea, but wouldn't it bring the same problem this article points out? DVB-T2 is not American so would have zero backwards compatibility with anything the Americans have, requiring a brand new set top box.
As for why, no idea
My impression - apart from the "not invented here" aspect - was that DVB (and DAB) requires that broadcasters give up their individual transmitters and operate, or buy space on, a shared data pipe, known as a multiplex. Each multiplex delivers a fixed amount of data to the receiver, and that data is split up between a number of channels, some of which might be television, some audio-only (radio), some data-only and so-on. It means that small broadcasters are able to enter markets they were previously barred from because all they have to do is buy a sufficient amount of data from the owner of the multiplex.
In contrast, ATSC is designed to be used by a single broadcaster, perhaps with a few subsidiary stations.
But the US terrestrial broadcast market has always been very different to the European market, particularly with regard to the lack of single country-wide broadcasters, and the sheer amount of thinly-populated space. US cable is different again.
If you like, if DVB (and DAB) is a socialist solution, ATSC is the capitalist answer.
M.
The first generation of HDTV tuners went into the trash a long time ago. They were some DVD chips and a pile of open source junk found on the Internet. They ran hot, crashed constantly, and had compatibility issues.
The second generation tuners were popular with plasma TVs. Plasma was the only tech at the time that could show 1920x1080 without weird motion artifacts. Today those TVs aren't as bright as they used to be and some people might be tired of their 300W to 900W power consumption heating up the room. Or the dithering flicker. Or the power supply hum. They won't be around in 5+ years when ATSC 1.0 goes away.
New TVs that are most likely to be in use during the conversion should have a spare HDMI port for an external tuner dongle. Might as well get started on ATSC 3.0.
I gave up on standard telly years ago. Separating the shite from the flushed wedding ring isn't for me. The 4 or 5 shows that I like can be had without a massive cable or satellite bill showing up every month. I could afford a much better holiday every year by ditching the subscription.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
