FCC Commissioner blasts new TV standard as a 'household tax'

[steve2470]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/13/fcc_tv_standard_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 federal regulator "is about to rush this standard to market without understanding the consequences for consumers."

Not only will Americans have to pick up the cost of developing the new standard – ATSC version 3 – through higher cable bills, she warned, but since the standard is not compatible with the current ATSC 1.0 spec, it also means everyone will need to buy a new television set, set-top box, or similar, to use it.

"This is not a great boon for consumers," she argued. "It's a tax on every household with a television." Instead, she proposed that the FCC "go back to the drawing board" and come up with a way to move over to the new standard "that better serves the public interest."

[bobbieinok]

1. Is this right?? More info for tech dummies

[steve2470]

2. I would recommend reading the entire article at the link

Then come back with questions I'm not good with TV stuff but many here are good with it.

[HAB911]

3. Brings broadcast up to current high end tv standards

If it isn't backward compatible she's right.

ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards and was created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). ATSC 3.0 will support mobile television, 3D television, 4K UHD, high dynamic range (HDR), high frame rate (HFR), and wide color gamut (WCG)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0

[eppur_se_muova]

4. A lot of us don't need or want higher TV standards.

HD is not found in our house. No need or desire for it.

There's really nothing on TV I want to see badly enough to justify investing in new technology.

[MR. ELECTABLE]

5. It's incompatible because ATSC is 20 years old

ATSC (the broadcast spec for HDTV) was adopted in 1996, even though a lot of people didn't get high def TVs until the late 2000's. Compare the state of viewing video over the internet in 1996 to today to give an idea of how much compression technology has improved over the last 20 years. Right now everything on HDTV is broadcast in mpeg 2, which is basically the same format found on a DVD. This is not a very good compression which is why ATSC is currently limited to 720p or 1080i.

Just like with the previous transition, I would assume the adoption of more up to date modulation schemes and mpeg-5 compression will take a lot of time once it is kicked off, at least 10 years. This is because it will require another round of television equipment upgrades to support the new standards. So either way this will not affect us for a long time.

[hunter]

6. My wife and I abandoned broadcast-cable-satellite television years ago.

When the new digital TV standard was adopted I made an antenna that worked very well. I also got the $40 converter box, the one you could get with a voucher. PBS still had some value to me, I was a subscriber for years, especially for the kids shows when our kids were kids, but now it seems too beholden to its corporate sponsors.

We eventually bought a 1080p television that doesn't connect to the internet or have "smart" anything. It's total overkill because we only use it as a DVD player, a "standard 0.7GB per hour" resolution Netflix player (over a medium speed DSL connection) and rarely, as a video cassette player. (This television does some digital magic to video cassettes, since they look better than they ever did on old CRT televisions. Not as good as 480p DVDs, but whatever... it's just TV.)

I don't miss commercial television at all. I don't see any television commercials except for a few of the clever commercials people post here on DU from YouTube. And most thankfully, no television processed cheese food "news." I'm a much happier person reading all my news. And I don't have to hear Trump's voice. He's creepy.

I'm certain down-converters from ATSC 3 to vanilla 720p and even (horrors!) NTSC composite will be inexpensive, maybe even given away for free, otherwise many viewers who still care to participate in the traditional television business models will be lost, the ones who all that pharmaceutical advertising is directed at. If I was a doctor and a patient asked me about some medicine they saw on TV I'd tell them to quit watching TV.

If the traditional broadcast and cable television industry makes itself irrelevant I won't cry. They are partly responsible for the election of Trump.