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."