FCC Lets Wireless Devices Use Empty TV Channels 163
Dr X-ray writes, "The FCC has given its blessing to wireless devices that operate in vacant television channels; unfortunately, the devices can't go on sale until 2009, when all television broadcasters are required to switch to digital transmission. Even then, much of the spectrum won't be available. From the article at Ars Technica: 'Here's how the scheme will work: consumer electronics devices will be allowed to operate in the portion of the TV spectrum being vacated by broadcasters as they switch to digital broadcasts in 2009, with some restrictions. Channel 37 is out — it's used by radio astronomers. Channels 52-69 are also out, since they have been allocated for public safety use. Finally, channels 14-20 might be out (the Commission has asked for more information) because 13 US cities currently use parts of that spectrum for public safety communications.'"
I don't understand. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't understand. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't understand. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes when I'm stuck in traffic, I pick up XM/Sirius broadcasts on (locally)-unused FM frequencies because people with wireless FM transmitters are leaking signal for around 10-20 feet around their car.
The obvious application for these frequencies is going to be a wireless device that broadcasts analog TV from an NTSC input source, and it'll be advertised as a "wireless DVD/gaming console player" or "make your old VCR wireless" gadget, targeting nontechnical people who (a) don't want to buy a new TV, and (b) hate that messy tangle of cables behind the TV, and (c) don't want to worry about their kids mucking about in the rats' nest of cables every time they want to play a video game.
DRM won't even be an issue -- sure, there's an analog hole, but the quality will be so downgraded compared to DVD (let alone HD-DVD/Blu-Ray), that it won't even be useful for piracy.
You say terrible problem, I say interesting feature. As long as my neighbors' pr0n collection isn't too kinky (and even if it is :), it'll still beat the hell out of broadcast TV.
"Cable is dead. Low power TV, here and now. Network 21."
- Sigue Sigue Sputnik
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I can't remember how long it went on for, but the couple must have been wondering why people looked at them oddly!
Don't underestimate MPAA's fear of a-hole (Score:2)
I have a feeling that broadcast devices will be similarly crippled.
Re:I don't understand. (Score:5, Funny)
It's more entertaining than most broadcast TV.
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Re:I don't understand. (Score:4, Interesting)
What would I want to watch an empty TV channel for?
I used to be able to get a channel that had signal/jitter trace displayed on it with my old cable service. I'd often leave it on just for fun, especially if people were over. Since I hardly ever watched TV (basic cable comes with a cable modem) I was doubly amused when one of the ratings companies asked me to be one of their participants. For a few bucks a month I'd write in a few episodes of the Simpsons, some historical documentary, and a dozen hours of "oscilloscope channel." I'm sure they tossed that out when compiling their results, but it still amused me.
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When Nielson still did manual log books (versus the electronic tracking boxes they use now) you were suppossed to only log when you were actually watching the tv, just simply leaving it running in another room did not qualify.
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you were suppossed to only log when you were actually watching the tv, just simply leaving it running in another room did not qualify.
Heh, this was when I was poor and just out of school. The other room, was the bathroom. Cram 30 drunks in a studio apartment and someone will be watching it :)
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Re:Independet TV (Score:4, Insightful)
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*Note: I said Exclusive Analog because many Digital [ATSC] sets have both tuners. The display doesn't make tvs digital. It is the tuner inside that makes it digital.
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Read my entire reply. NTSC analog tvs will continue to be sold until Analog broadcasting is turned off. This because that the demand for them is still high. But you can expect the demand for ATSC set top boxes to be in high demand in couple years.
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LOL, we're both writing in Engish, but no communication is taking place! I know that they still sell analog TVs. I know that they will sell it until there are no more analog broadcasts in 2009. But the discussion that we are having is not about what to do presently, because there are no "empty" channels yet. We are discussing what to do with the channels in 2009, when they suddenly become empty. In this context, it is correct for me to say that they will no longer be selling analog TVs.
All of this is acade
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Plus, the vast majority of these sets surely won't be going anywhere - if we say analogue TVs make up 80% of the 248 million [census.gov] sets in the US (in 2001), are these all going to landfill, or will they be paired up with cable, or digital terrestrial and a set-top box? It's the latter, and they could still receive local independent analogue serv
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Well, first I'd argue that it would be silly to set up a whole new analog system based on the fact that most people will still have an old analog set lying around. This brand new system would run out of viewers as the old sets decay over 5-10 years. And it's not like you could recycle the old broadcasting equipment, either. A local broadcaster is going to have little use for a 25ft antenna meant to service an entire metro area (not the tower, the antenna).
Second, regulated or not, few people would actually
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A medium-sized city of perhaps 1 million people is going to have several firefighter and paramedic teams active at any given moment, and a few hundred active-duty police, and those are just the most obvious public safety workers. Allocating 20-some-odd channels to that many people -- and potentially many, many more when a major disaster occurs -- isn't exactly outrageous.
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Nothing for you to see here. (Score:1, Funny)
Shouldn't that say something along the lines of "No band for you to transmit here, please move along." ???
Even better! (Score:4, Insightful)
On a serious note, then we could use the formerly TV spectrum and newly wireless internet spectrum to deliver...
TELEVISION over IP.
But then the giant corporations would lose control of how consumers/voters think.
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Hardly a worthy successor. (Score:5, Insightful)
NTSC may not be high-def, but the whole analog-tv ecosystem and infrastructure has been built up painstakingly through 70-odd years of experience.
The FCC is mandating that it all be thrown away in favor of a few years worth of half-baked digital technology, which in many cases isn't even going to work as well as conventional analog broadcasts. (If you haven't experienced the mass of multipath that is ATSC in a built-up area, it sucks.) And naturally, it won't be the same technology as the rest of the world, so the golden opportunity we had to implement a unified world standard was wasted. Did we learn nothing from the PAL/NTSC/SECAM days? Perhaps future generations will do better; I had thought maybe I'd see it in my lifetime, but apparently not.
The whole digital-TV transition seems, to me, to be nothing but a handout to the cable companies and consumer-electronics producers. There's very little in it for the "average viewer" who's currently watching broadcast. Everyone is either going to have to buy a digital ATSC tuner/converter, or subscribe to cable/satellite service, just to watch what they get for free right now. And with ATSC being the way it is, you're not even guaranteed to get the channels you now watch, using the antenna you now use.
Reading about the introduction of television to the U.S. and the FCC in the 1940s and 50s, paints a picture of an organization that's totally different from the corporate shitbags we're burdened with today.
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That's because it was before the bigwigs realized that if you put something on TV, the masses will demand it in stores so they can buy it... thus making them more money than Bill Gates, or Jesus.
The telephone may be the world's most culturally significant device invented in the 19th century, but the TV was certainly
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Yeah, because there was absolutely no product placement on television in the 1950s. They didn't throw commercials into the dialog at all.
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These aren't roads we're talking about. For the cost of a new transmitter, some cameras, and editing hardware, you've easily built a new digital infrastructure. What's more, they've been at it for a decade now.
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By auctioning off part of the spectrum they will reclaim in the deal, they will make that money back many times over.
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Yes, development of ATSC was started years before DVB. Deployment has been slower in the US, mainly because of the 6X higher resolution increase happening at the same time.
The first sentence of the wikipedia article you quote says ATSC was formed in 1982, LONG before the DVB Project (1993), and long before the "late 90s" (1998). The FCC officially adopted ATSC in 1996, long before anyone had deployed digital broadcast TV.
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Why does everyone forget that the FCC is going to be paying for the digital converter box you will need to "buy"? And that some 95+% of TVs are currently hooked-up to Cable/Satellite anyhow?
Even if my set couldn't pick up TV channels at all, I sti
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Not everyone wants to make room for a games TV, and a digital TV. Granted most people won't throw them out because they realize the extreme wastefulness the FCC is forcing.
What's your estimate for how many TVs are in North America? There are about 33 Million people in Canada, and considering nearly every household, and many workplaces have a TV, some with more than one, I'd say there are at least 15 million TVs in Canada [as a very
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Umm, "why" they are going to pay for it should be quite obvious. They are doing it so that (almost) all current TVs that get broadcast signals will continue to work after the digital switch-over.
~99% of those TVs will continue to recieve their same TV channels without any additional investment by their owners. So why in the world do you beli
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Umm, "why" they are going to pay for it should be quite obvious."
Don't feel overwhelmed, just explain what you mean. Where can I apply to get a free digital to analogue signal converter for my TV set [were I an American]? I hadn't heard of this plan of the FCC's.
I understood the old channels would be sold and/or not allowed for existing television signals. Is that not the case?
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You can't at the moment. There's well over a year to go before the program goes into effect.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.htm l [fcc.gov]
In February 2009 all the analog channels have to shutdown. The FCC will then give a portion of the spe
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That's basically what "digital tv" is, with added features as "tv on demand" and "interactive tv". (DVB [wikipedia.org] is a young standard here; right now I'm watching a DVB-T broadcast. It's used next to conventional ether to eventually replace it. DVB-C is encoded though, but gives the possibilities to watch any broadcast on demand.)
In Belgium there's a project like that; a small community has the opportunity to film th
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Yeah, we'll just have small independent content providers like Google.
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Dont believe me? Think about it this way: we are switching to digital broadcast which will greatly shrink the need for a wide spectrum of frequencies. Now add a tiny bit of IP overhead (which would probably be cancelled out by newer compression technologies which would be a lot easier to distribute to thes
Hrm... (Score:2)
Or would that be against FCC rules?
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I haven't a clue about amateur radio, or how it is regulated in the USA, so I got all the ones about the technical jargon wrong, but I passed with a 74.3% score using common sense and basic physics. I suspect most geeks would be capable of the same, especially anyone inclined to attempt transmitting their own analogue TV signals from their next-generation WLAN card...
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Too late for this ... (Score:2)
They're going to shift the burden to the consumer of keeping up with demands of industry.
Cheers
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Umm, wasn't the cable provider (or maybe the gov't?) supposed to provide cheap or free devices for accessing OTA and unencrypted wired digital signals, specifically so individuals *wouldn't* have to bear the costs?
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That sounds great in principal. I'm skeptical that they won't find a way to pass it on to the consumer somehow; they always do.
Everyone else's bill will get hit with a $5/month "legacy access fee" or some bullshit like that.
Large cable companies or governments do NOT absorb such costs; they pass
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But surely they won't be broadcasting the analog signals to televisions not connected to cable. Otherwise, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of making the change and re-allocating the frequencies usedfor over-the-air transmission?
Cheers
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nope.
If consumers didn't move, neither would the channel. once the switched and lost 80% of there viewers, there would ahve been holy hell.
they are not letting the market decide, that's where the burden comes into it.
If the broadcast BOTH, and eventually the majority switched equipment beacause of a better value(cost, picture shows), then it would be the market voluntaraly changing.
For reals? (Score:2)
This might one good decision out of the FCC... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this does mean that they went the way of unlicensed use for most of the spectrum, then I see this as one of the few good moves the FCC has made in a while for the people, in light of its bad choices about other allocation choices, wiretapping, DRM, etc that were in favor of huge companies.
I like this idea, as when building electronic devices, the more frequency choices I have the better... and the licensed spectrum is just wasted by the big companies over-charging for cell-phone plans (I don't have a cell phone).
Empty? (Score:2)
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There are several proposals.
There could be a map of what channels are used in what locations. Every device would contain GPS and a copy of this map, thus letting it determine what channels are empty in its location. Broadcasting map updates to all devices is left as an exercise for the reader.
All devices could use "listen-before-transmit" cognitive radio, where they listen for an ATSC TV signal on a channel an
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Unless it is a Mac; (Score:2)
Sorry! Wrong section! (Score:2)
It could be HUGE (Score:2)
Imagine high-speed wireless internet with the range of broadcast TV.
The problem is, neither the cell phone companies, the DSL providers, or the cable providers will EVER allow it to happen. It would nearly kill their internet service sales in a lot of markets. I fully expect the FCC/feds to announce that the spectrum is open for aything "except data services" or something equally stupid.
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If you could pump similar amounts of power into your wireless router, you'd get some pretty amazing sending range too...
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Heck, if the phone company decided to run gigabit eithernet to a node half a mile from my house, and then transmit the last half mile over VHF/UHF at 100mbps, I'd have zero problem with that. I'm sure my neighbors wouldn't mind much, either. Of course, we already are recieving FIOS service... but if we weren't
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It doesn't work. In a 6MHz channel you will be lucky to get 20Mbps; sharing that over hundreds of square miles would suck.
So what will the tv band look like in 2009? (Score:2)
will look like when the dust settles?
Obsoleting NTSC completly has one major drawback. No longer will
battery operated sets be of any use. So come the next major hurricane,
earthquate, etc. TV will be USELESS for emergency communication. The law
should mandate that the broadcasters in a disaster area (if they can
still get on the air) switch back to analog during a disaster so people can
get the news over battery operated TV's. It also me
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hahas,
-l
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What has analogue got over digital and how does it relate to battery power ?
Take a pill !
BTW, I have a combi dvd-digital tv with a seven inch screen, and yes it runs on 12v or rechargables.Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, I wonder what storm-related interference would do to a digital transmission (analog is fairly resiliant, as you can still get information through the static).
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Just as an example, you can now buy a wind-up digital radio in the UK. One minute turning the handle will give you an hour of reception of analog broadcasts, or 3 minutes reception of digital.
Digital reception is not very resilient, either. It it works, it's fine. But if the signal is weak, you don't get static. You just get nothing.
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I am confused on all this now, can't imagine how parent etc will handle it
Do new TVs recieve both? If i buy a new TV now will it be obsolete in 3 years? Does a TV that says 'digital' work for over-the-air broadcasts now?
http://www. [circuitcity.com]
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In violation? (Score:2)
Wouldn't that mean that 13 US cities are currently violating FCC rules? I think they should be fined. Thats a piss poor excuse for the "We can't give you the bandwidth - these 13 cities are using it illegally, and so they need to continue doing so."
Above the law BS.
Re:In violation? (Score:5, Informative)
A bunch of years ago -- 25? -- the FCC allowed users in some metro areas where there were no low-channel UHF stations to extend into the 470 - 512 MHz range to ease congestion. It's commonly known as the "UHF-T" band and it never displaced any existing TV stations. I believe that only public safety users can get licenses for that spectrum.
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Dynamic Frequency Selection (Score:2)
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Replacing the mics with a model designed to work with this scheme is a *very* expensive proposition.
Attention: CRTC! (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be great is this next generation of wireless tools could work across the entire continent.*
___________
* Not to snub Mexico's broadcasting authority, Pedro, who is a fine fellow. I'll buy him a beer and bring him around, too.
2009? Wasn't it 2006? (Score:2)
Of course, my old analog television receivers still seem to be receiving an image, so I guess the deadline must have slipped three years.
It always seems to be three years away.
I don't think I'd count any "vacant television channels" chickens until, or
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The next deadline is Jan 1, 2009. Onlycard-carrying fools (never in short supply) are certain that we will make that.
In point of fact, digital TV receivers remain quite expensive, and market penetration is minimal. That's partially because comparatively few TV stations have their digital transmitters on the air yet. And it turns out that digital TV coverage areas are smaller than an analog station in the same location with the same power. No sma
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No, building a DTV to NTSC converter probably is not rocket science. In fact, satellite TV in the US uses converters that do exactly that. The pr
Converter availability (Score:2)
Me, too.
For reasons too complicated to explain, I would gladly pay much more than $15... let's say $150... for an HDTV downconverter, because we're perfectly happy with NTSC broadcast reception, but there's ONE channel with not-very-good reception... and it happens to be the local PBS affiliate, which we watch a lot... and they broadcast in HDTV too.
So in fact I've been shopping for converters, maybe they exist, but you sure can't prove it by the sales st
So where is the accompanying device law? (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
There'll be something good to watch.
How about the FCC (Score:2)
Better yet, how about we get some *REAL* technology-capable people to start heading the FCC? Than we wouldn't have such a big fucking problem to begin with. The biggest problem with government of any sorts is that it tends to be unreliable and unreasonable, only through sheer IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY of those employed within that agency. As the ne
More info??? (Score:2)
What range of frequencies? The exceptions are all in the UHF band (14-69), are any of the VHF channels (2-13) included or not? If so, you're talking about frequencies just above the shortwave spectrum, which opens the possibility of very long-range transmissions (not ionosphere skip, but still very impressive ranges).
What kind of power are we talking about? Can the current TV broadcast towers continue at current power levels, now b
FOLLOW THE MONEY (Score:2, Insightful)
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^BumP^ (Score:2)
Me either.
Clinton's administration included spectrum auctions for pagers & cell phones back in 1993 & Congress passed it as a way to cut the deficit.
A big part of Clinton's huge surplus budget projections were based on the cash to be made from FCC auctions of over-the-air TV frequencies after the switch to Digital broadcast happened.
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VHF TV is 12 channels that are 6 MHz each in width, so a total of... you guessed it, 72MHz! So, there is the same amount of bandwidth available in the VHF TV Spectrum with two additional benifits: VHF transmitters are MUCH cheaper than 2.4GHz stuff and also usually can crank out more power, and also VHF passes through walls much be
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Don't VHF transmitters need to be about 10x larger? IANAEE, but I thought there was a linear relationship between wavelength and the size of antenna needed, which would make VHF less than ideal for use in devices like laptops and PDAs.
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At the lower end of the VHF band even if the relatively large antenna size approaching 1.5 meters for 1/4 wave was not a problem the useable bandwidth of the antenna would preclude efficient wide frequency operation. The
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Actually, QAM is more efficient. The ATSC standard uses 8-VSB for OTA, which provides about 19.2 Mbits/sec of usable bandwidth. 256-QAM, which is used by almost all digital cable systems, provides around 38 Mbits/sec of bandwidth in the same 6 MHz channel. 256-QAM requires a much higher signal-to-noise ratio for quasi error free reception, and isn't suitable for OTA.