|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: DTV Feb 17 Deadline May Be Delayed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
|
posted 02-12-2009 11:20 PM
Heh, well the FCC is challenging a number of stations who want to switch on Feb. 17th to PROVE their market is ready for the change, as well as throwing additional burdens on them.
EDIT: Eugene NBC affiliate KMTR caved to the FCC today. They're now delaying until June. The rest of the local stations will probably be falling in line if they haven't already. And on top of that KMTR is running HD shows in SD tonight and superimposing an FCC-mandated crawl at the top of the image advising everyone of the new date. What a hassle this is for broadcasters who prepared for the drop-dead date of Feb 17th and are ready to go and now they have to change it all up. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
story here
You can bet your expired DTV converter box coupons that there are a bunch of full-power TV stations across the United States rushing to meet Federal Communications Commission guidelines for making the analog-to-digital switch early. "Early," of course, now means on or after the old DTV date: Tuesday, February 17. The new Final Day is June 12.
The DTV Delay Act, however, gave the FCC authority to set conditions for letting license holders do the transfer as per the old schedule, more or less. In turn, the Commission has given 368 early birds the green light. But the agency has also told 123 stations that, at this point, "their early termination poses a significant risk of substantial public harm."
Here are the eight requirements that the FCC says these stragglers must fulfill to get a DTV early pass. They've got until Friday the 13th, six pm EST, to file a statement of certification with the Commission that they've met them. In fact, these licenses don't even have to offer some of these services themselves, but they've got to assert that some station in their area will do the job.
At least one nightlight
First, the applicants must show the FCC that, in their Nielsen-defined Designated Market Area (DMA), at least one station will continue to broadcast DTV transition information in analog format for sixty days after February 17, as well as "enhanced nightlight" service: local news and public affairs programming.
But don't confuse this "enhanced nightlight" term with the agency's analog nightlight program, which authorizes stations to continue broadcasting, post DTV hoc, a bare bones message in analog telling stray viewers whose sets still can't pick up digital that they need to get their act together, fast.
Second, this on-air education must include "demonstrations of converter box installations, antenna setups, and other helpful information." Third, it must be broadcast in Spanish and accessible to people with disabilities, providing closed captioning, among other services.
Fourth, the station must show that TV watchers in their signal region will have access to data disclosing areas that could lose coverage thanks to phenomena such as the digital cliff effect (see the last paragraphs of this story). "Such information may include detailed maps," the FCC says, "listings of affected communities, and instructions on how to assess what type of antenna may be necessary to retain or regain the station's digital signal."
Operators standing by
These licenses must also promise to provide viewers with local or toll-free telephone DTV support. "Such assistance," this fifth requirement stipulates, "may be provided jointly with other stations, organizations, and businesses in the area." Sixth, they must offer some kind of consumer "walk in" center to help viewers with set-top converter boxes and demonstrate how they work. They can set this up with others stations or businesses as well.
Seventh, they must show that they are currently and will continue broadcasting DTV-related PSA crawls on their analog signal from February 10 through 17 explaining that the station will drop its analog transmission on February 17. The crawls must be aired five minutes of every hour for the first five days, and 10 minutes of every hour for the final two. They must disclose the FCC's call center number too: 1-888-CALLFCC.
Finally, and rather vaguely, "each station will consider and is encouraged to coordinate with and use community resources to provide consumer outreach and support, including in-home assistance."
Last resort
If some of these signals don't think they can commit to these requirements, they can file a five-page statement explaining why not making the switch on February 17 will result in "extreme economic hardship." But, the FCC warns, it does not anticipate "that many stations will be able to meet the high burden applicable to this showing."
How rigorously will the FCC review these statements of certification? It doesn't look like the agency is going to rush inspectors out to these areas over the weekend to audit them. "Stations certifying to the above conditions are permitted to cease analog operations on February 17, 2009 without further authorization by the Commission," the FCC's Public Notice concludes.
On the other hand, the Commission warns that it will take "appropriate action against stations that certify they will meet the conditions, fail to do so and nevertheless go off the air on February 17, 2009."
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
|
posted 02-13-2009 01:07 PM
All broadcasters here are digital already, as the mandatory analog switch off is only exactly 1 year away for us.
Still, not a single one of them transmits in HD. They are all SD. All over the country. Only 1 or 2 channels have been experimentally shooting out some HD over the air.
There is virtually no market pressure here to go HD. Absoutely all people I've asked think their new digital image looks just fine, "much better than before", and love it. When they see a (quite compressed) HD channel (currently only 2 from satellite) they go: "Huh? That's all there is to HD? My DVD's at home look almost just the same".
Of course their DVD's at home don't look just the same, but what I mean is that people over here don't care squat about their TV and consider current DVB-T and DVD's plenty for their needs. Many don't even have HD tv's, so it's not like they would notice a difference in the source material/delivery anyway.
Heck, the most popular TV product is the phone companie's broadband TV, a pack of several dozens of standard definition channels at ~2.8Mbps AVC encoded received over the phone line by TCP/IP. Some of the channels look like crap (the ones that have gone through too many boxes and some of them were adding gamma changes or colorspace convertion errors). Others, surprisingly good (for standard definition). I have that thing at home (it's only €3 more a month than regular 6Mbit adsl) and the main advantage is that I can record the stuff directly to my home network hard drive.
The image is "anamorhpically" expanded as they are 480x576 ...
It's not even Standard Definition resolution (720x576) !!!
I should add that our standard definition here, in PAL Europe, is (and has always been) a bit better than in the USA, as our TV is (basically) 720x576 25fps, while being only 720x480 at 30fps in the USA. The "closer to cinema" frame rate means all our movies in PAL DVD have nice bandwidth preservation (i.e. not wasted in 30fps 3:2 pulldowns), no motions artifacts (movies are sped up 1fps, rather than manipulated in anyway, increasing temporal resolution from cinema) and 720x576 in resolution (aprox. 20% better "resolution" than NTSC countries like the USA).
So our DVD's, which usually are also anamorphic, have tradionally looked really good. So now the change to (crappy-over-the-air) HD doesn't really impress people a lot. Not as much as when you move from (inferior) NTSC to HD, certainly. A lot of people here have widescreen analog standard definition 16:9 TV's (crt's) that were in fashion far before digital started as many satellite transmissions were 16:9 (anamorphic standard-def).
So virtually "no HD" for us in Spain. Except on blu-ray, of course. Standard definition digital PAL deemed enough to watch Big Brother by Joe Sixpack by Joe's own popular demand.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 12 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic