Hollywood Pressuring FCC on Selectable Output Control Again: Via EFF.org Updates.
Our friends at Public Knowledge have been doing a great job in Washington, D.C., fighting against the MPAA's efforts to selectively disable the high-definition analog (i.e., "component" video) outputs on your cable box. In essence, Hollywood is telling the FCC that it won't give Americans early access to blockbuster movies unless the FCC lets it kill your analog outputs.
Public Knowledge has an update today, letting us know that Hollywood is back at the FCC pushing for this anti-consumer, anti-innovation change in the FCC rules: read more... »
Movie studios again demand HDTV disabling powers from FCC: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
Hollywood's bid to force a yet-to-be-agreed-upon number of households to buy new home theater gear is back in business. The Motion Picture Association of America has once again asked the Federal Communications Commission for the right to selectively control output streams to the TV entertainment systems of consumers. "The pro-consumer purpose" (!) request "is to enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content," three MPAA biggies explained during a meeting they held with seven FCC Media Bureau staffers last Thursday. read more... »
TiVo, AppleTV, Boxee, and the future of HD television delivery: Via Freedom to Tinker
I don't watch as much TV as I once did. Yet, I'm still paying Comcast every month, as they're the only provider who will sell me HD service compatible with my TiVo-HD. Sadly, Comcast is far from ideal. I'm regularly frustrated at their inability to debug their signal quality problems. (My ABC-HD and PBS-HD signals are right on the edge, in terms of signal quality, so any slight degradation makes those channels unwatchable through the MPEG block errors, which seems to happen on an irregular basis.) Comcast customer service wants me to sit around all day waiting for a tech to come out when the problem has nothing whatsoever to do with my house. When I've attempted to report the signal strength measurements I've taken and how they vary from channel to channel, I've found I might as well be speaking to a brick wall.
Yes, I know I could put an old-school antenna on the roof and feed it into my TiVo. That would do pretty good for the local channels, but then why am I paying Comcast at all? Answer: for the handful of shows that we watch from cable channels. More than one person has asked me why I don't just download these shows online and cut the cable. You can get Comedy Central programming from their web site. You can get all sorts of things from Hulu.com. All free and legal! read more... »
Forget Coupons — Are There Enough DTV Converters? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: Via Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Two weeks before the country was supposed to shut off its analog television broadcasts, there is a shortage of converter boxes that people need to get over-the-air digital television.
Michael Petricone, the senior vice president for government affairs at the Consumer Electronics Association, told the Federal Communication Commission Thursday that three million to six million converter boxes are in the pipeline and available to be sold, according to an account in Broadcasting & Cable. read more... »
DTV Converters In Short Supply: Via Slashdot
Ponca City, We Love You writes with a New York Times story saying there could be a shortage of DTV converter boxes in addition to the problem with coupons. "At the current rate of coupon redemption, 115,000 per day, plus sales without coupons, that means the current stock of converters could be sold out by the end of this month. So what would have happened if the whole digital transition worked the way it was supposed to? read more... »
US Digital TV Switchover Delayed Until June: Via Slashdot
necro81 writes "The Delay DTV Act was passed first by the Senate, now in the House, and will be signed by the President. The hard cutoff for turning off analog TV broadcasts in the U.S. has been pushed out to June 12th. The act had earlier failed to gain a 2/3rds majority in the House, but passed this afternoon with a simple majority. The bill allows stations to cease analog transmissions at any point between Feb 17th (the old cutoff) and June 12th, and many have signaled they will do so."
Read Original Article ( Via Slashdot. )
Octopuses Have No Personalities and Enjoy HDTV: Via Slashdot
Whiteox writes about an Australian researcher named Renata Pronk, who has discovered that octopuses prefer HDTV. She recruited 32 gloomy octopuses from the waters of Chowder Bay. Previously, researchers have reported little success when showing video to octopuses. Miss Pronk's insight was that the octopus eye is so refined that it might see standard PAL video, at 25 fps, as a series of stills. She tried HDTV (50 fps) and her subjects reacted to the videos of a crab, another octopus, or a swinging bottle on the end of a string. A further discovery is that octopuses show no trait of individual personalities, even though they exhibit a high level of intelligence. It would certainly be possible to quibble about the definition of "personality" employed, and whether Miss Pronk had successfully measured it.
Read Original Article ( Via Slashdot. )
TZero Demonstrates World's First Commercially Viable 1080p60 Wireless HDMI Solution: Via HDTV Magazine - Industry News (Beta)
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TZero Technologies, the leader in Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology and wireless video solutions, today announced that it will publicly demonstrate its second generation ZeroWireTM product at a developer's conference in Tokyo this week. The new ZeroWireTM solution, with an expected bill of material cost below $50 per device, is the world's first and only commercially viable Wireless HDMI product that supports full 1080p60 high-definition video streaming and the sub-frame latency required for high-definition wireless gaming applications. This public demonstration reinforces the fact that Ultra Wideband is emerging as the only wireless technology capable of reliably streaming the richest and most dynamic high-definition multimedia content, a key requirement for new consumer electronics devices being launched in 2009. read more... »
Missouri HD Owners Waiting For Cable Boxes: Via TVPredictions.com Forum
Missouri HD Owners Waiting For Cable Boxes Cable op Mediacom is two months late for some homes.By SwanniWashington, D.C. (December 3, 2008) -- You've purchased a new High-Definition TV and now you want to watch some of the great high-def programming available from your local cable provider. Right?Well, not so fast if you're a resident of Springfield, Missouri. KSPR-TV, the ABC affiliate in Springfield, reports that roughly 200 people there are on a waiting list to get a high-def set-top from Mediacom, the local cable TV service.In fact, some HDTV owners have been waiting as long as two months. read more... »
HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #333 - Post Black Friday HTiB Round-up: Via HDTV Magazine - Industry News (Beta)
We did this a couple years ago, and it's probably just as good an idea now as it was then. Being that many of you may have recently purchased your first HDTV at a great price on "Black Friday," we wanted to do a show that will help you decide on a Home Theater in a Box (HTIB) system that will bring the other half of the HD experience into your HD Theater. We list and briefly discuss 5 systems; all of which support Blu-ray - some even include it. read more... »