Digital TV Facts: The Latest

If the switch to digital TV in 2009 matters to anyone, it’s those folks who depend on an antenna (rather than a pay-TV service) for their viewing pleasure—especially the ones who still own traditional analog-only TV sets.

About 14 percent of U.S. households watch TV over the air exclusively. That’s 15.5 million households—according to the latest FCC report, anyway.

No one knows for sure, you see. Competing estimates:

• About 13.5 million antenna-TV households, says a Consumer Electronics Association survey.

• “Anywhere from 40 to 80 million households,” including TV sets in cable- or satellite-equipped homes that are not connected to the pay-TV service, according to figures cited by a Best Buy spokesman.

Related:
• Digital TV facts for over-the-air viewers

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s plan to give cable subscribers additional channels from local broadcasters fell off the commission’s agenda this week. But it may pop up again at the FCC’s December 18 public meeting, according to an AP report.

Martin promoted the idea that minority- and women-owned businesses (among others) would be able to lease DTV multicast channels from station owners. But a dozen Congressional Democrats, in a letter to the chairman, expressed skepticism:

“You have presented no evidence to support your assertion that multicast must-carry would promote program diversity and increase programming choices.”

Republican Martin would likely need support from his Democratic colleagues to enact multicast must-carry. But Democrat Michael Copps, who acknowledges ownership diversity as an urgent issue, suggested this week that the chairman was trying to ram the measure through.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s latest plan to force cable carriage of broadcasters’ multicast channels appears to be advancing. At its November 27 public meeting, the commission will address “initiatives designed to increase participation in the broadcasting industry by new entrants and small businesses, including minority- and women-owned businesses.”

Under a plan circulated by Martin, station owners would lease out some of their excess digital TV channel capacity to new participants, and cable companies would be required to add the channels to their systems. (With the move to DTV, each local station is capable of broadcasting separate programming over five or six channels simultaneously.)
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For customers of small cable companies, the road to digital TV could get bumpier if seven senators can persuade their colleagues to overrule an FCC decision.

Federal regulators simplified the DTV transition for consumers in September, announcing that cable systems will be required to carry local stations in both analog and digital form after traditional analog broadcasts cease on February 17, 2009. The rule has an exception: Operators of small cable systems will be granted waivers—but only if they can prove their case to the FCC.

Now five Republicans and two Democrats are proposing “a blanket exemption for systems with less than 552 MHz of capacity or with 5,000 or fewer subscribers,” according to Multichannel News. This could complicate matters, albeit slightly.
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• Consumers who don’t understand the digital TV transition “may be stampeded into making the wrong choice and spending a lot more money than they have to,” a consumer group official says.

• Movie studios oppose “digital cable ready plus” (DCR+), a two-way plug-and-play technology favored by the Consumer Electronics Association.

• Harris Corp. wins a technical Emmy award for its digital TV filtering technology.

• Will “white space” broadband devices actually protect your digital TV reception? Doug Lung, offering a technical analysis of the claims, remains unconvinced. Even cable TV reception could be threatened, he writes.

• The Center for American Progress wants Congress to (finally) address the public-interest obligations of DTV broadcasters. But FCC Chairman Martin does not want to impose further requirements.

• Consumer Federation of America chief Mark Cooper blasts cable industry’s DTV transition commercials, calling them “awful and disgusting.”

Cable customers may miss out on some HD programming from local stations, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). Rules approved by the FCC last week require cable companies to provide local “must-carry” stations in both analog and digital form after the shutdown of analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009, unless the cable system is entirely digital. The FCC, announcing its rules on Tuesday, also said it “reaffirmed the requirement that cable systems must carry high definition (HD) broadcast signals in HD format.”

But Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the cable lobby, told Multichannel News that

a broadcast TV station will have to decide whether to offer an SD or HD feed as the “primary” [digital] signal to a cable operator. “In the event that some must-carry broadcasters do introduce HD, they probably will still declare SD as their ‘primary’ signal to guarantee carriage of that and reach the widest possible audience,” he said.

If the NCTA’s interpretation is correct, the FCC’s HD “requirement” isn’t worth much to viewers who have paid for HDTV sets and cable service only to miss out on high-def programming from certain local stations.

Must-carry stations are typically independent or public TV channels that elect mandatory carriage under federal regulations. (More-popular network-affiliated stations are in a position to negotiate with cable operators for carriage under “retransmission consent” rules.) Unaffiliated stations tend to show less HD programming—and if cable viewers won’t be able to watch it anyway, the stations will have a disincentive to invest in costly HD equipment.

Earlier:
• FCC: Cable may degrade local HD signals (a little)

• Link: Multichannel News

Cable TV subscribers who watch local channels’ HD broadcasts may be short-changed on signal quality, under an FCC action adopted Tuesday. While the ruling “provides cable operators with flexibility,” according to the commission, consumers who have splurged on home theater systems won’t be cheering a decision that can lead to diminished picture quality.

Cable operators will be required to carry local stations’ high-definition telecasts in HD after the shutdown of analog TV broadcasts on February 17, 2009. But the FCC will not require cable systems to pass through the entire HDTV signal as broadcast over the air. Instead, according to an FCC statement, “cable operators must carry broadcast signals so that the picture quality is at least as good as the quality of any other programming carried on the system.” In other words, cable companies can downgrade quality on local stations, but they aren’t allowed to make the locals look worse than the cable networks they carry.

The decision can be seen as a compromise between demands from broadcasters, who want cable companies to provide “all content bits” to their subscribers, and cable companies, who face capacity constraints on their systems because of the huge amounts of data that must be transmitted to provide HD programming.

Some cable companies will probably provide the full HD signal if system capacity is sufficient. But if you have an HDTV and want the best picture quality possible from your local stations (and you live in an area with reliable reception), your best bet is to watch over-the-air using an antenna.

• Link: FCC [pdf]

For cable customers, the digital TV transition just got much simpler. Under rules approved by the FCC Tuesday night, most cable subscribers, including those without digital cable, will continue receiving local stations after the shutoff of analog TV broadcasts on February 17, 2009.

In the absence of the rule change, many analog cable customers may have lost access to certain local broadcast channels or been forced to get a digital cable box. Instead, the FCC will require cable systems to offer “must-carry” stations in both analog and digital form, unless the system is entirely digital. (Must-carry stations are typically independent or public television stations that, upon a station owner’s request, a cable company is required to carry. Network-affiliated commercial stations, however, typically negotiate carriage agreements with cable operators.)

Bottom line for cable subscribers: Whatever kind of cable service or television you have, you should be able to continue watching local channels after the DTV switchover in 2009. There is one exception, though: Small cable systems will be permitted to apply for waivers from the FCC that would allow them to drop local stations from analog cable channel slots. If granted, some of their subscribers will need digital cable boxes.

The FCC’s dual-carriage rules are set to expire in 2012. The commission could choose to renew the rules, although by then more cable systems can be expected to be all-digital and more subscribers will own digital TVs.

• Link: AP

After tomorrow, subscribers to plain-old cable service may finally be assured of continued access to local stations. Cable carriage of local channels after completion of the digital TV transition will be addressed at the FCC’s public meeting on Tuesday, and commissioners might just approve a proposal from Chairman Kevin Martin to require cable operators to set aside enough channel slots to provide stations in both digital and analog form. If such a measure moves forward, customers without digital cable service would still be able to watch local stations on conventional television sets without needing to add a digital cable box.

After the shutdown of analog TV broadcasts on February 17, 2009, cable customers are likely to continue receiving most or all of the local stations they receive today, one way or another. The details remain uncertain, however, despite a reported $200 million advertising campaign launched by the cable TV industry last week intended to assure cable subscribers that everything will be fine.

I would not like to see cable customers saddled with digital cable set-top boxes that they would not otherwise need—a senseless waste of energy that would probably also stick consumers with additional monthly fees.

But a solution imposed by the FCC may also harm consumers. Read the rest of this entry »

Cable customers’ access to local stations after the digital TV transition is an agenda item for the FCC’s public meeting on September 11. A plan circulated by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin reportedly envisions dual carriage of local channels in analog and digital form following the shutdown of analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009.

Dish Network’s parent company, meanwhile, is telling the FCC that it will be unable to provide all “must-carry” local stations in high-definition for its satellite TV customers in time for the 2009 deadline. EchoStar is also saying that it cannot make an overnight switch from analog to digital stations on February 17, 2009; the transition of 1,500 local signals nationwide could take months, the company contends.

Degradation of local HD broadcasts by cable companies would be prohibited, under a behind-the-scenes proposal from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin reported in Multichannel News.

Cable (and satellite) TV companies that put the squeeze on high-definition quality have aroused the ire of subscribers who have purchased HD packages and costly home-theater equipment. The problem is channel capacity—and systems that don’t have enough of it know that they can squeeze in more channels by skimping on signal quality.
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