IP: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates On the Way

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>


[Note:  This item comes from reader Monty Solomon.  DLH]

At 12:37 -0700 8/4/02, Monty Solomon wrote:
>From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
>To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
>Subject: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates On the Way
>Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 12:37:30 -0700
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>
>The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse:
>TV Set and Cable Mandates On the Way
>
>Issue #39
>August 5, 2002
>
>by Adam Thierer
>
>America's 15-year high-definition television (HDTV) industrial policy
>experiment has been a failure by almost any standard. Although this
>long and miserable history is too long to recall here, suffice it to
>say, the grand vision of the broadcast industry and public
>policymakers has become an expensive joke. And just when you think
>things can't get worse, Congress and the Federal Communications
>Commission (FCC) are now readying new rules to roll the burden of
>rolling out a service nobody wants onto the backs of television set
>manufacturers and cable network providers.
>
>Under a potential new FCC rule, TV set makers will be required to
>include digital tuners in all their new sets by 2006. The logic
>behind this requirement is that it will help jumpstart the slow HDTV
>rollout by ensuring all Americans can receive high-def signals when
>they are available. The Consumer Electronics Association, however,
>notes that this unfunded mandate will translate to a hidden $250 tax
>on new TV sets. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, House Commerce Committee
>Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-LA) is apparently set to drop a new bill
>mandating that cable companies carry all local digital TV broadcast
>signals on their systems. Cable firms are already strapped with
>analog "must carry" rules that eat up capacity and offer them no
>compensation in return. Under the bill Tauzin is proposing, "dual
>must carry" rules would be forced upon the cable industry. So if that
>home shopping station on channel 50 in your hometown offers both an
>analog and digital feed, your local cable company will have to carry
>both of them whether they like it or not. That means less cable
>capacity for other programs or services that consumers actually
>demand.
>
><http://www.cato.org/tech/tk/020805-tk.html>


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