Tag: DTV

National Press Club
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor
Washington, DC

PK President Gigi Sohn will be speaking at this mini-conference sponsored by the Information Economy Project at George Mason University Law School.

For program information please visit: http://iep.gmu.edu/gorecommission

Here at PK, we’ve been keeping our heads down the past few days, trying to fight against some really bad legislation. Once we finally get word of one, another one popped up. There are three in all (so far) are four (another was introduced during the writing of this post!!!) and we’re going to need your help to put them away.

S. 3325, The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008

First up is the Senate’s version of the House’s PRO-IP bill, S. 3325, “The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008.” Rashmi’s written a good breakdown of the differences between the bills, but that analysis may not hold up for long as we’re hearing that, as you read this, a deal may have been made to nix the differences between the bills so a compromise can be passed with ease.

If you’ve never seen the intro (original/new) to the TV show “The Outer Limits” then perhaps now is the time. Be sure to have the sound up:

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission…

Perhaps if the intro was written today, it would say, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. But do not attempt to view our movies. The MPAA is controlling transmission.”

Sometimes the market for a certain thing or feature gets stagnant. There comes a point when a once innovative feature becomes standard on every product. Case in point, the DVR interface. You know what I’m talking about, those linear menus that force you to scroll down, sequentially through every option. Way too often, the buttons on the remote aren’t responsive enough making the whole idea of having a long list of content choices into a burden. Enter two new interfaces from Hitachi and HillCrest Labs:

One of the many panels at CES on Tuesday, January 8 featured a tricontinental group of communications policymakers: David Gross, United States Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy; Viviane Reding, European Commission Commissioner for Information Society and Media; and Tsutomu Sato, Senior Vice Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan.

Alex, Sherwin and I will spending most of this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, otherwise known as CES. We’ll be trying to see what are the cool new technologies and trends and to consider their policy implications. The show is massive, the biggest trade show in the world, with nearly three thousand exhibits and 150,000+ attendees taking up the entire Las Vegas Convention Center and Sands Expo and Convention Center, as well as parts of the Hilton, Renaissance, and Venetian hotels.

There’s a lively discussion about the DTV transition going on right now. (Go ahead, ask an elderly neighbor of yours who receives television broadcasts over the air what she knows about the DTV transition. I bet not much.)

I wanted to drop a note on a couple of recent developments since my post on right-to-attach last week. They are:

I’m an analog cable subscriber and was hoping to upgrade to an HDTV this holiday season, and apparently I’m not alone. Before I buy-in, I’ve been considering the freedom that “going digital” should give me compared to the old analog world. The primary reason I haven’t “upgraded” to digital cable up to this point comes down to TiVo, it and the freedom that devices like it that connect to an analog coax cable give me. Digital technology is supposed to deliver more, not less freedom, isn’t it? It’s not clear that upgrading to digital cable gives me the freedoms I’m used to.

We had heard rumblings a few weeks ago that the MPAA was trying to push the broadcast flag, yet again. More recently we heard some more details that the content industry is trying to win over some in the consumer electronics industry to push for the technology mandate that would cripple many home devices and limit fair use of legally obtained content by consumers and educators alike.

You may remember the last push of the broadcast flag was buried in the series-of-tubes Senate telecommunications bill that thankfully went nowhere. That version’s language gave FCC the needed permission (which was lacking(PDF)) to instate the copy-protection scheme that would limit what you could do with over-the-air broadcast television.