Feds Kick Off Digital TV Consumer Campaign
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It's one of the biggest technical changes in television since color TV: the digital transition. And because many Americans remain in the dark about it, federal regulators began an education campaign Monday to enlighten them.
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Comcast Cable this month will turn up the first US commercial deployment of Microsoft TV Foundation Edition, a digital cable software platform that includes an interactive program guide and supports dual-tuner digital video recording (DVR) services.
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Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has been at the forefront of efforts to get consumers to buy high-definition TVÂs.
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WASHINGTON - It&#39;s one of the biggest technical changes in television since color TV: the digital transition. And because many Americans remain in the dark about it, federal regulators began an education campaign Monday to enlighten them.
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Electrical retailers Currys, Dixons and PC World will now promote digital TV sets with built-in Freeview tuners.
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The government will offer households as much as $80 to convert TVs to receive digital broadcasts before the end of analog broadcasts in 2009.
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NEW YORK  - Nielsen Media Research has estimated that more than 13 million U.S. households are ill-prepared for the digital TV conversion next year.
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Agency seeks public comment as first step in deciding how far Internet service providers can go before they transcend "reasonable network management" and run afoul of federal policy.
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Crossover to digital televisions is happening earlier than expected, with North America expected to follow suit soon.
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Consumers are racing to replace their aging televisions with high-definition TVs. Trouble is, many are still using devices and services that can't fill those HDTVs with enough visual information to make them look their best.
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An entirely new generation of digital TVs is being produced now, but manufacturers are using ingenuity and wherewithal to try to distinguish their products from each other's in unique ways.
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The United States led calls on Monday to  allocate a prime tranche of the radio frequency spectrum for  use by digital television, in a move that would create a multi  billion-dollar market for that technology.
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CEA says majority of U.S. households now have at least one digital television.
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A new political action committee supports candidates who speak for the consumer when it comes to copyright law. The group doesn't have the big bucks of the entertainment companies, but it's just getting started. By Katie Dean.
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A group of broadcasters, consumer electronics vendors, and civil rights groups pledged Wednesday to leave no television viewers behind as the U.S. transitions to digital over-the-air broadcasts by February 2009.
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Television broadcasters on Monday launched an advertising campaign to fight a technology industry proposal to transmit high-speed Internet service over unused airwaves.
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(InfoWorld) - The association of television broadcasters launched a campaign on Monday designed to persuade the Federal Communications Commission not to allow portable wireless Internet services in the so-called "white spaces" of TV spectrum. The move pits powerful broadcasters against some of the biggest names in technology, including Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Dell. The broadcasters said they began airing a television advertisement as well as print ads in several Capital Hill publications on Monday. They also planned to send a letter to the FCC arguing that enabling portable wireless Internet services in the white spaces will degrade TV service for consumers just as they spend billions of dollars buying new digital TV sets. "This investment should not be jeopardized by the introduction of unlicensed personal and portable devices that are sure to interfere with television reception," the letter reads. The campaign from the National Association of Broadcasters and the Association for Maximum Service Television comes in response to anÂ FCC report detailing its testing of prototype devices from the technology giants, which are working together as theÂ White Space Coalition. The companies, also including Hewlett-Packard, EarthLink, and Philips Electronics North America, had submitted prototypes of products that could operate in the portion of a spectrum band that a TV broadcaster doesn't use, known as white space. The devices were designed to look for broadcasts in the spectrum and then transmit only if the spectrum was free. But the FCC found that the devices didn't consistently detect the signals and could sometimes cause interference. The FCC has already approved transmission in the spectrum for fixed devices. The prototypes submitted by the technology companies were of portable products. However, two weeks after the FCC released its report,Â Microsoft filed a letter with the FCCÂ explaining that the device it submitted was badly damaged and that's why it failed to adequately detect broadcast signals. The broadcasters say that even if the devices work as designed, they won't protect digital TV sets from "devastating interference." That interference would cause an unacceptable hit on quality, they say. "While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not," Alan Frank, NAB's chairman, said in a press release. Even though the FCC found that the prototype devices don't consistently work properly, the agency said it is open to the possibility that future devices could perform better.