Free as in free speech pc hdtv

[John Kelleher]

Free as in free speech pc hdtv

I live in Cambridge and am a new subscriber to this list. I've joined
to ask for your comments and assistance. Some of this information may
be old news to some of you. However, I've searched the list archives
and haven't found any mention of this issue. I'll try to lay out things
for people new to this information, with apologies to the more
informed.

Our family doesn't have cable or satellite (because of grumpy, stingy
me), and normally I don't become actively interested in consumer
technologies like HDTV until it is ludicrously cheaper to use them
instead of what we already have. However, reputable sources tell me
that free as in free speech HDTV will be gone in the US as of July 2005
because of the "broadcast flag"; e.g., see the EFF web site:

http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/

By the way, free as in free speech hdtv even now only applies to "over
the air" digital broadcasts, as cable and satellite already require you
to use proprietary boxes. The idea that at some point you just flat
will not even be able to record a TV show to see later without the
explicit permission of a "robust" chip in every device in the chain
doesn't make me that happy. 

The upshot is, it is still legal to manufacture over-the-air hdtv
capture cards that ignore the "broadcast flag" until July 2005. It will
also remain legal, as it is now, to possess and to use those soon-to-be
"legacy" cards (to record shows, for example).

So, I've decided to buy the linux-friendly pchdtv 3000 card when it
becomes available, just to have during the coming years when there
won't be any more free as in free speech TV in the US:

http://www.pchdtv.com/

But since I've decided to get the card, I've decided I might try to get
it up and running. According to pchdtv, I have a modern-enough
computer, I have a 3 GB partition that I could dedicate to an install
of Fedora Core 1 or 2 (required), so maybe the family could at least
watch some broadcast hdtv on our big computer monitor (which runs, not
true hd, but at least does 1600x1200 at 68 Hz quite nicely) while I
figure out what to do next.

If any of you have thoughts or comments, I'd love to hear them. I
haven't bought anything yet, so you could, on the one hand, warn me off
the whole deal.

Alternatively, I'd love to have somebody more experienced, or just
somebody curious like me, to express an interest in coming over and
seeing if we couldn't get a picture up and running, once the card gets
into production and I purchase it.

John Kelleher


		
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