FCC cancels white space meeting to focus on digital TV transition
By Darren Murph 
posted December 15th 2008 12:05AM
posted December 15th 2008 12:05AM
[Via phonescoop]
posted December 15th 2008 12:05AM
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d bags
Our government at work, you got to love them.
He looks like Stephen Colbert in 20 years.
i would say notcolbert in some negative years
Oh please. You know perfectly well the reason for the delay is to get a Democratically appointed FCC to do all these things. Come February the Obama appointments will have the upper hand.
and your point? what would that have to do with anything? you just made no sense at all but you proved your an upset mcCain supporter GET OVER IT!
Clearly sarcasm is beyond you. And no, I was not a McCain supporter. For that matter, what makes you think I'm even American?
A little off, guys. Use of whitespaces, which is wifi-like unlicensed use (as opposed to auctioned-off exclusive rights) of empty TV channels, was already approved by the FCC at one of the last meetings. You wrote about it here:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/05/fcc-votes-yes-on-unlicensed-white-space-use/
What the discussion at the Dec. 18th meeting was to be about was a proposal by company called M2Z, to buy spectrum at auction and use part of that spectrum to provide free nation-wide broadband. That free service, unfortunately, would be filtered. You've also written about it here:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/16/fcc-chairman-looking-to-kill-free-internet-plan/
Further proof that anyone who considers blogging to be a legitimate form of journalism is a moron.
Consistency and fact-checking? Bah, to hell with it all!
or even spell-checking, for that matter. I think you mean two months away, not an imminent event two months ago, Darren.
This is also likely to be partially due to the legislation that just passed both houses that, if signed into law, will require the FCC to enact a plan by Jan 15, 2009 to allow for extensions to analog TV service for public safety and DTV information [S.3663 / H. R. 7013].
Well, hell. My birthday is February 17th, and my occupation is transferring legacy analog media to digital formats. Sorry everyone.
Should "just over two months ago" read "just over two months away"?
Proofreading FTL
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed it.
Caving to requests from Democratic lawmakers = Democrats, brainless Obamaniacs!
Get real you ignorant fools you have gotten the short end of the stick, Now shit on it like good sheeple.
Incoherent thoughts FTW?
"Sheeple" now i like that...you, not so much.
A spade is a spade is a spade. I don't care whom you vote into office. Nothing is going to dramatically change. Any person thinking otherwise ignorant of our political system and should go read then come back and complain.
Whether it be Obama or McCain (had he won) the way things are going are not going to change any time soon. Power breeds greed and greed breeds selfishness, which starts a vicious cycle that neither helps our country nor the human race as a whole. The more I read about some of the scientific breakthroughs happening and where we *could* be rather than where we *are* leads me to believe and see that the road our political system is taking will not be beneficial to us later down the road.
Capitalism has turned into a shell game where larger companies just move around all the small ones but are still the same major company *ahem bell*. I'm for innovation and making money just as the next person, but at some point this type of system like all systems before it will become stagnant and no longer be useful in order for us to leap past our predecessors and grasp the amazing science in front of us and utilize to better humankind.
One of *the* biggest issues will be our country, its political system, our economic system, Europe and its economic system and terrorism. Terrorist hate everyone but themselves and would like nothing more than to see *everyone* who is not them or like them dead. I'm fairly certain this includes idiots who think they can de-nounce being American and/or European. I mean you plan to rationalize with folks who strap bombs to themselves and walk into what is more or less a church and kill everyone? Yeah sounds like a grrrreat plan to me, tell me how that works out for ya.
So....as far as this FCC deal? The heck with Feb all the morons who *don't* have cable or sat at this point and *haven't* bought a new turner deserve to have no tv for being ignorant. I have cable and see the stupid commercials and they aren't even relevant to *anyone* who subscribes to any service for TV. It *only* applies to peoples with rabbit ears and tin foil. Not only that but the stupid things are practically free with the vouchers the Fed Gov.t doled out to everyone...I wonder how much that cost the tax payers. I should get a $40 check just for the fact that I helped pay for the schmucks that basically got something for free. If that is the case then why didn't the government buy those same people rabbit ears years ago? What a waste.
As for the free wireless? I have a feeling it'll have some issues if not cause issues to current used frequencies. I read the PDF that the FCC put out and it was possible to switch to an open frequency as well as find ones in use, but the numbers seemed a little worrisome. I think some of the numbers were around 60% or 70% of the test devices could find a frequency in use. I don't know about you but I'd rather that number at say 98% + before allowing any sort of device screw around with frequencies that could possibly disturb other electronic devices. I know this can be fixed and hopefully will before launch of a retail product. Even in retail crazy crap can happen. I read an article today from http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=43404 about a fellow using a retail UHF/VHF antenna used for watching TV on a boat that jammed GPS for the whole bay and several miles out to see! This thing was within FCC specs yet was able to screw up GPS in a fairly large area. The issue from what I understood dealt with the preamplifier built into the antenna.
You know only about 2 people are going to spend the time to bother reading that, this is a gadget blog, we like our comments witty, sarcastic, illogical and stupid.
Here are some of our favourite examples:
"Firrrrst!!!11"
"But will it blend?"
"Does it play Crysis/Doom"
"Thats what she said"
"I dont see any electronics,i just see a hot asian chick"
And of course anything by Clak or iEye
True that
You forgot, "And I for one welcome our ______ overlords."
What I don't understand is: even after a couple of years of media discussion on this, how anyone cannot yet be aware of this transition. The Luddites who don't probably don't even own or will ever own one of these new fangled movin' pikshure boxes...
Is there more to do?? Looks like the agency is just spinning wheels rather than make more important decisions :-) at least it will hopefully keep them occupied so they won't have resources to censor TV to "morality standards" developed at the dawn of civilization.
this post should just be deleted... what's the point?
"...we're struggling to understand why an agency this large can't..."
It would perhaps be more appropriate to post news when a government bureaucracy *could.* Alas Darren, my dear friend, with government bureaucracy, all things are [im]possible.
Hey, get your heads out of your asses and get me some free country wide Wifi.
I could care less about all the 70 year olds who will lose their TV because they fail to upgrade to something that can handle a digital signal.
Yes, I know, I have no heart.
FCC - Fuckers Choking Communications
Can't you sheeple see??? They want to clear up the airwaves for Emergency use to dispatch between agencies and cops, firefighters, that kind of stuff. Now why would they want to do this all of a sudden now, about 7 years after 9/11??? And if you think about it, it has to be foreshadowing something, something big and disastrous, right here in the US, Martial Law and Biological attack possibly??? You can thank our Pagan/Luciferian worshiping government for that. Oh and 9/11 was an inside job!!!
lol.. then while they're at it... figuratively clearing things up for the Emergency Personnel... get rid of Redneck Connect, aka sprint/nextel... and forbid nextel from using those frequencies...
engadget: ...but we're struggling to understand why an agency this large can't work towards auctioning a slice of soon-to-be-freed airwaves for widespread internet use while educating consumers on the digital TV transition that's coming in February.
answer: two words; gub'ment.
We all know the transition will come as a surprise to everyone (Other than ourselves). They recently tested it in our area for TEN MINUTES, and the support lines were overcrowded with calls. No one knew anything about cable boxes, people can't afford them in this recession, and worst of all, the news recently had a story of how to set one of the boxes up and they couldn't get any to work on their test TV! Older people are going to be the worst effected, and you can't just tell them to "Go buy a new TV or box".
I think we all know there wont be a transition at this point. Ever. It will take place, too many older people and struggling/poor people will complain and it'll be turned all back on again.
The FCC will need to make available teams of people for every city in the country to go out and help these people to get their boxes purchased and set up.
Just wait for it.
Actually, this switch-over, is big. I work for a PBS station, and quite honestly, there is so much ignorance out there about the switch over, it is scary. Hell, we have had FCC officials ask us questions, like what UHF is. (ugh). This switch will go over quickly, and smoothly for most of the nation. For the relatively small percentage that don't have cable and satellite, it is likely to cause a TON of problems.