Broadcasters may have to pay extra for the right to deliver Mobile DTV
As a geek who just wants to enjoy gadgets, it can be very hard to understand the complicated spider web of media rights -- it's easily the kind of thing that puts one into an outrage when things like Hulu being pulled from Boxee happen. The problem is of course money, but this one is just too crazy, so we'll spell it out for you. Lets say a broadcaster pays NBC for the exclusive right to broadcast the network's signal in the Los Angeles area. Now obviously the exclusivity means that the broadcaster is the only one who can deliver that content in that area. Well evidently just because they paid for the right to broadcast the signal to HDTVs and cable customers, doesn't necessarily mean they own the rights to broadcast that signal to mobile portable device. Yeah, that's right, networks want broadcasters to pay extra for that. The part that makes this really ridiculous is that the older NTSC standard worked just fine on mobile portable devices without any extra licensing fees, but now that we have one type of signal for stationary, and one for mobile, they have to pay more. Gotta love those content creators.
