DVD recorders will soon be useless

For years, I warned that digital TV signals were inferior to the old analog signals, because the nature of digital signals would cause them to break up. Nobody listened. Congress, the FCC, and the TV industry chose instead to stand around and play with themselves.

Now a new standard for digital TV is finally being developed to remedy this problem, and some stations have already started using it - though you need a whole new TV set to watch using this standard. Now there's another problem in addition to having to buy a new set. Some stations are encrypting their signals under the new standard using digital "rights" management.

DRM is a refuge of scoundrels. It already rendered digital music tracks useless. When consumers transferred their music to a new computer, tracks with DRM stopped working. That's like if records were designed to break if you got a new record player (though Panasonic did little short of that with their shitty styluses in the '90s). How will DRM will affect the new TV standard? With the new standard, stations may prevent DVD recorders from recording off the air.

The FCC has a mandate to make sure radio and TV stations operate in the public interest and provide free service to the public. You might think free over-the-air TV is here to stay. But the FCC is doing nothing to prevent encryption of broadcast signals, despite the mandate to make sure these signals are free.