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Broadcast Flag shot down!

Great news from the legal front: a court has ruled that the FCC overstepped its bounds in requiring all new HDTV hardware to have broadcast flag features after July 1, 2005 and promptly struck it down in a unanimous decision. Here's a background piece from last year outlining all the problems I saw with the law.

This is especially good news to those building their own home theater PCs that are HD-capable and even better news for manufacturers that won't have to have every device vetted by a secret panel before it can go to market.

I was just about to announce that the EFF is throwing another build-in, where they have an open invitation for those wanting to build HD-recording, linux based PVR machines which would be illegal after July 1 of this year. Now that they've won this battle, it doesn't have the same urgency (less than two months was left before the lock-down), but the event in San Francisco is still going off on Saturday, May 21st, as both a celebration and a hacking fest. Details follow:

***** EFF's HD-PVR Build-In *****
-- Saturday, May 21, 2005 --

Want to make your television work for you?  Build your own high-definition personal video recorder (PVR) before the FCC's broadcast flag mandate takes that opportunity away.

Join EFF and friends for an HD-PVR build-in. You bring a computer and HDTV tuner card, and we'll help you get it up and running as a PVR. We'll be installing MythTV, an open source software package that lets your machine function like a TiVo in high-def: pause live TV, schedule recordings over the web, and manage your media the way you want it.

It's not all fun and games, though. The FCC's broadcast flag mandate, set to take effect July 1, 2005, prevents manufacturers from making HDTV (ATSC) tuners that give users access to the unencrypted signal that's broadcast over-the-air. The good news is that tuners made before July 1, such as pcHDTV.com's HD-3000, will continue to work flag-free after the deadline. Building your own HD-PVR now helps ensure you'll have open an media platform now and into the future.

If you're interested, check out recommended hardware configurations at http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/cookbook/guide.php#requirements

RSVP to BuildYourTV@eff.org to give us a rough head count before we finalize the details.

Links:
Broadcast flag:  http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/
pcHDTV: http://www.pchdtv.com/
HD-PVR cookbook: http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/cookbook/

Scheduled from 10-5, at the EFF Offices in San Francisco, California:
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA  94110 (Google Maps)

by Matt Haughey May 6, 2005 in News

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