[mythtv-users] Re: commercially-produced mythboxes -- an idea

[Brad Templeton]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 12:43:30AM +0000, Gavin Hurlbut wrote:
> Brad Templeton <brad+myth at templetons.com> wrote:
> > And of course, we continue to spend a great deal of effort trying to
> > fight the rules in the first place, both here, and the new rules for
> > DVB being promoted overseas, and a similar rule for ATSC in Canada.
> > That's our biggest effort, we have folks like Cory Doctorow travelling
> > the world going to standards meetings to deflect these efforts.
> 
> Care to share a URL for a reliable source for the ATSC rule you speak of for
> Canada?  All of the research I have done has shown me that nothing of the sort
> is planned in Canada.

Don't have it in my head, just recall a note of it on our internal
mailing lists.  Cory or Wendy would have an exact reference.

As you probably know, there is very little ATSC broadcast in Canada,
in fact 6 months ago apparenly only City-TV was doing it though I have
heard Global might have started.   The vast majority of Canadians get
TV from cable and satellite, which both have HDTV offerings in Canada,
and in the case of Rogers, an HDTV-PVR is offered (my mother has one).
All locked up of course.

The tv stores in Canada don't even sell ATSC tuners for HD-ready sets,
as there is no demand for them, though no doubt the TVs sold there will
be featuring them because of the U.S. requirement -- is this becoming
the case?

Annoyingly, the low use of ATSC in Canada means that ATI, a Canadian
company, doesn't even market the All-in-wonder HD card in Canada.

That's a shame because if they did, and we could keep the BF out of
Canada, it woudl become relatively easy for people in the US to buy
non-BF compliant cards from Canada, though technically they could
get stopped at the border.   It still could be the case that cards
like the pcHDTV could be sold in Canada (where, if there is no flag,
it's legal) after the 2005 deadline and somehow make their way over
the border where they would be legal to operate privately here.

Here's one article on the battle.

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200409/msg00036.html