Audio Video News

As part of a National Broadband Plan, the Federal Communications Commission will try to persuade broadcasters to relinquish some of the spectrum allocated just last year in the DTV transition.

The <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov">Federal Communications Commission</A> (FCC) will likely raise limits on ownership of television stations when it releases new regulatory proposals on Tuesday June 2, according to reports from Washington.

This is another one of those bad news, good news stories. The bad news is that the Federal Communications Commission has caved in to the movie industry's demand to disable the component video interface on high-def devices. The good news is that the studios can use this so-called selectable output control only under very specific circumstances, to protect fresh video on demand titles.

Michael Powell, the newly appointed chairman of the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A>, announced March 29 to the House Telecommunications Subcommittee that his agency will soon begin reviewing ownership caps on broadcast television and other forms of media.

Despite competitive pressure from direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services, cable providers have managed to push subscription rates up faster than the pace of inflation, according to a report issued by the Federal Communications Commission at the beginning of January.

The <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> has turned down an appeal by a California-based Internet service provider hoping to piggyback its services on local cable television lines. <A HREF="http://www.ivn.net/">Internet Ventures, Inc.</A> had tried to exploit what it saw as a loophole in cable-access law that might have let the company use unallocated bandwidth for its Internet service.