The FCC is already drafting digital TV compatibility standards for how new TVs will connect to cable systems, he said, and added he will recommend their adoption in April if the industries don't find a compromise before then. The move may avert a cross-industry conflict that would impede sales of TVs that can receive and display the digital signals U.S. broadcasters must have on the air by 2003. The conduit defined the content. But the rules where conduit defined content have been rewritten by digitization. And that's television.
Televisions are almost all still analog.
Where broadcast digital TV is available, it is not yet carried on cable. To watch cable, you would have to watch it on your old set, or employ a converter that dissipates much of the resolution advantage of digital transmission. That's a little like riding on a train and having to move from first class to coach class at the border. This law, for the first time, permits satellite carriers to transmit local television broadcast signals into local markets. Antitrust Prominent experts in the Microsoft antitrust case discussed some proposed measures that US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson might impose if the case reaches a penalty phase, at the American Economic Association's annual conference.