"TV everywhere." Sounds nice doesn't it? this is the thin end of a wedge that will end the right to privacy forever. Plus free TV. More below the fold.
A few days ago, I was at a conference on the “Future of Television” and what I heard chilled me to the bone. The right to privacy is going to be totally abolished and they’re going to sugar coat it with the name “TV Everywhere.”
For decades, there were two modes of broadcast television, VHF (channels 2-13) and UHF (channels 14-83), and they were financed by commercials or pledge drives. As the public owned the electromagnetic fields that did the waving, the government was able to control, to some extent, what was on them.
It was a one-way service, it was easy, and it was free.
Then came cable. You had to pay for CaTV, and the coaxial cable was able to transmit far more signals than over the air. They could also scramble a bunch of signals and charge extra to let you see them. But you knew that already, just look at your bill. For the most part, aside from the ever-rising costs, nobody objected. There were now hundreds of channels, most of which only a tiny percentage of the population care about.
Now the cable services get their content from scrambled satellite signals, and for a fee, so can you. Again, except for the costs and occasional technical glitches, nobody complains. But here’s where things get complicated. The satellite signals travel along the same magnetic field everything else does, so if it weren’t scrambled it would be under the same rules as analog broadcast stations, more on that later.
As most people without cable remember much to vividly, broadcast TV went digital last spring, this means that broadcasters can put out more “data” per channel then they could with analog. While this never affected VHF, UHF underwent a vast change at what’s called the “700 megahertz (MHz) spectrum”, which is roughly where channels 52-69 are. Since 2002, channels 52-59 were used for things like wifi and cellular phones, and since last February, the rest were due to be reallocated, creating a land-grab for the remaining space, and the likes of Google are now in the game.
In other words, a good deal of UHF is now two-way, and you are unwittingly broadcasting to the cable/phone companies all sorts of information and they can send you individualized programming. The concept is called “TV Everywhere!” Your virtual cable box can follow you on your computer (or i-pod or celphone) wherever you go, and AT&T, Google et al can track your every move.
Here’s how it works: Steve Jobs announces a new I-pod. It’s really cheap compared to earlier versions, less than half price, but there’s a catch: even if you download only stuff you already own, there are commercials, which you HAVE to listen to. If you don’t press a button to prove you are listening to the commercials, then the thing shuts down. They’ll sell you an app to shut the feature down, but it’s so expensive that it would have been cheaper to buy the more expensive i-pod.
Big Brother: The Beta version! Not only that, with digital, it’s now easier to scramble the signal, and the regular broadcast networks may start charging to let people watch what used to be free TV.
Welcome to the Tens, folks, it seems 1984 has arrived a little late.