OK so I run across this opinion piece by Cory Doctorow which has almost every conspiracy theory out there about HD.

Now saying that, Cory has done some of his homework. He does have mostly good facts in his article, but some of the reasoning doesn’t make sense.

“The nervy broadcasters asked the commission to leave all that fallow spectrum intact, and furthermore, to allocate them even more spectrum, so that they could broadcast HD signals alongside of the analog ones. Once enough Americans had bought high def-receivers, the FCC could switch off the analog towers, return the spectrum to the American public and then, then it could be sold to the likes of Moto for mobile applications.”

Here, Cory trys to say that the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) gave broadcasters more of the broadcast spectrum because they were greedy, but in the same paragraph, he states they also at a future date (April 2009) are going to give back the analog spectrum. Well which is it? Are they getting more or less spectrum in the end? The answer is less.

I attached a picture of the US frequency spectrum from 2003 above. If you look at those big swaths of teal (blue-green) you will see they take up huge amounts of the spectrum. These swaths represent AM/FM radio and our analog TV of today so you can see why it makes sense to upgrade these and move to more efficient signals. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just good common sense.

Then he gets into the broadcast flag, HDMI, and HDCP. You know from my other articles that I haven’t been a big fan of these DRM schemes either and since they already have been cracked (there is a German HDMI switch that sends out non HDCP signals) I don’t worry too much about this, but for the average user it will mean a full upgrade to a HDMI/HDCP HDTV to watch their DTV HDTV.

In some terms this is a good thing. Why? What was the last great thing (before this whole HD thing) you saw out of SDTV’s? PIP (Picture in Picture)? Whoop de doo! But since HDTVs we can now have a potentially better picture on larger screens and we have many technologies along with features that are competing for your $$$. Technologies such as LCD, DLP, Plasma, SED, Deep Color. These techologies and features have given many companies good profits and providing good paying jobs. Along with this it will also drive out all those old powersucking, glass laden, heavy TV’s. Have you ever picked up a 42″ glass tube TV? Bet it took more than two men to do it. Comparatively speaking it is a lot easier to pick up a 42″ LCD. It still takes two people, but its more about the bulk than weight.

Then Cory goes a whole new direction getting into the Blu-Ray/HD DVD debate and starts talking about AAC, region coding, managed copy, and the ICT (which hasn’t been implemented anywhere). I guess Cory doesn’t remember CSS. These schemes are there just so studios can sue some big underground distributer under the DMCA for “circumventing” their DRM scheme. That is the only reason. For the average Joe user they don’t care if you make a backup copy for home use, just so long as you don’t make another one for your neighbor ;>

Opinion: High-Definition Video–Bad For Consumers, Bad For Hollywood - News by InformationWeek