Jack.O'keeffe@f26.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Jack O'keeffe) (02/21/91)
Index Number: 13689
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
President Bush signed the decoder chip bill last October, and the FCC
is now in the process of developing regulations to implement the bill.
This will require all new TV sets to have built-in decoders beginning
in 1993. But there may be a problem. The EIA (Electronic Industries
Association) which represents TV manufacturers fought against the bill
in congress - and they lost. Now it looks like they are trying to make
the bill ineffective by advocating that the FCC approve a standard for
decoder chips that would provide much LESS captioning than our present
TeleCaptioning Decoders. EIA would turn progressive legislation into
a great step BACKWARDS for TeleCaptioning!
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Captioning
Institute proposed a specification for the chip which would do all
the present captioning, and more. The EIA wants a chip standard
that would do much less. Here's a comparison of the two proposals:
___________________________________________________________________
FEATURE ORIGINAL PBS/NCI PROPOSED EIA
SPECIFICATION STANDARD
Caption Channel 1 mandatory mandatory
Caption Channel 2 mandatory optional
Text Channel 1 mandatory optional
Text Channel 2 mandatory optional
Lower-case characters mandatory optional until 1996
Accented characters mandatory optional until 1996
Color (see note) mandatory optional
Italics mandatory may display Italics
as inverse video.
Display area for top four rows and all fifteen rows
pop-on captions bottom four rows
Number of simultaneous eight four
caption rows in pop-on
mode
display area for bottom four rows all fifteen rows
roll-up captions
____________________________________________________________________
Note: Color coded captions are used in European countries to indicate
which character is speaking in some movies, plays, etc.
If the FCC adopts the EIA standard, the immediate effect will be to
disable text services like ABC's "PLUS" program listing, and the text
news services in some states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, etc.) The long
range effect will be that we are locked in to a wimpish caption spec
that will stifle growth of captioned TV services.
Realize what we are talking about here, the difference between two
three dollar chips - one developed by supporters of captioned TV
and one developed by opponents of captioned TV.
What can we do to counter EIA's destructive lobbying effort? WRITE
to the FCC and tell them they should approve the original PBS/NCI
specification, not the inadequate EIA proposal. Tell them we need
to continue present text services. Tell them NOT to lock us into
an inadequate standard. Where to write:
The Honorable James H. Quello and The Honorable Alfred Sykes
Commissioner Chairman
Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission
1919 M Street, NW 1919 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20554 Washington, DC 20554
Do it now!
... Xpress Yourself!
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