Mobile DTV Device Makers Seek Waiver from Analog Receiver Requirements

CE makers are seeking a blanket waiver to exempt mobile DTV devices from FCC Part 15 requirements that all TV devices include analog and legacy ATSC DTV tuners. Dell and LG filed a joint petition, seeking a waiver for battery-operated mobile devices. Separately, Hauppauge Computer Works sought a broader waiver to cover any “television receivers capable of mobile use by consumers” that has a mobile DTV receiver. Comments on both requests, which the commission will consider together, are due June 4 under an accelerated process. Replies are due June 11.

Getting the waiver is critical to a pre-holiday 2010 rollout of mobile DTV services, Dell and LG said in their waiver request, signed by their counsel and former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley. “If mobile DTV receivers are to be widely available by the 2010 holiday buying season, relief must be granted as rapidly as possible,” they said. “Ideally, by mid summer so that manufacturers have sufficient lead time to finalize their production schedules to meet the expected high consumer demand for mobile DTV.” The public policy debate over digital TV versus analog is over, they said. “Indeed, this request is a natural consequence of the Commission’s transition to digital television,” they said.

Requiring mobile DTV devices to include analog TV receivers “simply makes no sense in today’s all-digital world,” Hauppauge said. “At a time when there has been concern about cell phone users consuming so much network bandwidth by watching videos through Internet connections, the FCC can alleviate spectrum congestion by encouraging live broadcast TV usage,” it said. Plus, analog receivers are power-hungry and inefficient, including them in phones or other mobile devices would unnecessarily add to the cost and size of the devices, and require greater processing capabilities, Hauppauge said. “Mobile devices should not have to be burdened with a spectrum hogging, power hungry analog tuner that no one wants or can use,” it said. Even NTIA’s coupon-eligible converter boxes didn’t include analog receivers and the FCC “never claimed that the DTV-only converters violated the rule … even though the converters were TV reception devices under Section 15.3(w),” Hauppauge said.

"No one has designed these products to have analog tuners in them [and] a waiver process is the proper way to deal with that,” said John Taylor, LG vice president. “June 12 is behind us and all the full power stations successfully moved to all-digital,” he said of the DTV transition. “For these kinds of devices … it just really doesn’t make any sense to have analog tuners.”