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FCC Deserves a Digital Thanks for Nothing (TechNews.com):
By Rob Pegoraro Sunday, November 9, 2003; Page F07

The Federal Communications Commission has figured out how to make digital television more appealing to the millions of consumers who haven't bought into it: Force manufacturers to make hardware that's less capable than what's sold today.

The FCC did this when it voted Tuesday to require consumer-electronics firms to support the "broadcast flag" -- a tiny bit of code in digital-TV (DTV) broadcasts -- by July 1, 2005, in any hardware that can receive an over-the-air digital signal. That means not only TV sets but also videotape, hard-drive and DVD recorders and even computers with digital-TV tuner cards.

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