FCC Report & Order Overview

[Gregg Lengling]

FCC Report & Order Overview
 
 
On 9/7/04, the FCC issued a new Report & Order that requires all broadcasters to send PSIP in their digital television broadcast, effective 120 days after publication in the Federal Register (estimated deadline: February 1, 2005). The R&O adopts the ATSC A/65 PSIP standard in its entirety, with no exceptions.

Static PSIP systems will not comply with the FCC mandate, due to the changing nature of the parameters that must be signaled. To comply with the FCC regulations, stations must implement dynamic PSIP (i.e. PSIP that changes to reflect changing configuration and actual schedule). Further, the dynamic information present in the broadcast PSIP needs to be accurate and up-to-date.

In addition, if EITs (program information) refer to the NTSC channel, then your NTSC transmission must carry the correct TSID in line 21 of the VBI.  If you have an Evertz closed caption generator, you may already have the hardware to do this with.

The FCC also clarified the DTV closed captioning rules.  In order for a program to count toward the quarterly captioning quota, a broadcaster must send out both CEA-708 and encapsulated CEA-608 captions.