A cabal of TV studios and entertainment executives is planning to tighten the guidelines on digital video broadcasts, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The digital freedom advocacy group's Who Controls Your Television? report alleges that the Digital Video Broadcasting Project is planning standards that would embed DRM technology into television sets. 

The EFF said that the chips would allow broadcasters to control the content users are allowed to capture on digital video recorder boxes.

The DVB Project is a Geneva-based industry group formed to establish standards for digital broadcasting systems and protocols in 35 countries in Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa.

Its proposed standards could "take away consumers' rights and abilities to use lawfully acquired content so that each use can be sold back to them piecemeal", argues the EFF.

The group claims that the new regulations could allow broadcasters to prevent viewers from copying programmes onto home digital video recorders, block users from transferring programmes to a laptop or a PC, and even render certain set-top devices useless.

"The restrictions can be changed at the whim of the rights holder. It may be that today you can record your favourite programme and transfer it to DVD for long-term storage. But next week, you could be prevented from recording or archiving to DVD," said the EFF.

The DVB Project standards are part of a larger plan backed by major US movie and television studios seeking to gain a stranglehold on how content is distributed, claims the EFF.

"Hollywood has long pursued this goal in the US, but its schemes in DVB have taken place behind the public's back and outside the scrutiny of elected officials," said the report.

"If and when American studios press for special regulatory protection for the DVB Project's DRM standards, public officials must be urged to protect consumer rights, sustain vibrant competition and innovation, and call Hollywood's bluff. "