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Your local TV stations, or more specifically their greedy parent companies, are to blame for the hike in Retransmission Fees. The ACA expects fees to keep going up. These fees vary from region to region.

The station owners have been using money from fees to buy more stations so they can leverage cable companies to raise fees.

Getting rid of the fees would require fixing the retransmission consent provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act. That forces cable operators and other rebroadcasters to obtain permission from broadcasters before carrying their programming.

It also wouldn't hurt to break up the cable companies and to break up the companies that own scads of local stations.

The Wheeler version of Net Neutrality didn't block T Mobile's Binge On zero rating

http://www.multichannel.com/ne...

Net Neutrality is a slogan they use to promote Title II regulation of ISPs, i.e. they want to regulate their complements. It reminds me of Joel On Software's memorable line that 'smart companies try to commoditize their complements'. E.g. Microsoft encouraging clone PCs. That drove down hardware prices which meant a consumer buying hardware and software would have more free cash to spend on software.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com...

Once again: demand for a product increases when the price of its complements decreases. In general, a company's strategic interest is going to be to get the price of their complements as low as possible. The lowest theoretically sustainable price would be the "commodity price" - the price that arises when you have a bunch of competitors offering indistinguishable goods. So:

Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements.

If you can do this, demand for your product will increase and you will be able to charge more and make more.

Similarly Title II regulation of ISPs theoretically means that ISPs will be less able to charge Google a premium to be on a fast lane and/or less able to charge consumers a premium to access that fast lane. Meanwhile Google would be unregulated and free to do non Net Neutral stuff.

Sounds good in theory? Well even under Wheeler the FCC allowed for zero rating, e.g. T Mobile's Binge On, though he muttered he might rule differently about future offerings.

http://www.multichannel.com/ne...

"Tom Wheeler's comments regarding T-Mobile's new BingeOn zero-rating plan calls to mind the good familiar cop/bad cop routine," said Randolph May, president of free market think tank, the Free State Foundation. "On the one hand, Wheeler's statement that the plan is pro-competitive and innovative is commendable. On the other hand, his further elaboration that the FCC will monitor the T-Mobile plan for compliance with the Open Internet Order's 'good conduct' rule is disturbing. This is because the vague 'good conduct' standard means anything that Wheeler's Enforcement Bureau says it means on any given day."

Even under Net Neutrality Wheeler said that zero rating was fine. Though he also said it might not be fine of they changed it in the future under the 'general conduct rule'.

http://www.multichannel.com/ne...

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday (Nov. 19) he thought T-Mobile's Binge On zero rating plan was the sort of highly innovative approach the FCC's new network neutrality rules were predicted to thwart, but clearly didn't.

Wheeler, in a press conference following the FCC's November meeting, appeared to endorse the Binge On offering, calling it pro-competitive and innovative. "It is clear in the Open Internet order that we are pro-competition and pro-innovation and clearly, this meets both of those criteria," he said. "It is highly innovative and highly competitive."

He then said that it appeared the plan does not violate the bright-line no paid prioritization rule, but took something off the endorsement.

He said the FCC would keep an eye on Binge On per the general conduct standard in those new open Internet rules, which allows the FCC to look at such business models on a case-by-case basis.

That rule, he elaborated, says a carrier "should not unreasonably interfere with the access to someone who is trying to get to an edge provider and an edge provider who is trying to get to a consumer. So, what we are going to be doing is watching Binge On, keeping and eye on it, and measure it against the general conduct rule."

"The Commission staff is working to make sure it understands the new offering," said FCC director of Media Relations Shannon Gilson, of Binge On following the chairman's press conference.

Binge On is a zero rating plan in which video streaming services including Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu do not count against data allowances.

Commissioner Ajit Pai said following that statement that nobody still knows whether Binge On will pass muster under the general conduct standard. "I don't think it should give any company comfort to know that the state of the law is so unsettled."

Pai said following Wheeler's qualified endorsement that the question remained: "Does T-Mobile's Binge On and any other offerings like it violate the net neutrality order." He said that under the Internet conduct standard nobody can get certainty, which he suggested was illustrated by Wheeler's statement that is was pro-competitive, followed by the signal that it still needed to be vetted under that general conduct standard.

Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said that if someone was looking for a blessing, the chairman appeared to have given it. "someone is looking for a blessing and everyone is kind of holding their breath waiting for a decision. It wasn't an official issuance by the General Counsel's office or the Enforcement Bureau, but they just got the blessing they were seeking and I imagine now we are going to see a lot more offerings like it."

But he also said that holding up those innovative offerings for a moment like the chairman's statement was just the sort of problem he had pointed to with the general conduct standard.

"Tom Wheeler's comments regarding T-Mobile's new BingeOn zero-rating plan calls to mind the good familiar cop/bad cop routine," said Randolph May, president of free market think tank, the Free State Foundation. "On the one hand, Wheeler's statement that the plan is pro-competitive and innovative is commendable. On the other hand, his further elaboration that the FCC will monitor the T-Mobile plan for compliance with the Open Internet Order's 'good conduct' rule is disturbing. This is because the vague 'good conduct' standard means anything that Wheeler's Enforcement Bureau says it means on any given day."

The EFF had concerns about the vagueness of the 'general conduct rule' too

If only Apple made something to change the interface to television, oh I don't know, an Apple TV...

Stop complaining and start coding!

BTW Comcast X1 is gaining a lot of useful features, such as "Team Reminders" for sporting events, "People Also Watched", Custom Playlists for DVR, etc.

This is a very simple situation. Comcast is a huge company leveraging its position as Internet gateway for approximately 20 million subscribers to get cash from others trying to provide services to those customers. In particular, they targeted Netflix because it competes with Comcast's cable TV and video on demand services.

Capacity was never the problem. The interfaces required to upgrade Comcast's interface with Cogent cost a few thousand dollars. Cogent offered to give Comcast those interfaces for free. Netfilx also offered Comcast free caching servers and a royalty free direct peering agreement that would have slashed congestion on the Comcast-Cogent interconnects and reduced both of their costs dramatically. Comcast wasn't interested.

What Comcast wanted was payola to allow Netflix access to Comcast's subscriber base. Comcast didn't care if that came in the form of Netflix using a CDN (Content Delivery Network), who pay Comcast for interconnects, or for direct payments from Netflix. They just wanted their pound of flesh.

Incidentally, in 2014 Netflix made about 267 million dollars in profit. Comcast made over 8 billion. I don't know what Netfilx is paying Comcast, but it can't be more than a drop in the bucket that is Comcast's approximately 69 billion dollar annual revenue. I suspect this was more about hurting Netflix than it is about protecting their bottom line.

Here are some sources backing up the facts and figures.
http://www.marketwatch.com/inv...
http://www.marketwatch.com/inv...
https://gigaom.com/2013/11/11/...
http://www.multichannel.com/ne...
http://www.practicalecommerce....

You can read the official explanation for the very real gag order that prevents the 323 page document from being released. While there is a historical tradition for secrecy, it is not mandatory, and requests to make the preliminary draft public was denied by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and explained here. This is a case where we need wikileaks.

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/mcn-guest-blog/fccs-legal-gymnastics/388213/

That say this is because they are going into areas where Comcast or Time Warner has an existing COAX network. The new competitor builds a FIBER network. Comcast doesn't have a huge advantage since they also have to build their own fiber network to compete.

The technology already exists to crank up COAX cable speeds to 1Gbit.
Docsis 3.1 is allegedly going to be 10/1 Gbit capable, though it will depend on the quality of the COAX to your home.
The only catch is that the hardware isn't ready yet, it's still being designed and built

This was NOT DNS, multiple sites nation wide on static IPs went down for us as seen by AT&T and downdetector saw nearly every point they monitor within the TWC network as down.

I think you may be incorrect on those speeds. Comcast speed tiers are 3/6/25/50/105/515(certain Northeast markets only) There may be regional offers on price but the actual speeds are uniform

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/google-fiber-now-faces-comcasts-250-mbps-offering-provo/2013-08-29>
http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/comcast-light-250-meg-broadband-service-provo/145182

I think that they were fine on the speed, but not sure about the price.

http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/mediacom-expands-usage-based-broadband-plans/145303

Mediacom's lowest cap in the new plan is 150GB. You can choose from plans with various caps, up to 3 TB of usage.

"10GB/mo satellite or cellular" is not the problem here.

Submitter is whining because he likes to torrent, and will have to pay a little more each month to move to a higher usage cap.

NDS (HQ based in Israel) makes the "smart cards" for all the Murdoch companies that require Smart card technology.

ITV Digital / On Digital used smart cards made by Canal+ (A French company).

Canal+ took NDS/Murdoch to court in 2002 accusing them of leaking the French companies data to Pirate websites.
Murdoch settled out of court by agreeing to buy some of Canal+'s non-profitable properties.

Also check out Echostar (Dish Network). NDS did the EXACT same thing to their smart card technology, Echostar took them to court and NDS was found guilty. But jury did not award the $1billion EchoStar was claiming instead they got $100 (yup from 1 billion down to 100 dollars!!) for 2 breached of Californian penal code.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/133249-EchoStar_Wins_Battle_Loses_War_In_News_Corp_Unit_Piracy_Case.php

The major professional and college sports leagues still have long-term exclusive contracts with cable TV.

My goddess! You are so uninformed. Citation please?

I was referring to cable TV as opposed to Internet TV, not cable TV as opposed to direct broadcast satellite TV. According to this article on Multichannel News, ESPN recently renewed a multi-year contract with the NFL to show Monday Night Football. MLB has an online blackout if the game is televised locally.

NFL had an exclusive contract with DISH for years. You couldn't get it on cable at all

By "cable", I was referring refer to any subscription television service organized into tiers of tied channels, regardless of the physical medium. Can you recommend a word for television providers with the same general business model as cable or satellite television that is shorter than than "cable or satellite TV"?

Oh, you mean they had contract with the TV networks, the channels themselves, that are on both cable and satellite?

Yes. The contract is to black out the games online wherever a broadcast, cable, or satellite network has the exclusive right.

I see. So, when pro/college sports make shitty deals with Viacom or Sony you blame Comcast or Cox.

I blame only the league.

O rly?

AT&T seeks more phone deregulation in Alabama
AT&T and Deutsche Telekom push for deregulation of wireless markets
Time Warner seeks Manhattan deregulation

It's trivially easy to find other examples.

Instead it CUT it's deployment spending over the past few years

[citation needed]

That would explain a lot but I looked it up and there appears to be no indication that's the culprit (not sure what is). Here's a link or two or three that says AT&T has increased its wireless capital spending. I found one article claiming what you say in the headline but if you read the article the jist is that the reduction in capital spending was due to a slowdown in their U-verse home fiber buildout.

Seems odd that CNBC would be an "early adopter" and NBC would be actively sandbagging the same project.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/458030-Google_TV_Tunes_To_Turner_HBO_CNBC_Netflix_And_Others.php

Ok. Looks like Google wins this one. Basically, for ~100 million, was it, for On2, they get some tech that might possibly be interesting, and they get a bargaining chip that just made youtube immune to MPEG LA royalties.

The enterprise cap on H.264 royalties is $5 million a year. Bandwidth for YouTube - 75 billion video streams a year - costs $1 million a day. YouTube May Lose $470 Million In 2009

I would find out who your Business Customer Service rep is and contact them about this issue. Bottom line is you will need to install some sort of decryption box to get the signal to the TV’s. This type of conversion has been going for the last 10 years. What they are asking you to do is not out of the ordinary for the industry. The Hotel solution is not going to work for you. That solution requires about 10K worth of gear to make 32 analog channels show up without a box at the TV. This would have to be replicated at every location you need service. They refer to that solution as a Mini-Headend. Some hotels have more advanced system that use special modules that plug into the back of the TV (A BOX) that has the decryption chip built in. So whenever there is a digital signal and it is encrypted, it needs something to unencrypt it, a box. I see some of the posters listed D to A devices and I think I saw a D to D clear QAM device. They cost more than the 32 channel Mini-Headend solution I mentioned earlier. There should be someone at Comcast that can help you work out the best possible solution for you departments needs. Are all these locations fed by direct fiber to mini-nodes or GPON? If so ask if they have a Hotel FTG (Free To Guest) channel package they could switch you to. That should be in the clear analog or digital. Also see this article that explains whats going on... http://www.multichannel.com/article/366818-Cable_Tec_Expo_2009_Comcast_s_Project_Cavalry_Priority_Do_It_Yourself_DTAs.php Good luck,

First, disclaimers. I don't work for Comcast, but I do consult to them. I don't speak for Comcast in any way. I am under NDA, so I can't give you the sort of specific technical information you need. There may be any number of reasons why this thing wouldn't work in your circumstances, or why Comcast wouldn't choose to provide you one.

Having said all of that, you might want to look into the MDTA. It's the "solution" you're sure exists ;-)

It is POSSIBLE that one of these could be connected to your 1 inch (probably 850) hardline. But be aware that it doesn't mix with digital video services, though CableModems and MTAs work fine when hung off of it.

-Peter

Is that integration between phones, smart or otherwise, and computers is not really a technical problem at all; but a business one. Yes, there are some technical details(fiddly bluetooth profile stuff, details of USB networking, etc.); but nothing that competent engineers can't work through, and largely have.

The big issue is that carriers, for the most part, absolutely don't want phone/computer local connections to be useful. And, to the degree that they are willing to let them be, they still want to be paid for it. The real control freaks don't even want stuff like bluetooth OBEX to work, so that you have to get pictures off the phone by MMS ($.50 a pop, ka-ching!) and ringtones and things on to the phone from some walled garden store($2.99/ea, ka-ching!). Even among the more moderate, most of them want you to pay more if you are using the phone as an internet connection for a full PC, even if the phone is a smartphone with an existing data plan.

You can, already, get all kinds of useful integration between PCs and phones, with no stupid proprietary hardware bundling nonsense; but you often have to buy unsubsidized handsets(and then pair them with voice/data plans that are priced to include paying off a handset subsidy) and either pay extra or risk TOS disconnection if you do any serious data tethering.

This is reminds me of seeing stories about this device a while back. A "portable DVR" that would dock to record shows, and then be removable to watch them out and about. Incredibly stupid idea(Why would you want your DVR's capacity to be constrained by a portable form factor, when gigantic 3.5 inch drives cost nearly nothing? Why would you want a DVR that can't record shows when you are out of the house? Why tie the lifetime of a DVR, that should be able to pretty much sit there and Just Work for years, possibly with the occasional HDD upgrade/replacement to the lifespan of a delicate mobile device?). However, the simple, obvious technical solution(make the DVR networked, transfer recordings to whatever mobile device you want) is largely deemed unacceptable by DRM and control-hungry cable companies, so you get this really ugly hack. Similarly, connecting a phone to a computer using existing ubiquitous technologies should be fucking child's play. There is absolutely no need for any proprietary bundle solution, except because of carrier control freakery.

Actually, the cable companies do pay to rebroadcast the content of "broadcast" networks.

This has led to cable companies temporarily losing service while a new agreement is worked out.

For example Mediacom vs. Sinclair

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/BIT_RATE/30860-Cable_Ops_Didn_t_Fund_Research_Into_BitTorrent_Tracker.php Speaks for itself

However, they have infrastructure costs of somewhere around $300 million a year, which they haven't been able to cover with advertising.

According to this article - "YouTube May Lose $470 Million In 2009"

According to the firm's analysis of YouTube traffic and ad strategies, the site is on track to generate about $240 million in revenue in 2009, up about 20% year over year.

But the cost of bandwidth, content licensing, ad-revenue shares, hardware storage, sales and marketing and other expenses will total about $711 million, putting YouTube squarely in the red, the Credit Suisse report estimated. Bandwidth accounts for about 51% of expenses -- with a run rate of $1 million per day -- with content licensing accounting for 36%.

To arrive at the estimated $360 million bandwidth tab for YouTube, the analysts assumed the site will receive 375 million unique visitors in 2009 and that a maximum of 20% of those users are on the site at any given time. Credit Suisse's analysis then assumed each user downloads a video at 400 kilobits per second, to yield a peak bit run-rate for YouTube of 30 million megabits per second.

or knew how to make a new /. Well anyway here it is: http://www.multichannel.com/article/195969-Time_Warner_Cable_Tweaks_Bandwidth_Billing_Plans.php

there is which is cheaper then $150 and which the linked article doesn't mention.

They are also adding a $99 unlimited plan.

Article Link

Most of the articles I saw regarding losses were based on this projection.

This is NOT new news, and that at LEAST 2 WEEKS ago i read about this. Somewhere in the article Japan was mentioned.

And, no, i'm not referring to this even OLDER article:

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/BIT_RATE/6720-Microsoft_s_TV_Ads_That_Watch_You.php

You're doing a real bad job of it, then. We're sorry that we don't all read the same articles and newsletters as you.

This is NOT new news, and that at LEAST 2 WEEKS ago i read about this. Somewhere in the article Japan was mentioned.

And, no, i'm not referring to this even OLDER article:

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/BIT_RATE/6720-Microsoft_s_TV_Ads_That_Watch_You.php

http://www.multichannel.com/article/162373-Verizon_Flip_Flops_On_DTV_Delay.php?rssid=20059/

If the people you allege are hurt by the government action are supporting the action, there's no real basis to say the action is being taken as a result of corruption by the people you allege are helped by it.

Well, they sort of are doing something like that.

Ars ran a story last week, FCC okays DTV "analog nightlight" rules. Unfortunately, it's only for 30 days - seems like it should be 90 or 180 days. Also, apparently, this doesn't apply to all markets, so I think the FCC is kind of messing up there.

Partly, though, I'm confused about how anyone could possibly not know about the digital TV transition and not be prepared for it at this point? Every time I try to watch OTA broadcasts using my digital converter box, I'm constantly being annoyed by text overlays obscuring the programming I'm watching, with messages about the digital transition. I've seen one possible explanation.

Still, I do agree with the parent - why not *permanently* leave one analog channel for information about the fact that TV has switched to digital transmissions, and also use it for emergency programming (like evacuation and health-related notices, severe weather coverage, disaster-related instructions and info, etc)?

Do you read the Weekly World News?

I already said I read Ted Rall. Same thing. :-D

Wouldn't the contents of the Weekly World News challenge your world views

Look, you needn't be so open-minded that your brain falls out. WWN (may it rest in peace) was a delightfully farcical tabloid intentionally written as humor; it wasn't intended to be taken seriously. If you're seriously comparing the WWN to Fox News, then you're so far too the left that everything looks like a vast right-wing conspiracy.

If you're that bad off, you might want to try a little statistics to gain some perspective.

"Seventy percent of those surveyed gave CNN the highest rankings for believability, the most for any broadcast or cable news network, according to the Pew Research Center, followed by MSNBC at 63% and Fox News Channel with 59%."

Of course, surveys have their limits - "just 20% [of Americans] know that the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives", a common problem among "8 disastrous years of Republicans" Slashdotters. ;-)

You might be right. The city of Alameda tried it with traditional cable and failed miserably. It has a bond payment due soon and revenue won't even cover the interest.

Lowell, Michigan also tried and gave up in 2007 when it realized that the cost of upgrading the system to modern standards would far exceed the value.

Running a telecom service in an underserved area is more expensive and complex than many people think. Often, the area is underserved for a reason.

That said, maybe fiber will work. Or maybe it's worth it as a social value to the community, even if it's pricey. Fingers crossed for you.

Let me be the first to say F*CK Comcast. I moved to southern PA recently only to get gouged with a $70 monthly internet bill. I don't have the option to switch to DSL/FIOS so my only other option is dial-up. No thank you. It's funny my neighbors (a lot of them) have a $24.99 monthly Comcast bill. The local ISP just before I moved in (SusCom) was bought out by Comcast http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6279636.html and they get grandfathered into the same price. Any "new" service REQUIRES cable TV + $50 a month internet, totaling $70 a month. I'm an avid DirectTV subscriber because the Comcast cable tv service is absolutely terrible here. So I have to pay for cable tv, internet and DirectTV.

You know what Comcast told me when I complained about the price, lack of options and their crappy service? "Move". Isn't that wonderful customer service ...

Say what you will, his record suggests that he simply has no love for cable companies:

+ Does Kevin Martin hate cable?
+ Martin: A Record of 'Picking on' Cable
+ Kevin Martin Doesn't Hate Cable, He Just Loves Ma Bell

Of course, the BushCo connection seems to be more important than the facts here.

I don't see why this is a surprise to people. The internal business decisions outweigh whatever grumbling people may make. At least, that's what the mindset was at Road Runner when I was there. They wanted to pimp internally developed content to the point of using the term "walled garden" to describe their efforts to try and get customers to stay away from the Internet as a whole. That filtered down to the affiliate level: We (the affiliates) didn't give a rat's poop about that content; we wanted to develop our own and have full control of it. Why should they be able to offer their own stuff but we, as the "local experts" couldn't have complete control over our customer's screen real estate? (We were given 20% of the homepage to put up content that was locally grown. The rest was set aside for the corporation to use.) We complained and complained, but it fell on deaf ears. It was headquarters' decision, not the affiliates, who were the direct point of revenue generation.... It wasn't about logic or customer service. It was about bad decisions made by corporate. My point is, they (TW headquarters) have always wanted to offer their own stuff rather than what customers necessarily want. It makes sense: They have their own content, why wouldn't they push back against making it easy for other content owners to move in? Is it logical? Sure. Is it a ridiculous, losing battle that ultimately make them look stupid? Same answer.

It's a trade publication for the media industry. The very people who don't want you switching commericals. The tivo at 299 is a sweet price point and they don't want it succeededing...

http://www.multichannel.com/affiliate/26617.html

is the first page of a long list of their affiliates.

covered in Multichannel News. The blogger calls Sopranos a "national Rorschach test" which pretty much sums it up, for me anyway. http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330/post/9 90010499.html Also, this blogger spotted the NY Post television columnist fishing the HBO board for viewers who were threatening to cancel their subscriptions...so I guess we'll be seeing that story pop-up soon, too.

anyway - that's what a blogger on Multichannel.com said. Kinda interesting. Here's the link:
http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330/post/9 90010499.html

You seem to draw your points out of thin air rather than basing them on actual research and published data.

What do you think this is?. "At the end of 2004, there were 11 million HD households, each owning an average of 1.2 HD sets." Two years ago. There were already millions. You're trying to denying what anybody can see is a huge trend to big flat screen TVs in the living room. Give it up, you need to get out more.

Wow, you responded to points I didn't even make, are you reading off a sheet of talking points or something? This is where you lose your remaining credibility:

I have several gamer friends, and not a one of them does anything but laugh at the idea of buying a PS3. And these are single friends making $50k+ a year, living in low cost of living cities.

You're nuts, this is diametrically opposed to my own sampling of gamer friends. At the end of 2004, there were 11 million HD households, each owning an average of 1.2 HD sets. Anyway, take your meds, relax for another week and check out the reaction to the US launch ok?

The Gamecube was pretty close to the original Xbox in terms of graphical horsepower. Oh wait, you're not actually talking about graphical power, just about those TVs that nobody has yet.

I like to think I'd do a bit of research before making such an egregious comment.

Forrester Research: "39% of consumers say their next TV will be a flat-panel plasma or LCD TV set."

Variety: "Elsewhere in its 'The State of High Definition Television 2006' report, Kagan estimated that 9.1 million HD sets will be sold to consumers this year, compared with 3.4 million and 5.6 million bought in 2003 and 2004, respectively."

You were right to be skeptical of HDTV up until two years ago, but now we are seeing a curve similar to DVD adoption. I would submit that your position is no longer supported by the sales figures.

Google has some very key data centers... give them some an entry into the cable market, set top boxes with targeted ads, disable TiVo ad skipping, and I'll probably have to quit watching TV entirely. It easy to firewall off my wife's shopping habits, but this would be the turning point for DVD only. Interesting article here

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6283333.html ?display=Breaking+News

Seems you're not right at all. I'm not a console gamer so I couldn't care less about the Xbox360's HD abilities, but HDTV is great. Almost everything I watch is HDTV (though not all) and there are more channels coming online every day.

and the Disney op does not have substantially more personnel than Comcast. .
I was reading MultiChannel News, and it put the employee numbers at Comcast - 60,000, Disney - 110,000. So it appears that Disney has many more employees than Comcast.

However, Comcast has a market capitalization of 70 Billion vs Disney's 56 Billion

Yet another failed attempt by Microsoft to break into an industry in which they do not have a monopoly. Considering how much stock Balmer and company have been selling, I think they see the writing on the wall, and want to cash out before the world realizes that the glory days of Microsoft are over.

TiVo's lack of support for standard-definition digital cable is no big deal, but HDTV is another matter.

Digital SDTV is a maximum of 720x480 (or 704x486 (704=22x32) or something else close) which is similar to VGA's 640x480 but the pixels are narrower than they are tall. PAL digital SDTV is 720x540 with almost-square pixels.

This maximum is the same as DVD and also known as CCIR-601. However, digital cable might have lower resolution to save bandwidth. TCTI/AT&T/NuevoComcast uses 352x486 on most channels on the HITS satellite and it's likely the content is softened (low-pass filtered) a bit before real-time-encoding.

Therefore, re-digitizing and re-encoding the standard-def analog stream coming out of your digital cable set-top box is only moderately horrible. Motion artifacts will be a bigger issue than resolution because TiVo encodes in real time so can't go back & choose keyframes more wisely later. It also costs 1/100th of the encoders used by HITS and DirectTV do.

Real-time-encoding of SDTV by a sub-$500 box is a reasonable thing in 2003. HDTV is another matter and the digital cable boxes I know of (Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 2000HD) only have analog video outputs (YCrCb component for HD). Pinnacle Systems makes a system where the HD option alone is $1000. HD on PCs now is where SD was 10 years ago- intra-frame (Motion-JPEG/DV-style) or no compression, using oodles of disk space (even with today's 180GB drives). Uncompressed HD @ 1920x1080x30x12bpp (4:2:0) is 90 megabytes per second. That means burning through a 180GB hard drive in about 1/2 hour.

As the poster suggests, you want to get the MPEG-2 stream & just slap it on a disk instead of trying to recompress. For Over-the-Air HDTV broadcasts, this should be no problem. For cable systems that keep OTA in 8VSB...

(something boxes were required to do a few years ago even if the provider doesn't support it- they have to pass through 8VSB with enough bandwidth/low enough noise that a receiver can still demodulate&decode it)

an 8VSB-in-only HDTV PVR would work. Many systems are demodulating 8VSB and re-modulating at QAM64. If they also apply their conditional access (CA), it gets really sticky.

The fact that there aren't digital-cable-ready TVs like there were(are) cable-ready TVs is something the industry, their Cable Labs group and the FCC have been working on for years. The biggest obstacle is Scientific-Atlanta and General Instrument (now Motorola)'s incompatible systems in the US. It's possible to run both on a single network under an agreement called Harmony, but they still see CA as the crown jewels.

POD (point-of-deployment CA, rented from the cable company) was supposed to solve that by putting all the proprietary stuff in a PCMCIA-like card & making the boxes or TV's or VCRs or PVRs use standard interfaces.

Google terms: PowerKEY (SA's system), DigiCipher (Motorola's), Conditional Access.

Other sources: Multichannel News and Communications Engineering and Design (CED) Magazine