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It would be useless for the FCC to simply allow a la carte pricing. They have to modify their existing rules on tiers and bundling.

Right now, unlike the FTC which ruled that Microsoft was out of line when they bundled software, the FCC rules specifically allow channel owners to sell bundles of channels to cable carriers, specifying in the contract which channels need to be in which tiers. On my local cable system, this results in having lots of channels in the broader digital tiers that no one ever watches. In order for my cable carrier to carry The Discovery Channel, they also need to carry Discovery Health, Discovery Military, etc...

If there's true a la carte pricing, with cable carriers charging whatever the channel provider wants to charge per customer plus a fee for carriage and bandwidth, there will be a major shakeout in the number of channels out there. Suddenly, the only cable channels out there will be the ones that customers are willing to pay for. (shudder)

The upshot of this would be an increase in HDTV offerings on cable. One of the major problems cable providers have right now is insufficient bandwidth for all the HDTV channels that they might otherwise want to offer, many of which HDTV owners would be willing to pay for. You'll see the dropped SDTV channels replaced by more HDTV channels and on demand services as the market sorts out what people are willing to pay for.

If this happens, it's long overdue. I'm not holding my breath.
-JMP

At this point, bandwidth speed doesn't matter as much to me, in comparison with "reasonable bandwidth" limitations. My Time Warner Cable of NYC offers me plenty of speed, but if I queue up even a few torrents for simultaneous downloading, I'm guaranteed to have my connection dropped within 30-60 minutes.

If the cable companies are really trying to compete with DSL, they need to allow customers to take full advantage of the bandwidth they purport to offer 24x7. Otherwise, cable modems will remain at a disadvantage for people who need more bandwidth.

I was in the same boat, researching alternatives to TiVo, until Time Warner (very quietly) came out with their own DVR service in my area.

Only $9 extra a month, and *no added cost* for the DVR itself. I just had to exchange converters.

Of course, not all of the bells and whistles of TiVo, mythTV, snapstream - favorites, suggestions, online and WAP enabled phone access, etc - but it's worth it... at least until you find a reason to spend the extra $xxx.xx for the added features of the other guys.

One thing I don't think anybody's brought up yet, and the thing that worries me the most, is that the real potential to kill Tivo (and the entire concept behind it) would be when Mystro eventually and inevitably becomes standard cable. Look at DTV - it's practically a requirement here in NYC now, and if you go to Time Warner's web site, I challenge you to find any information at all on their analog cable offerings. Mystro will eventually become the standard cable service which will render Tivo not just unnecessary, but useless. In order to use the two together you'd have to select a TV show to watch on cable, then manually record it on Tivo - which basically puts Tivo in "boat anchor" mode; the Tivo service itself does nothing.

And of course, along the way you lose any real choice about the TV shows you want to watch or when you want to watch them, since there may only be a certain window of time a show is available, for example (this is true of Tivo by default as well, though you can always tell Tivo to keep a program "until I delete it").

My problem is not with this service being available, as I see no reason to switch from my Tivo. But it's silly to dismiss this as an idea that won't work. All AOL has to do is make it part of the standard cable service and boom - no more Tivo for anyone. It's not as if there's any actual competition among cable providers. (There's satellite, yeah, but as I know first-hand as an unfortunately former DirecTV subsriber, satellite is not always available to apartment dwellers. And this is a city of apartments.)

Road Runner in my market (Austin, Texas-area) charges an additional $14.95/mo for additional PCs on their network.

Damned straight I'm using a NAT box and have two additional (for now, soon to be three) PCs on their network. RR knows I have a NAT box and has been made aware of the additional PCs (one at least) on the network. No one's dinged me for this (yet) and I imagine that if/when this is passed in Texas, I'll either be forced to pay the additional fees or find another ISP.

For the record, one of the PCs is my son's (he's not even 3 yet, only goes to PBSkids.org) and the other is my wife's. She only uses it for email/browsing, so its not like my additional systems are consuming 500GB/mo in bandwidth.

TWC Austin's charge of essentially $15/mo for additional PCs is above what other markets apparently pay over what others are paying. TWC NYC users are only charged $4.95/mo for additional PCs.

My cable company (Time Warner/Road Runner)specifically allows NAT, but doesn't offer technical support from their FAQ :
Road Runner provides subscriber support and technical assistance for internet connectivity to your Road Runner modem and primary computer connection. Road Runner does not provide subscriber support or troubleshooting support for Local Area Networks. Should you experience any problems with the functionality of your Hub or LAN please refer those issues to your PC retailer or LAN equipment manufacturer.

What about Road Runner?
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Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

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