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Sony Introduces Passage
UncleCrispy writes "Sony, a newcomer in the cable industry announced its new technology, Passage, on the opening day of the BroadBand Plus Show to the receptive ears of the cable community. "Sony's Passage Technology is a simple, elegant solution that allows equipment from multiple vendors to peacefully co-exist on legacy digital CATV networks"
Now you won't be stuck with the SetTopBox your cable provider forces on you, but with Passage you should be able to go to the store and buy any box you want. If you want a DVR box, you can buy it, and you'll no longer be stuck with the rental fees.
Sounds like it's a good deal for the cable providers and consumers, but how will current SetTopBox monopolies take the news?"
Is that really so? Maybe I misunderstood the whitepaper but to me it seemed like the main benefit would be that you can now make multiple set top boxes co-exist. The cable provider may still force you to buy their preffered STB also (by encryption for example) - but now you don't have to buy that only :) Or...
Maybe I misunderstood it completely, if so, could someone explain the concept more clearly than the whitepaper does :)
Now Sony is protecting us from those evil American Empires Motorola and Scientific/Atlanta, as well as that nasty Canadian robber baron Videotron, as well as all those evil Korean STB monopolies? Um, Ok, great. Thanks.
Next time, will somebody please circulate a memo reminding us from whom we need saving? I'm losing track.
Also, this is not a consumer product. The Western Show where Sony made it's announcement is a Cable Operators Trade Show, a Comdex for the head-end and pole-climbing set. You can't walk into your local Radio Shack or Circuit Shack, buy a spiffy Sony Passage sitting up there on a shelf next to their Vaio's and PS2's, take it home, and give your Motorola box back to Comcast.
The key to understanding the role of the Passage, as I take it from following the links provided, is that the technology enables cable operators to purchase and deploy the 3 NEW SONY STB's ALSO BEING ANNOUNCED at the show. It would seem to allow a plant with existing S/A or Motorola infrastructure to hopskotch around their implied commitment to deploy S/A or Motorola boxes in the home, and use the new Sony STBs instead. The roll-out is presumed rather painless as well, as the Passage seems to allow old school and new Sony boxes to co-exist for an infinite time.
Of course, the technology economics of cable head ends are all balanced among the one-time-only cost of the legacy headend gear, and the presumed-to-be-ever-growing costs of the franchise build-out and additional STBs. For this reason, companies such as Motorola and S/A are typically inclined to provide sweet deals on the former encoder "razors," cuz they know the real money is to be made on the latter STB "blades." Sony wet-blankets those economics now. I'm sure the immediate fall-out of Passage will be a re-wording of a lot of their rivals' sales agreements locking low costs for the head-end gear into commitments for minimum STB purchases.
More business for the lawyers. More meetings for the salesguys. But none of this effects a consumer's "choice." You'll take whatever your cable company puts on top of your TV, end of story.
A better example would be Sky in the UK. You cannot view encrypted Sky DTH satellite broadcasts unless you buy a specific Sky branded receiver. This limits the viewer to a range of "approved" boxes which differ very little in basic specification.
In Europe, viewers can purchase a generic DVB-S decoder with the features they want and then plug in the required encryption module (similar to a PCMCIA card) for the encryption standard that their chosen provider uses.
The UK situation will hopefully change next year as the European Union is forcing all broadcasters to move to the modular system, which will mean that Sky will have to release an encryption module for those generic boxes.