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FCC Extends Set-Top Box Deadline
Kadin2048 writes "The FCC today announced that it was once again rolling back the date (PDF!) for the eventual ban of "integrated set-top boxes" distributed and leased by cable companies to consumers, from 2006 to 2007. The move was a slight nod to the cable providers, who wanted the ban removed altogether, and a minor setback to the consumer electronics industry, who would have preferred that it stay on schedule. The ban would prevent the largest cable companies from integrating their digital content security devices with their navigation devices, allowing consumers to 'mix and match' the navigation or DVR set-top-box of their choice with a standard CableCARD security interface device. Currently, most digital cable set top boxes combine these two functions, meaning that digital cable customers who want DVR functionality must rent one from their cable company. By preventing the cable companies from leasing them to end-users, the FCC hopes to foster competition in the set-top-box market and allow more consumer choice. A statement from FCC Commissioner Johnathan Adelstein (PDF) was released simultaneously. The battle has been carefully watched by all the major players in the entertainment and electronics markets, including Microsoft, which had previously weighed in on the side of the consumer electronics camp (pro-deadline), but then later agreed with the one-year extension."
When will be able to use Dish boxes with DirecTV and vice versa! eh!?
to work with my Charter Digital Cable, is it too much to ask?
I still think they should force the cable companies to allow third-party boxes, using open standards (even new ones).
altho I am glad to see the FCC doing something to benfit the consumer, I really wonder if this is their place. it sounds to me like it is a "monpoly" type issue and should have been taken up with the FTC. But like the FCC rules to make broadcasters switch to digital I really wonder if this is the goverments place at all to be.
I thought the FCC would actually take the opposing side of the Cable providers. Looks as if that's not so -- maybe the FCC should visit the homes of the top cable provider executives, get on their knees, and just finish what they're currently doing.
For the love of Jesus, let the consumers win for once.
This glut of reality TV ain't just because it's fun and interesting to watch average people compete for big dollars in unrealistic scenarios. There just isn't money to produce cool shows like Farscape or Friends anymore.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Pushing back the deadline buys the cable companies more time to throw it out altogether. It's standard corporate legal strategy, where the only strategy is short-term - one after another.
--
make install -not war
Why ban cable companies from being able to provide set top boxes? ALLOW customers to have the choice. If they want to buy their own set top box for what ever price they are sold for let them. If they would prefer not to invest a bunch of money into the box then let them lease a cable box.
AFAIK there are no plans to ban cable companies from leasing set top boxes, only requirements they allow me to use devices without leasing a set top box. Sounds like a good thing to me.
Examples like this do make me wish the FCC had control over Canada. The CRTC only seem to care about Canadian content percentages on our stations, and not about competition, innovation, or anything that makes sense. Maybe if more Canadian shows and artists were GOOD, we wouldn't have to baby them on to the scene with handouts.
Frankly I hate the cable boxes the cable company offers.
I liked the good old days when the sign can and I could split it to my 2 TVs.
Now they think I should buy/rent two cable boxes - one for each TV.
Now that I have a TV that has Side by Side picture they think I should have two cable boxes for that one TV.
It is geating crazy. My TV has a built in decoder for basic channels.
Stop these stupid cable boxes!!!! just send the whole signal to my house and allow me to buy spliter and such as I see fit.
And use MythTV, or any of the other OS PVR software.
but no choice in cable providers.
Personally, I would prefer the latter to the former.
If they want competition, they should eliminate the broadcast flag.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
Can someone (an American) please explain to this Canadian what a cable box is?
cable just comes out of the wall straight into my TV i dont need a box. there is box on the outside of the house, but thats a junction box.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Pushing the cablecard back another year means that Microsoft just has to play a waiting game for Tivo to go bankrupt or become irrelevant in this market. Pushing this back another year probably makes it difficult for tivo to survive.
Visit the office of your local cable provider executive, drop to your knees, open mouth, and take it from there. When will the consumer get ahead in any of this?
We should allow that. Then again I think we (New York at least) should allow people to choose service from different cable companies (you know to get some competition and lower prices, maybe) but then I guess that is impossible and too much to ask. I doubt they'd like the idea of cable they've strewn through the streets being used by competitors.
Cable companies (both service and channel providers) think that their programming is an *ahem*intellectual property asset. The last words they'd like to hear are open and competition: it makes companies *coughCablevisionEtAlcough* cringe. They're already concerned about not being the only stadium in Manhattan.* They'll try to delay this as long as corporately possible**.
*of course, so are people here who think we'd spend >$600,000,000 in taxes on the new center...but I'm straying from point here.
**I'd say humanly but what's so human about having a cable monopoly? I seriously wonder.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I know we hate Michael Powell, but have we made up our minds on this guy yet?
A statement from FCC Commissioner Johnathan Adelstein
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
I have a $500 DVR, that works beautifully, plays to two TV's independently, and I pay $5 a month for it from my satellite provider. I could not afford it on my own, is this what they are trying to do?
...
In our city, the mayor basically gets to renegotiate the cable monopoly for the entire city.
They generally do nothing except resign the existing deal.
The city council could use this as a negotiating basis to let Time Warner, Comcast, etc bid for local cable service so that
prices go down
service quality goes up.
Recently, Time Warner started advertising free HD boxes with no additional cost. In newer areas of town they do not provide analog service anymore.
Slightly OT, but whatever happened to the "inexpensive settop digital converter boxes" they promised would be available to convert older TVs to digital capability? I don't consider $250-$300 "cheap", it's more of a price point to get folks to buy digital ready TVs instead, tossing perfectly good analog TVs.
My point still stands, though, that that sounds to me like an FTC issue and the FCC is stepping on its shwanz again.
I, as a consumer, personally like the choice that these decisions are providing to consumers, but I disagree that the FCC should be involved.
Microsoft, which had previously weighed in on the side of the consumer electronics camp (pro-deadline), but then later agreed with the one-year extension.
When did John Kerry take over leadership of Micorosft?
I'm sure this was also pushed back because the manufacturers of devices with cablecard technology still do not have all their ducks in a row. My local cableco supports and provides cablecards to customer's that would rather have them but the lack of 2-way communication certain niceties are ousted like the digital guide and pay per view(which is why I _enjoy_ the box in the first place). Our local cable company allowed customers to purchase their own HD converter boxes at local retailers and it was toppled because customers deemed the $350 price tag on the HD boxes outrageous so the cable company picked up the tab, ordered a slew of boxes and now leases them. Complaints about the use of set-top boxes need to be directed at the manufacturers of Televisions/VCRs and DVRs. They are the ones having most of the issues with compatibilty. Ask anyone with a Sony WEGA or a Mitsubishi TV how well their cableCARD works .. well it worked for a few days but now it's acting odd.
The difference between cell phone providers and cable companies is that the cable companies are local monopolies. In my area (and yours too) you have to buy from whichever cable company is in your market. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect some regulation in exchange for a protected market.
In stone age times, before the Internet, even before remote control was standard gear, just about every TV only went from Channels 2-13.
So to get the channel #s that went higher, you'd plug in the cable box, leave the TV tuned to channel 3, and use the box for your channel switching needs. They either had a button for each channel, or a slider.
We still had to get up to turn the TV on or adjust the volume, but if you had a good cable box, it had a long wire so you could at least change channels from across the room.
You never expect irony, do you?
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I work in the elctronics industry, and in the last year I have seen a tow fold increase in the number of sets with cablecard capability. I think its a good thing.
I have seen samsung, sony, and thompson (RCA,GE, ect) with cablecard slots for the pcmcia card.
so, will this derail production of set with this integrated capability? ive seen a lot of sets, and a lot of sets that arrive that customers actually lease cablecards from the cable co. here (time warner)
so, I wonder if the number of sets with cablecard that I see for repair will come to a halt in the near future or what?
seems like its heading down the path to being nuked altogether.
but, I cant understand why the FCC has delayed this?
the cable cos is still going to charge you to lease that pcmcia card, and its still going to be the same amount. now if there were rules that placed a cap on that, I am even more for it.
The broadcast flag is about fair use rights. Changing the broadcast flag does absolutely nothing as far as competition is concerned, unless you're a pirate who hopes to pick up the shows free off the Internet. Since I hope your goal is protecting fair use and not violating copyright, your statement makes no sense, because the two ideas are not connected.
-1 Offtopic for you (if I could)
The cable companies can win a one year extension every six months, they win. I personally bet they will try this. Content providers do this with copyright and trademark extensions.
The box performes many of the same benefits that the DirecTV box does.
- scrollable TV guide
- channel filtering
- crisper digital streams
- more channels
- ordering PPV from the remote
- etc, etc.
A week ago I would have agreed with you, but the recent Comcast/TiVo deal kills any "TiVo is dying" arguments.
If the cable companies are allowed to have proprietary (non-cablecard) boxes, what motivation do they have to open everything up to cablecards in other equipment? Right now, because it's not a mandatory part of the STB, cablecard is crippled (one-way signal being the biggest deficiency). I for one think that this mandate is a great way to provide meaningful consumer choice. Nothing is wrong with the cable companies offering leased boxes, but it's not of for them to lock all the cool features into those boxes so that third-party equipment is always inferior.
sounds to me like an FTC issue and the FCC is stepping on its shwanz again
That's because the FCC fills the role of the FTC when dealing with communications matters.
For example, the FTC's Do Not Call list did not apply to telephone companies because they were regulated by the FCC. (IIRC, the FCC has since ordered the telcos to comply with it.)
Not entirely. They are getting significantly less than the $1 per sub they were getting under comcast. This doesn't mean that tivo-as-a-company is dying, but it could mean that tivo-as-a-pvrprovider is dying. The details of the comcast deal remain to be seen -- they are basically just doing the software for it.
I'm glad to see the FCC stepping in to do something useful (excuse derogatory generalization). Now the next step is to force cable providers to provide a la carte channel ordering. Honestly, I sick of cable monopolies and the rediculous prices. Companies now use "digital cable" as an excuse to charge a ton more for the lowest rate cable package. If I could only pay for the 3 channels I like, then I could pay maybe $20 a month for cable. And then have pay-per-view available for every channel on a daily rate.. [/ramble]
You Canadians got Bob & Doug McKenzie, what more do you want?!
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
I don't know about you guys, but I have leased DVR boxes from Time Warner for the last 2 years and in that time I have gone through 6 DVR boxes and 5 HD-DVR boxes with the 5 HD-DVR boxes being consumed since August. If I had to buy a new one each time it broke, I would be poor. With Time Warner I just drive down to their office and get a new one. $1,000 says that no consumer electronics manufacturer could top that. You would probably have to mail it in at a cost of $20, then wait for 1-2 weeks to find out if its eligible for warranty repair, and then another 2-6 weeks for it to be repaired and returned to you. I always thought home-brewed DVR systems were a waste of money because I have had such excellent service from Time Warner. But if I have to buy these things, consumer electronics manufacturers can suck my left nut.
TiVo can still roll out its CableCARD 1.0 boxes next year.
Sure, they won't be as convenient as the cable company DVRs, but there are still plenty of people who will buy them for the superior TiVo service and to avoid paying rent to the cable companies.
Also, Tivo will be profitable this year. They have enough subs; all they have to do is cut back on marketing, and they are profitable.
That doesn't guarantee TiVo's long term survival, but it does put the doom and gloom talk into perspective.
It's already been established in a court ruling last month that the FCC had overstepped its authority in trying to mandate that future television hardware must respect a "broadcast" flag. Federal judges rejected the claim that the FCC's mandate to regulate transmissions also afforded them the ancillary ability to regulate reception of those transmissions.
Why wouldn't the same precedent also prevent the FCC from mandating that cable companies cannot integrate digital tuners, CableCard authentication, PVRs, or any other technology into a single device?
In a market the size of Columbus, Ohio, I am served by Time Warner. I am the 30th installation, and the first in my region (grouped with Columbus). According to the tech who installed my cable card, roll out has been held up since mid-summer 2004 due to glitches, some of which have caused HDTV's to require factory servicing to repair. Even with nine months of delay, the technology is far from being mature and bug free.
With a Scientific Atlanta cable card installed, my TV (Sony KD-34XS955) periodically freezes/locks (it ain't just a Windoze thang) and needs a cold reboot. I am told that the problem can be fixed by having Sony come and install a firmware update for my set. I am calling them next week.
As a cable provider, can you imagine having to do this for every digital set in your service area? To me, it's no wonder they want a delay. The replacement to set top boxes is just not yet ready for prime time.
-Joe G.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Wow, so the cable companies' stalling and delaying tactics are working!
It's like not starting to write your term paper until the night before it's due and then complaining about the due date and how it's going to impact the quality of your work.
Do you think these problems are unsolvable over time?
TiVo is coming out that allows this.
Not just TFA, but the F'ing Brief...
TIVO's CableCARD unit will be useless if the cable companies aren't USING CableCARD. This article is 100% about the FCC pushing back their mandate that all set-top boxes must support cablecard by 2006. Since the mandate is now set at 2007, TIVO's box is useless until 2007 in areas that haven't already switched to cable card.
I was a C band satellite afficionado in the 80's. I watched most of the spectrum go dark in 1986. I hate cable companies myself, but my six megabit per second internet connection can't be delivered by satellite, my alternative connections are less than adequate, and I get a more affordable bundled deal when I get digital cable.
I was happy to ditch my cable box and get a cable card, but experiencing the deployment difficulties first-hand as an early adopter, not by hearsay, I tend to agree that cable companies and hardware manufacturers need more time to work out the kinks in this technology.
With HDTV the FCC set an arbitrary time table for implementation and spectrum reassignment with no regard for market demand. Does it make sense for them to at least listen to the concerns of the companies and individuals who will be implementing and purchasing the new technology, or is it better if they just blindly stick to an artbitrary schedule and ignore all outside commentary? From your comment you would seem to prefer the latter?
In my opinion, which admittedly is not worth a whole hell of a lot, Congress and the FCC screw things up enough without them completely forgoing industry and consumer feedback.
I realize this is
-Joe G.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
What do the cable companies stand to loose from CableCard enabled devices? (with the new broadcast flag, they cant claim "CableCard allows people to copy our stuff" anymore).
:P :P
They still get your (ever increasing) subscription fee $$$ every month.
Now if only there was a CableCard standard here in oz so you could use Foxtel/Austar on other boxes
Oh and make it sattelite enabled too
The problems you were describing were related to cable cards in TVs, not to the DTV transition, so I was addressing that. Switching to digital for broadcast TV doesn't affect cable companies directly and is another matter entirely. Note also that the requirement is for digitally compressed broadscasts requiring less bandwidth than analog, not HDTV.
Anyway, are you familiar with the concept of running out the clock? Or putting off something you don't want to do, possibly till you don't have to do it?
The cable companies never wanted to cede control by supporting cable card. Requirements and a deadline were set and the cable companies continued to fight to either eliminate or delay them, obviously without trying their hardest to implement something against their own best interests. Their delaying tactics seem to have worked since they have people blaming the govt or the technology for how poorly the cards work. I can't really blame the teacher for setting an arbitrary deadline when the kid does a bad job of writing his paper just because he waited till the last night. That's closer to what I see has happened.
Admittedly understanding this doesn't help you much today as a consumer but it helps to know who is to blame when setting policy.
This has been unusually enlightening for a
-Joe G.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!