Slashdot Mirror
FCC Opens Market for Cable Boxes
fistfullast33l writes "The FCC rendered a decision today against a Comcast appeal that centers on integrated security features in set-top cable boxes. The decision comes at the end of a long standing feud between the FCC and cable companies over the matter. The result is that starting July 1st, cable boxes distributed by cable companies must not be tied directly to a cable provider via internal security features. This rule is viewed as the first step in creating a market for set-top cable boxes. Comcast does have the right to appeal and has said they will do so. From the article: 'Several major consumer electronics manufacturers have argued that if set-top boxes weren't directly linked to the provision of cable service, they could enter the set-top market. Consumers could get a cable card from their service provider that they could insert into a set-top box purchased at a consumer electronics store. The cards would ensure that consumers could only access channels that they paid for.'"
Well actually they have. You can legally unlock your cell phone. The big thing that holds phones from transferring from one provider to the next is the network type. This is more or less the design of the phone. Think of it like an 802.11b device and an 802.11b network. This is not to say that it wouldn't be nice to have a unified cellular network, but that's very unlikely.
They don't provide two-way communication. This is VERY IMPORTANT as two-way communication is REQUIRED for cable networks that use switched video broadcasting technology. Time Warner in Austin, TX is one such network. I would expect most of not all the digital channels will move to swiched video by the end of 2007. This isn't a problem as a digital box already is required for the digital feed.
Second problem. You won't be able to order PPV or view any on-demand content with cable cards.
Until Cable Cards move to a new spec that support two-way, they're rather worthless these days...and a total scam by themselves anyway.
Life is not for the lazy.
Does this mean we'll have a choice of boxes with better UIs? I hate having to go through several button presses in the menu to access the one and only feature I ever use (listings, sometimes filtering movies only). Worse, the remote has a rather slow repeat rate and a very cheap feel to the button presses. That alone makes me feel like I have to fight the box to watch TV.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Satellite services don't operate under the same monopoly based business model. Space is open to whomever has the cash to toss a ton of satellites up there and start providing signal. I can freely choose from Sirius or XM for my radio and Dish or DirecTV for my video. If I don't like the channel lineup or available hardware for one I can always sign up with the other service.
... many years ago, it was illegal per AT&T to attach anything but AT&T-approved equipment at home or in a business alike to their network. Eventually, the anti-trust folk, PBX equipment vendors, etc. broke up that racket, IIRC. At the time, AT&T made dire predictions about network reliability, etc. if "non-approved" devices were attached to it. In the end, it was clearly a rear-guard action designed to maximize the lease-money that AT&T was deriving from equipment rentals. This Comcast rethoric is no different, they want to lease a $30 cable box for $4 month ad infinitum.
So, I would very much welcome a requirement to open up the the consumer choices with regard to cable boxes. Ideally, someone at the FCC will have the foresight to look to the EU or other places that have already gone through the trouble of designing a secure option and require an "open" standard instead of allowing content providers to reinvent the wheel yet again to create a NA-only product. While cable-boxes are definitely not as portable as let's say cell-phones (and hence will not derive as much value from being interoperable), economies of scale definitely apply in this business and the more competition, the better for the consumer.
Plus, interoperable product ensures that if cable content providers ever get competition, that cable boxes don't get discarded simply because provider X has a different encryption scheme than vendor Y. Besides the unnecessary lock-in at the set-box level, I would also like to see a requirement by the Feds to allow consumers and content providers to chose their packages à la carte (i.e. disallow bundling requirements). This is the only means of breaking the oligopoly of the content providers and to restore some semblance of consumer choice to the market.
I have seen plenty of TVs with Cable Cards that get HDTV just fine. The only thing they cannot do is On Demand. Now, given the cable company doesn't make it easy to get a CC, they still provide them.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
I mean, the Comcast one I have works great! It only took ten minutes to program it to record "The Office" this evening. It showed it as a season pass, but didn't indicate it was going to record tonight's until I set a manual recoding. There were no scheduling conflicts....it apparently just didn't like tonight's episode.
To make matters worse, the *reason* I'm programming the DVR right now is because it deleted all of its content and scheduled recordings last week.
And the formerly fast user interface is now running quite slow. Unplugging/having Comcast reset it does not improve the situation.
It'll be going straight back to Comcast once I get my MythTV set up.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Sorry, but no Cable Co that I know of makes the hardware. Time-Warner, Cablevision, Comcast, and Charter get their settops from Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta (now a part of Cisco).
I've had to endure the worst version ever for these damned Scientific Atlanta cable boxes. I use them with standalone TiVo boxes, but I've had to disable Suggestions and pad all recordings by a minute before and after just to get them to work with the latest update forced upon me by Time Warner Cable.
It's all about their new guide data system. Now, if you try to change the channel at the hour or half hour when the channel you're leaving has another show coming on, the data update can throw out some or all of the digits your TiVo sent to the box so you are left on the same channel or tuned to the wrong channel, both cases recording the wrong show.
But that's not the worst of it! Another failure mode is the cable box crashing, restarting, and staying off until you physically press the power button again. *Every* *single* *Wednesday* *morning* the box crashes as a result of TiVo recording their Teleworld Paid Program without any padding and I have to make sure to turn them back on again before I go to work.
Further, I've had it crash twice on HBO without an attempt to change channels, both right after the last two episodes of Real Time, so even if I could find a way to bias the TiVo by 5-10 seconds to avoid the critical window, spontaneous crashes will still occur!
Time Warner Cable is completely unsympathetic and doesn't give a damn about my complaints, not even to roll back my boxes to a functioning revision. I'd go buy a Series3 and get two unidirectional cable cards if I could afford it now and had assurance that the same glitch won't follow me to those cards. (I don't give a damn about PPV or other OnDemand programming and have thought about putting a unidirectional trap on the line to keep my boxes from requesting their guide data.)
I'm even considering switching to DirecTV, even though I've seen how much they compress the hell out of animated programming to practical unwatchability.
I'm not sure I can even last until July when I can (theoretically) get my own cable box and return their buggy units.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
> Also, cablecos are not yet required to offer CableCards yet. The FCC's plug and play rule that covered it does not take effect until July. So if your cableco currently does not want to offer CableCards, you're SOL.
> I'm not sure what the ownership rules are for CableCards, but from what I've seen it appears they are still the property of the cableco and you still pay a monthly fee for them (you just don't have a big, hot running box to keep around).
Actually, just FYI. The FCC has required cable companies to offer CableCards since July of 2005; they must provide them and cannot deny you them. This new ruling today affects set-top boxes, wholly separate thing.
The ownership rules are that the CableCards belong to the cable companies. You rent them just like you rent a cable box now, except that the FCC has also capped the rate at around $2/mo. That sure beats a cable box which, depending on the company, can be anywhere from $5 to $20/mo to rent.
The current iteration of technologies -- DVB-S -- is the standard MPEG2, Standard FEC, and has the optional crypto wrapper which is handled with PCMCIA CAMs and Cards.
DVB-S2, which is being implemented, is MPEG4, 8PSK/8VSB, Turbo FEC, and still has the optional crypto wrapper. I think DirecTV has, likely, already gone to this standard or some close cousin of it. Dish Network is in the process of moving to it and will likely be finished with this process, which involves a lengthy and expensive equipment swap, in a few years. Their new receivers -- the ViP series -- are already MPEG4 and likely fully DVB-S2 capable.
Many European set-top boxes are already MPEG4/DVB-S2 capable, the only thing stopping them from being used with U.S. Pay TV providers is, as noted, the fact that you need a CAM which it is likely that Dish Network or DirecTV will never make available in that manner. (Interestingly enough, however, both Kudleski Group/Nagrastar and NDS make CAMs for other providers which are more standardized.)
I had no idea that this new "digital" cable went back to requiring those boxes. The idea that people would tolerate that was so absurd, that I didn't even think that it was a possiblity.
It's quite true. In fact, not only do people put up with boxes (and far bigger boxes than before; they're the size of VCR and put out heat like the bastard stepchild of a Pentium IV and a coffeepot), they pay extra for the pleasure. The reason is that these boxes are currently the only way to get "digital cable" (which is not to be confused with digital television, since the picture is still NTSC, not highdef, in most cases). The selling point of this is that you can have many more channels than before: hundreds of them, compared to the 90-100 with standard analog cable.
The point of this move by the FCC is basically to give people the capability of doing the "cable ready" thing, where you just run a length of coax from the wall to your TV, with digital cable. Unfortunately, it'll never be as easy as in the analog days; even though these new systems won't require a box, they'll still require the rental of a decrypter card, which I assume the cablecos will charge as much for as they charged for a box.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Newer GSM is built on a CDMA physical layer.
GSM is GSM, there isn't a newer version of it with a different physical layer. You're probably thinking of UMTS, which is a completely different standard, though most UMTS phones are dual mode UMTS/GSM phones.