New Agreement May End the Cable Box

esocid clues us to news that Sony and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have come to agreement on the way forward for two-way TV without set-top boxes. The actual agreement was not made public, pending review by other members of the Consumer Electronics Association, and as a result the coverage of the agreement is uniformly pretty incoherent. The background is that the NCTA and the CEA submitted competing proposals to the FCC on how to handle two-way, interactive TV services. None of the articles I turned up made clear what the future of the CableCard is to be. This was an interim solution to allow competition in set-top box manufacture, but its adoption has been plagued with problems. "Sony and the cable companies — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision, and Bright House Networks — agreed to adopt: the Java-based 'tru2way' solution powered by CableLabs; new streamlined technology licenses; and new ways for all those involved to cooperate in the development of tru2way technology at CableLabs."

Comments

Species traitors

[pla]

new streamlined technology licenses;

Engineer: Faster, cheaper, more reliable, more efficient.

Businessman: Slightly less annoying, but still entirely arbitrary, restrictions on how you can what you already paid for.

Next time you wonder "what the hell has gone wrong us as a species", ask yourself which of those two run the world.

Re:Species traitors

[notabaggins]

Engineer: Because I can.

Businessman: Because people want it.

Just in case you were wondering why businessmen run the world. Yeah. I remember all the protests in the streets of people marching to demand DRM...

Re:That's not the only reason they have cable boxe

[jmnormand]

I have a strange suspicion that a standard decided upon by Sony and the cable companies will be good for no one...