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FCC May Pry Open the Cable Set-Top Box
awyeah writes "The NY Times reports that the FCC is finally looking into the practice of cable companies requiring use of their set-top boxes to access their digital cable and video on-demand services. The inquiry (PDF) states: 'Consumers can access the Internet using a variety of delivery methods (e.g., wireless, DSL, fiber optics, broadband over powerlines, satellite, and cable) on myriad devices made by hundreds of manufacturers; yet we know of no device available at retail that can access all of an MVPD's services across that MVPD's entire footprint.' Yes, there are a few devices out there — for example CableCARD-enabled TVs, and CableCARD/Tuning Adapter-enabled TiVos and Windows Media Center PCs, but only the cable companies' set-tops can access services other than broadcast TV, such as video-on-demand and pay-per-view. Is it finally time to open these devices and embrace actual standards and competition?" Lauren Weinstein has a cautionary blog post about the world we may be entering if this FCC initiative comes to fruition, which concludes: "I have difficulty seeing how this universe can be made to function effectively in the absence of some sort of regulatory regime to ensure transparency and fairness in situations where the Internet access providers themselves are providing their own content that directly competes with content from the external Internet."
TV watches you!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
There you go, some good bait to get the /. crowd all riled up.
To get it out of the way, we need the regulatory institution because the cable providers have a monopoly, are transitioning to digital only signals across the wire, and we don't have any way to set up our own HTPC to record TV shows for viewing/commercial skipping later.
I see only one way that we, as consumers of content, will get a good outcome from this. And it's a messy one... We'd need to be able to have multiple content providers simultaneously. They'll competing on their service on shared content, and on the unique content they provide. It would end up being like TV before cable... you had the big networks in VHF, and a few fringe stations in UHF.
I really don't think this is a feasible solution due to infrastructure requirements (unless the infrastructure is common), but I think it's the only way the [Internet access|Content providers] can be involved in fair competition that benefits the end-consumer.
Say Microsoft enters into an agreement with Comcast, and Comcast starts delaying packets for google searches. Fine... not much harm done, since I could "change channels" and use another ISP.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I have difficulty seeing how this universe can be made to function effectively...
Well for one thing, controlling the Universe is a God complex.
The other is, we can't do anything to make the Universe function correctly until the Cosmologists figure it out.
Geeze!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
In case nobody noticed, there hasn't been any new models cablecard enabled TV set since 2006. Cable companies has worked hard to make sure cablecard will never ever take off, and for the most part they appear to have succeeded. FCC investigation is about four years late.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
TV is dead anyway.
eztv.it, bittorrent and companies with their own streaming sites (daily show, south park, etc) is all I need. I haven’t watched TV or touched a remote for at least five years. And I see more and better shows than before.
If I want to pointlessly procrastinate, there’s always Slashdot with more stories than I can read in a day (including *all* comments. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Right now they spend bucks developing their own STB applications, and they have historically sucked. It's only within the last year or so that my 3-4-yr. old Comcast DVR stopped freezing up due to buggy programming. And their cumbersome homespun guide and recording software will never begin rival TiVo's.
Imagine if they just standardized access, fired their crappy in-house teams, and let the TiVo's and the MS Media Centers provide the user friendly front ends...
When I got my first CableCARD-enabled TiVo, I was overjoyed to finally be rid of Time Warner Cable's Scientific Atlanta cable box with its mystro software designed to penalize you if you use an external device to control it to change channels precisely on time. If you started changing channels before the guide data updates for the timeslot but don't finish until after it does, you find it throwing out the initial or all the digits and either changing to the wrong channel or not changing channels at all. Though that cable box was still useful as a conduit over Firewire for recording to my desktop computer.
OK, so maybe there were a few problems now and then, but the CableCARD experience had settled down... until TWC decided to use Switched Digital Video and required TiVo users to use their Tuning Adapters to watch certain channels. Not IR controlled though. These use USB, so at least they could handshake to ensure that the device switched properly, yes?
No, of course not. For many of my HD channels I now have to have a second unit also recording the non-HD version of the same program in order to be sure I at least get to see the shows I want.
Meanwhile broadcasters like Fox (KPTM 42) are setting broadcast flags on their prime-time shows, preventing me from playing back my recordings made through the cable box on my computer, their being flagged "Copy Once" instead of "Copy Freely". And this after last season doing something else that made their video non-standard so I could only access the audio stream with the computer. At least the TiVo not only still records and plays back those shows, it also still lets me transfer them to the computer for burning to DVD.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Digeo worked on Charter's network along with the Moto boxes. Of course, they were bought by Arris a few months ago, but still.
What the FCC is proposing is making the DCTV systems function like the ACTV system used to. You know, it's the reason why every new TV / VCR / ETC that came out had an analog cable box built right into it. I don't see why this ended when DCTV systems appeared on the scene. CableCards where a completely unnecessary and unneeded detour AWAY from the functionality and choice that the consumer previously had.
Until digital cable TV works, I won't be paying for it.
If the FCC "forces" them to work with my HDHomeRun, I'll likely become a monthly-paying sap. I think it's funny, though, that they won't choose the more profitable (for them!) course on their own.
I get this image of the FCC holding a gun to Comcast's head, saying, "have customers, collect revenue, stop screwing over your stockholders," and a Comcast lobbyist saying, "No, we don't want money! Please, nooo!! Customers, ick!! The bastards pay us every damn month and we don't know what to do with the money, so please, please don't force us to supply a service that people will be willing to pay for. We had to buy NBC with our excess cash, and if you make us more profitable, we'll have so much money that we'll be choking on it. For the accountants' sake, at least, have mercy!" So far, FCC has considered this to be a good argument.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The future is:
ONE DATA PIPE!
Voice, cable TV or the idea of 'channels', video, program guides, on-demand, the Internet.. It's all just data. The future is paying for one Internet connection.. and then paying for whatever services you want from whatever company. For example, one person might decide to have 7 cable channels they like from 7 different providers for nominal monthly fees, Internet access to accomodate, and a voip phone also.. all delivered (except for the actual Internet link) from various states or even other countries. Mr. African-American can actually watch African channels in America! Another customer might feel better having a 'package' deal where everything is delivered by one company (exactly how things are done now). Another customer might prefer Internet access from one company and a package of select channels from another company..
So, imo, the easiest way to accomodate this is for 'cable' boxes to require Internet access. Hell.. with a decent Internet connection and a computer on every TV (getting less and less expensive or different in price than a cable box), I could just pay for cable channels I want if the damn media companies were willing to sell it directly to me.
And, as technology progresses, the argument that it is 'innefficient' becomes more and more moot because the bandwidth required becomes more and more nominal in relation to availability.
Of course, the entrenched entities such as Verizon and Comcast will fight against this.. because even in 'competition' they duopolistically screw the consumer.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Say what you will about the man, but his FCC seems to have significantly more teeth than the last administration's. Between this, the Verizon ETF, and the Gvoice/Apple thing they seem to actually be doing their job.
"I have difficulty seeing how this universe can be made to function effectively in the absence of some sort of regulatory regime to ensure transparency and fairness in situations where the Internet access providers themselves are providing their own content that directly competes with content from the external Internet."
I'm neither trolling nor taking cheap shots here.
TFS is right if the implication is that things only change from market forces or regulatory ones.
Market forces are held back when there are few choices - such as that faced by a large number of TV consumers that can't get decent over-the-air (OTA) reception - or their favorite shows via OTA. For many people, it's a take it or leave it option for cable OR satellite.
Now enter streaming video. Market forces - especially among /.'rs - might well prefer that - but then, we hit the take-it-or-leave-it ISP download options - and in many markets, the tech is apparently running well behind the demand due to payoff (return on investment?) considerations for the various network providers.
Now - add in TV and ISP interests and hope for regulatory salvation. While laudable theoretically, it's a formula for even more special interest lobbying.
FWIW - note that cable companies seem to successfully lobby many states for an added tax on satellite TV, as one example of infighting hitting the consumers.
Don't forget the ever-present MPAA and programming conglomerates for cable / satellite - they want the cable feeds to be hard to copy, or circumvent.
Like it or not - cable or sat can with present tech deliver a LOT of programming in their respective pipes - streaming is not ready to fully compete in terms of delivery systems, DRM that the industry will allow, and ease of use for the consumers.
I, for one, do not see a viable solution to this situation.
But - I shudder at the word "regulatory."
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
That's what the government ought to be working on: ensure competition. Everything else is not only useless — for even the slowest-moving corporation will outrun and outsmart a government bureaucrat — but dangerous, because trying (and failing) to outsmart a corporation, the bureaucrats will trample over freedoms and liberties.
The entire idea of giving entire regions over to one or two companies — in exchange for "stricter" regulation — was a disaster. It is as if somebody wanted Capitalism to fail, so they crippled it with government-assured mono- or, at best, duopoly. Why am I stuck choosing between Verizon and Comcast?
That ought to be stopped. Allow anyone to run their cables to any home, if they want to. Then you can stop mandating this and that and let the competition sort it out. Which consumer would rather be calling FCC (Monday through Friday, 9-4 EDT) to complain and wait for the bureaucracy deal with company's skilled lawyers, instead of simply calling the competitor to switch?
Of course, this would diminish the Government's power, so FCC will never voluntarily release this control and will keep finding reasons and examples of its own usefulness...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
My video cable box is a standard Motorola. There's nothing proprietary about it.
And my Internet cable adapter is my own Motorola Surfboard, that I picked up at Goodwill for $4. Even though it was old enough that someone threw it out, it is a newer model than the ones the cable company rents to customers.
How much do you want to bet cable companies dont want to be supplying the boxes either. Maintaining all those boexes is expensive and cable companies at best get exactly what they paid for from the rental fees. The problem is there is no real way to not need a box right now. Also the problem is every company has their network laid out differently. Also Verizon would have to be included in any legislation since they now have fios tv.
Incidentally, Singapore is considering a single set top box (between multiple vendors). This could be a similar situation.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1019917/1/.html
What the NEW (northeast Wisconsin) version of Time Warner Cable does, and probably other branches too, is change the digital cable exact frequencies like once a week. So sure, my Olevia TV can tune into channel 142.12 but next week it'll be 142.9824. And yes, it does go out to 4 digits apparently. So I have to rescan my TV really often just to pick up digital and digital HD channels. Then to tune directly to them, I have to remember the idiotic 6+ digit number. I can't memorize them either because it keeps changing. Talk about a scam! Their provided DVR, which is on another TV, can magically retune itself and enumerate the channels to more friendly, whole numbers too. I assume it's getting a secret data update that tells it what the channels are changing to. They're going to get absolutely destroyed if the gov looks into that too!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Cable companies don't use public airwaves. The FCC should have anything to say about them beyond regulating spurious emissions. If a cable company offers you a deal where you use their services in exchange for using specific hardware then so be it.
Cable companies do, however, use public right of way's which are probably owned by the city. I say let the cities add contract/lease terms for open access when they allow the cable companies to run the wiring.
Cable companies do have competition already - at my house, I can have AT&T U-verse, Time Warner, DirecTV, or Dish Network. I can also just get wireless internet or DSL and watch YouTube... or I could read a book.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Is this that thing where they take away channels I've been paying for until I rent a set-top box to get them back, but my bill doesn't go down in the meantime?
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Clear QAM. If the cable companies designed and supported CableCARD properly like they should have in the first place, then they wouldn't be in this mess. Nobody wants STBs attached to every TV in their home, drawing more electricity and wasted energy, when their TVs already have perfectly capable digital tuners in them (and have for years). You see, back when TV was analog and TVs only went up to 13 channels were when STBs made perfect sense. They were delivering value by enabling so much more content to be accessed then you ever could without a box.
New TVs from ~2001 up until 2006 all had support for CableCARD built in. It was the very thing to liberate us from the stupid (and unnecessary) STBs the cable companies would force you to rent. Yet the cable companies did everything they could to kill it, including charging more for the card then they do for the damn boxes. Eventually TV manufacturers realized that nobody was using the CableCARD slots so they abandoned it as an unnecessary cost.
Fast forward to now and we have a myriad of download-able, streaming content to enjoy direct from the networks. The cable companies did this to themselves. More and more people are canceling their subscriptions as they realize the absurdity of it all. In order for cable to survive it will have to do the only thing they will never do. Clear their QAM. Provide a digital signal that is un-encrypted to the consumer. People will actually buy back in if this were to happen. They would be overjoyed that they would have the freedom to use MythTV, Windows Media Center, or whatever they wanted to as a DVR. Freedom of choice is the best way to get customer loyalty. Sadly, we all know that this will never happen, and we will continue to be forced into a model we do not want. The content delivery medium will continue to move from Cable to the Internet, until it is all over. Encryption and lock-down will be the death kneel to the cable industry. I suppose that the big Cable companies don't even care, since you're likely to still be paying them as your ISP.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I completely refuse to pay the cable company more money just so I can have a clunky box that they own taking up space in my living room. Fortunately I live close enough to the broadcast towers that I can get free OTA HD from all the major networks, and I'm happy with that. I'll never be happy with the cable companies until they provide unencrypted content to my home. Send us the signal that our built-in digital TV tuners can decode! To hell with all the encryption, DRM, and lockdown that the digital era has bestowed upon us. Lord how I do miss the good old days of analog sometimes.
But this wouldn't be the state telling the infrastructure provider what price to sell (or lease) at, just that they lease to everybody at the same price.
Here is the biggest problem for consumers... Support Most Cable Companies already refuse support for anything out of their core product offering. Examples include mail clients(Outlook Express Only), no third party routers, no linux/unix, or other operating systems, cable card ready devices aren't supported...
If you have 100 different makes/models of HD PVR's your cable co will only support the ones they sell. Consumers will get frustrated with the lack of support, and the whole idea of an open network will come toppling down.
Nice theory... bad idea.
Their just a little late. Replaytv is pretty much gone now.
Maybe they can reset the clock, it would be great to see open standards on Cable, Dish / Direct, or the Fios / Uverse setups. I would love to see the usability of Replay moved over to a device that supports 4 HD streams that can work on any provider.
Internet video is nice, but the 30 second commercial to watch 2 minutes of video is pretty much an ender for me.
just don't watch. it's all crap anyway. the only programs my wife and I watch are mad men and big bang theory via p2p. once in a while, daily show.
life's too short to remain glued to the tube...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
What ever happened to Switched Virtual Circuits and why couldn't they be put to use to enable "easy" access to multiple content providers?
The only way to get cable boxes into retail is to make them more attractive than the rental boxes from the cable cos. The only way to do that is to stop the cable cos from lying to customers and saying the boxes are required and that retail boxes (and Tivos) won't work on their systems. And the only way to do that is kill the atrocious profits the cable cos make from renting a $50 box for $10+ a month for years. And the only way to do that is stop the cables cos from providing boxes at all. And then the cable cos will just add the $10+ a month into their regular fees.
Or, you can educate consumers, but that's harder than doing the above.
"Lauren Weinstein has a cautionary blog post about the world we may be entering if this FCC initiative comes to fruition, which concludes: "I have difficulty seeing how this universe can be made to function effectively in the absence of some sort of regulatory regime to ensure transparency and fairness in situations where the Internet access providers themselves are providing their own content that directly competes with content from the external Internet.""
Yes, indeed. There are few parallels.
Eventually, the Cable Internet providers will be compelled, by profit and perceived survival, to either acquire or filter their competitors, the Internet content providers. They will see no choice.
Imagine we still had home delivery of dairy products in America. And imagine the dairies decided to stop delivering product to stores. Just their home delivery.
An imperfect analogy, but it would change the relationship between you and milk. And your dairy.
And you might never know about chocolate milk. Or yogurt.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Go to the supermarket in any EU country and you will find a selection of satellite and terrestrial TV receivers from many different suppliers and with many different levels of features. The American public is getting cheated, with limited or no choices. The US is also loosing a lot of business that would be generated by allowing the development and sale of set top boxes from many different companies - it is an industry that is essentially missing.
This is exactly what was happening. Hulu is owned by NBC. First, comcast adds a monthly cap the second hulu becomes popular. This doesn't work as well as intended and comcast now has a giant competitor. What does Comcast do? They merge with NBC. wa-la! Comcast is still a monopoly in many areas.
I live out in the forest. I get 1 OTA (2 if I put the antenna on the roof) channels, and I'd have to cut holes in the trees to get sat. Also, since I'm right off the ocean I have a feeling the fog bank wouldn't help. Comcast out here has a monopoly.
We have 3-4 OCAP Panasonic TVs in our lab and let me tell you, they are pretty flakey. I am also speaking from inside the Comcast company. These things were rolled out in beta mode in certain markets but IMO were no where near ready. Now they are much better but still buggy. The buggy part is because there's a set top built into the TV with a cablecard slot. The buggy part is the MCard firmware as well as the middleware and guide. The TV itself is actually pretty good, just the software kind of sucks. Of course the TV firmware is also sometimes buggy but getting better.
A while back, my cable company raised my rate. So, of course, I called. By the way, there is no DSL available in my area, so cable is my only cost-effective broadband option. And if it weren't for the fact that internet access alone costs nearly as much as access+basic cable, I would simply have that. Anyway, they offered a new rate for the next year if I subscribed to the digital package. Ok, fine. So they deliver a box. I try it out for all of a couple hours and find that it's an annoyance - my TV remote won't control it, I don't like its remote, and channel-flipping now incurs a delay each flip. So I unhook the box, stuff it away until they ask for it back, and go back to analog.
The moral of the story is that I'm paying for crap I don't want and don't use, but it's the most sensible option given my circumstances. Stoopid cable company.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Direct tv has good rent rates / mirroring fees.
The rent and mirroring (any box) is the same $5/m box 1 free and they seem to be waving / cutting the upfront fee quit a lot as well and it's better then cable with there $15-$20/m + about up to $30 up front fee for there HD DVR's and it is a much better and a better deal then comcast Chicago land as you need sports pack (that has some non sports channels) and comcast digital classic / preferred to get the same stuff as direct tv HD DVR and digital classic / preferred costs just about the same as direct tv HD DVR with no HD or DVR in it's price.
CSN + needs a full box at about $6/m+ for a SD one.
The big black eyes for comcast are sci-fi / Syfy and speed.
need full box + classic / preferred. and speed needs sports pack (parts of the area) + full box.
Why is fox movie channle in the sports pack? other comcast systems have that in digital classic / preferred.
Other comcast areas STILL HAVE THEM IN ANALOG and digital stater but not hear.
WOW cable has them in analog and IN HD.
RCN has syfy in lower level digital and speed in the higher one or lower one + sports pack.
at&t u-verse has them in the U100 level.
Selling cable boxes to the public works in Canadian cable systems why can't we have that hear with them being 100% movable to any system.
I returned my set-top box to Dime Wormer last February, and I haven't looked back.