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FCC Approves Changes To Cable Box Rules
GovTechGuy writes "The FCC issued an order Thursday that should make it much easier and cheaper for consumers to purchase and install third-party cable boxes made by manufacturers such as TiVo. The rules are aimed at spurring competition in the cable box market; currently consumers overwhelmingly choose to rent a box from their cable provider rather than buy their own. Lawmakers have complained the current cable box technology is outdated and doesn't allow consumers to leverage new sources of video content such as the Web or streaming services from providers such as Netflix. The new rules should result in a smarter, more advanced cable box in the near future."
And Cable providers sue in 3...2...1
Cable and Internet providers have been ridiculously successful against the FCC for the past 15 years. It's like literally everything the FCC has tried to do has been shut down by the courts.
I had a cablecard installed in my Tivo Premiere within days of calling Verizon with no hassle at all.
None of these address the "value add" (sorry, kinda puked in my mouth a little bit getting that out) that sells the consumer that they MUST GET CABLE BOX FROM CABLE COMPANY. First of all, consumers don't know they have a choice of getting a cable card, and how to get a device that supports one, and get one installed if they find the device. Secondly, consumers are told they can't get on-demand content if they don't use the cable company's device.
That's it guys. Prescheduled programming? Nobody runs into problems with this. Pricing/Billing transparency? No - this would be a problem if most consumers knew the option existed. Streamlined installation? See pricing/billing transparency. Ease requirements? No - just need to HAVE requirements.
TFA states a lot of PR from the FCC, the TiVo, and the cable industry on the effects the new rule will have on consumers, but nowhere describes what about the CableCARD rules is actually being changed, and doesn't cite the order to enable people to check for themselves. So I checked the FCC website, the order is here.
Haven't had time to read it myself yet, but hopefully having it will enable people to read it and make comments on the actual content, rather than the fluff in TFA.
The waiver for the satellite companies should be removed, so that you can buy third party DirecTV and DISH boxes too. (There could be third party DISH boxes, and would presumably have been new DirecTivos all along, without the waivers.)
I know someone (who used to work at TiVo) who said that something like 50% of TiVo's issue backlog (this was 2008) was dealing with CableCard issues (on models that supported it).
Maybe their curve has flattened out now, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that "support for CableCard" "works reasonably well on Comcast (or other cable company)". Is probably designed to prevent the next TiVo from popping up and embarrassing the cable behemoths.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
No. This is different. It's legal.
It's called an internet connection, bittorrent, and a ps3.
Really? How well does a PS3 decode encrypted HD cable channels and handle PPV content? If it functioned as a good cable box, I might just buy a PS3, despite the fact that I don't play a lot of games. Bittorrent is great, but just a tiny bit more cumbersome than simply pulling up a DVR menu or punching in a 4-digit channel number, and then there's the question of legality.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
This leaves anyone with a non-cableCard device out in the cold. The rules need to be tightened up to force cable companies to provide the digital signals that people are paying for IN THE CLEAR so they can use customer provided equipment freely. At least for any tier called "digital basic", which is the lowest level digital tier. In other words, they can trap the digital signals for anyone who doesn't have "digital basic", so they do not need to encrypt the signals to prevent theft, they just trap them out. Just as they used to do with upper-tier programming in analog form.
Comcast does this. They used to provide all the basic digital signals in clearQAM so my four clearQAM devices could access them. Then one day they simply shut them off. I get the must-carries in digital with those devices now. Just the must-carries.
Bastards.
Legality is kind of irrelevant at this point.
Cable/Satellite have already lost. This legislation is really no different than legislating that horse carriage manufacturers cannot mandate what buggy whip you get to use.
Locked in bundles, extortion by ESPN, monopolies and duopolies, out of control advertising, spamming during the programming itself, locked outputs, retroactively removed features that existed at the time of purchase (fuck you Sony and burn in Hell), are not desired by younger consumers, and especially the generation of young consumers that have been raised on YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Hulu, etc.
The future are services like Hulu and Netflix. I hardly even bother to torrent TV shows or movies anymore. For one, I can usually get the movie legally in a few days through the mail, or streamed directly to my TV in HD quality. My TV shows are now without commercials or those impossible-to-ignore-totally-ruin-the-fucking-show overlays with the Sci-Fi channel being the best example of the retarded twats that decided that was a good idea. I watched entire seasons of Chuck, Stargate SGU, The Big Bang Theory, etc. all without any interruptions or annoyances.
Above all... I did this legally for once. TV shows that are broadcast are obviously fair game to me though. If you put in radio waves across my face on my property, fuck you when you attempt to control what I do with it. That being said, I do like the fact that I can pay a reasonable price for access to a large catalog of movies legally.
There is a reason why Blockbuster has declared bankruptcy. There is a reason why Cable/Satellite execs constantly lament how many people are "cutting the cord".
They don't get it!
Even a cablebox of your choosing is not going to give you the on-demand choices and advertising free content that people are clearly going to obtain one way or the other. The article mentioned that the 3rd party cableboxes would contain Netflix. Really? If that is available, why would I choose to pay $50 a month for HBO/ShowTime/Cinemax/whatever? I would never pay any money for ShowTime, or whatever they are called, when they do the Sci-Fi Super-Retardo overlays on the movie while I am watching it. Saw that at a friends house and spent the next 20 minutes hooking up his kids XBOX to his TV, using the Live account his kids already had, and started watching the same movie IN HD, and WITHOUT the overlays through Netflix. Now his whole family has about 30-40 movies all the time queued up in their instant watch queue.
Sorry, the legislation here is too late. Nearly every young person I know has already transitioned towards a YouTube/Netflix/Hulu/??? combination to get access to entertainment and has never even once paid a cable TV bill.
We don't need to talk about the illegal stuff. Those people doing "illegal" stuff still represent a loss of marketshare (not a loss of income due to piracy, or some equally retarded and fallacious argument). However, what about the people like me that have been using, by and large, completely legal distribution channels to obtain entertainment on their own terms?
IMO, the legal options are going to make a cablebox obsolete before the legislation even takes place. 5 years ago I laughed when MS and Sony said they had ambitions to become the media centers in people's homes. Not laughing anymore....
The barrier isn't technological, it's psychological. My mom has a cable box she doesn't need. The installer told her she needed to get cable. I told her to take it back and demand a refund. She won't. During the 80's, you had to have a box to get channels above 13, because that was the highest a TV could tune. Then the FCC mandated cable-ready TV's, and you didn't need a box at all except for pay TV. There was no education or information given to the public, so a lot of people went through the 90's still believing they need a box, and the cablecos still play on that. The only was to solve the problem is to educate the public, something like forcing the cablecos to hand their customers a pamphlet clearly showing what channels do and do not require a box.
I would run one in a heartbeat - especially since I now live in a city where Comcast has deployed Motorola rather than Scientific Atlanta. (on Scientific Atlanta the ESATA ports are enabled, and on Motorola they are disabled). I like having the ability to keep an entire season of certain shows on the PVR/DVR to re-watch at my leisure.
However, there is a problem; most CableCard-capable PVRs available on the market, at least last time I looked into them, did not support OpenCable Host Device services, so watching On Demand content isn't (or wasn't) possible. Also, aside from client apps on a PC or Mac, management of viewing, recording, and deleting content on a Tivo requires about 3x as many clicks as does the cable company's PVR. The Tivo still doesn't(?) support OCAP:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/02/dnptivo-premiere-and-premiere-xl-usher-in-a-brand-new-interface/
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Bittorrent is great, but just a tiny bit more cumbersome than simply pulling up a DVR menu or punching in a 4-digit channel number, and then there's the question of legality.
The TV shows I torrent are ones that for some reason my DVR did not record, so I don't really care if I'm technically infringing copyright. That said...
There are already torrent clients that can use RSS feeds to grab the shows you are interested in. With a very small amount of extra coding, you could end up with the downloaded files renamed the way you want and in the right place for your media player to be able to access them, all with no human intervention. It's probably already been done, but I've never bothered to investigate.
The only real downside to this is that at times you might wait a day or two after the original broadcast before you have access. Since I'm currently a few months behind on TV, this wouldn't be a problem for me.
From the article:
"A trade group representing the cable industry also praised the FCC's action and pledged to work with TiVo and other retail cable box providers to create a new video device capable of seamlessly integrating content from multiple sources.
“We commend the Commission for its constructive approach in adopting sensible, targeted fixes to the current CableCARD rules that provide cable operators the necessary flexibility to continue improving the CableCARD experience for all of our customers," said the National Cable and Telecommunications Association in a statement. "
Yes, they probably don't mean it, blah blah blah...
*shrug* Pretty well, actually.
Try Ted [Torrent Episode Downloader] with PS3 Media Server. You get the same shows you watch now. It costs you nothing. All the commercials are edited out. And you can usually watch them within 3-4 hours of their being broadcast.
The only possible alternative that is similar in functionality (shows WITHOUT commercials, not just commercials you fast forward through) is Amazon VOD. That being said, Amazon VOD is only compatible with certain devices, unlike PS3 Media Server, which works with nearly all DLNA devices. Otherwise, I would probably just buy the shows through Amazon VOD. If it only worked on the PS3, natively.
You can use Amazon VOD, Hulu, and Netflix through PlayOn, but it kind of sucks. Netflix on the PS3 (the version Sony promotes) is using a Bluray disk, and the interface is terrible. One must click through titles one-by-one, with no way to hold down the "forward" button, or flick a page at a time.
The only issue with PS3 Media Server is that you have to organize the files, because although Ted does a great job of downloading the files, they will end up in a giant pile on your drive with crappy "leet speak" names. There are a few automatic renaming utilities, but these are very kludge.
There is a new (free as in beer) DLNA server called Serviio which fixes that, by automagically downloading program names, and presenting a hierarchical interface to the user. That way, you can keep your TV shows in a big pile, and organize them whenever you want. This combination (TED+SERVIIO) represents truly automatic HD video on demand, sans commercials, of nearly any content you would want. And its free.
That being said, Serviio's transcoding is somewhat buggy, so TV Nirvana isn't quite ready yet. But it's almost there.
The funny thing is that I cannot get service this good from any provider at *any* price. I would be willing to pay quite a premium to get truly ad-free TV. But I want my shows to download automatically (or stream), I want it in HD, and I want it to work with a video game console or TV, eliminating a set-top box that would otherwise take up valuable space.
The ironic thing? I prefer watching TV on my PS3s than on my DirecTV HD-DVRs with nearly every channel.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
26. We conclude that the best means of assuring the development of a retail market for navigation devices is to require cable operators to allow subscribers to self-install CableCARDs. We believe cable operators should have time to train staff and develop more robust customer support infrastructures and procedures, and provide nine months to comply for any operators that allow subscribers on any of their systems to self-install any cable modems89 or leased set-top boxes.90 We are not persuaded by arguments that cable operators could not support activation of retail CableCARD devices within this reasonable transition period. However, we are concerned that a cable operator that does not permit self-installation of any equipment that attaches to its network may not have the customer support infrastructures in place to handle self-installations and may need a longer transition period.91 Therefore, we will allow cable operators that do not have any self-installation support in place twelve months to phase in this self-installation requirement.92 We also require cable operators to inform their subscribers about the self-installation option when they request CableCARDs.93
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
I have a Roku box. Cost me $60. Uses the Internet (built-in 802.11n wireless, at that). And now is available with 1080p support (though I wish they'd announced that before I'd bought my second Roku for the other TV...)
I get Netflix, as well as a lot of other content, on it.
Two reasons it's not as good as cable/satellite:
1. There still isn't a lot of content, and almost none of it is live (there's an MLB out-of-market channel, but I haven't tied into it yet to see if it's live or delayed).
2. Roku works because it's sparsely distributed to the marketplace. The Internet does not have the bandwidth to give everyone unlimited, on-demand, random-access content in full HDTV quality all the time. The cable and satellite communication models eliminate the on-demand portion (mostly; each has some channels for on-demand-like programming, but they're pay-per-view controlled and that keeps their use down to a sparse segment of the viewership at any moment), but ensure that literally every installed endpoint can get any of the channelized content at the same time.
Of course, the real problem with the cable/satellite models is that they've become so fractionated that no channel has a really significant audience share, so they all have suck commercial revenues, so they can't afford the decent television shows, so 90% of them run the sucky junk that costs nothing. Which makes Bruce Springsteen not just observant, but prescient by a factor of 20: 1100 channels and nothing on...
i worked as tech support for a cable company in souther california. the only guy who was honest about the specific flaws of each model of box was the guy who trained us. he told us what problems to expect and how often, basically saying that all the boxes in one way or another were crap, even the 'new' ones. according to him, the main reason the company did not allow customer owned boxes, was because most of them were not compatible with our proprietary software. (read into that what you will) his sincere desire, for the good of the customer and the sanity of the tech support people, was for tv manufacturers to get off their butts and develop 2-way cableCARD ready TVs. do away with the box all together. at the time, there were TVs capable of using cableCARDs, but only 1-way, meaning no on-demand or pay-per-view. eventually, TVs with 2-way function and internal HDDs will come along, but who knows what roadblocks are delaying this...
Hold on a moment. Cable companies are granted exclusive franchises by the city government, not the federal government. That and that alone is the reason for the abysmal service. If you had a choice between TW, Comcast, Cox, Charter, and CableVision in most cities then we would have real competition, and the prices and services would be much better.
The FCC helps to keep the cable companies acting like there is competition. If not for the FCC, there would never have been the CableCard option in the first place. The only option would be to buy the set-top box, or not be able to tune in to many of the channels you are paying for.
Sure the FCC does sometimes bend to much the the will of the media companies or cable companies, but if the FCC only regulated the actual airwaves, and not also the cable companies, Things would be much, much worse.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Well, they should be scared that people are going to abandon their lucrative set-top box rental scam. I'm shelling out a lot of money per month just to have HD DVRs from Comcast. These are buggy, buggy pieces of Motorola crap that I just can't wait to get rid of.
The worst part is the abuse of their monopoly position. With 1080 lines of resolution at their disposal, they manage to squeeze five (5!) whole channel listings at a time onto the program guide screen. They reserve the bottom 20% of the guide for inane advertisements. They refuse to allow me to remove the shitty channels I will never watch from the lineup. They do not let me reorder the channels in a fashion that makes logical sense to me. There's a whole pile of annoyances that grate every time I touch the remote. We even have a list of activities we don't dare do, lest we send the cable box into some kind of tailspin while it's recording. And for this crap software, I pay them continually.
I always liked my ReplayTVs much better than any Tivo I ever used, but anything else has got to be a damn site better than these awful things.
John
More clueless rants from the Lemming peanut gallery.
CC hardware vendors will happily sell their gear to Linux users and support them too.
The main hurdle is CableLabs and the burdens they place on hardware and OS vendors.
These restrictions IMPACT EVERYONE and even make Tivos less useful.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Remember those?
I'd kill to have a setup that my 75-year old mother could actually use. (She's just never going to be able to get the idea of separate components, and I've never found a "universal" remote control that she can use.)
Monopolistic a$$hats.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Hooking up a PVR should be no more complicated than hooking up a VCR used to be.
All of the nonsense "standardization" that has been created by the industry and the FCC is nothing more than a monopoly on a silver platter.
The connection between the cable box and the TV should be in the clear. THAT should be mandated by the FCC.
I should be able to record off of a cable box with a $30 ATSC tuner.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What is illegal about an internet connection? What is illegal about bittorrent? What is illegal about a PS3? Come to think about it... What is illegal about a window? What is illegal about a brick? What is illegal about me throwing that brick through the window? Careful here..... It is my window.... and my brick....
Protip2: Then the FCC rule won't apply to them and any posts here are off topic trolls (in addition to the fact that Slashdot officially considers itself to be American and the largest single readership is American), unless made with a disclaimer similar to "I'm not in the US, but..."
P.S. I'm not in the USA.
Learn to love Alaska
...to have Time-Warner install a CableCARD on my Moxi DVR. First off, T-W resolutely refuses to allow customers to self-install. They require a technician to come out and make a call to the "head office" to relay information from the DVR that requires the DVR owner (in this case, me) to pull up. Then, it takes about 2-1/2 additional hours to figure out that the INIT sequence wasn't being properly sent by T-W. Of course, all this time T-W is telling me it's my DVR (even though T-W specifically identifies the Moxi as a "supported" DVR). In the end, it cost me $35 and 3 hours of my time (2 hours of that spent online chatting with a Moxi engineer who was telling me what to tell the cable guy) to deal with T-W's ineptitude when it comes to CableCARD support.
Contrast this to Comcast: I walked into the Comcast office, picked up a CableCARD for my mom's 8-year-old rear projection Mitsubishi, plugged it in, called Comcast, and was up and running in about 1/2 hour. Total cost? $0.
Unfortunately, I don't think the FCC's new regs will address gross technical incompetence on the part of some cable TV providers.
why do you cower? what are you afraid of?
This coming from a guy who posted with 5 different UIDs in one thread?
Shut the fuck up, samefag.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Remember the days of renting your dial telephone from the Ma Bell?
Allowing other manufacturers to create phones initially resulted in a slew of sub-standard, crappy telephones. After a short period of growing pains, touch-tone phones appeared and grew in popularity. This innovation was further enjoined by cordless phones.
I wonder what kind of antiquated phones we'd be stuck with today if we were still renting phones from a single provider.
How amazing, powerful and inexpensive can cable boxes become now that they're open to competition.