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Can Google Fix the Cable Box?
theodp writes "In purchasing Motorola Mobility, Slate's Farhad Manjoo reports that Google will also come into possession of one the nation's biggest suppliers of set-top boxes. So, can Google work some of its do-no-evil magic on the loathsome cable box? Don't bet on it, says Manjoo. For one thing, there's no evidence that Google would be very good at remaking the set-top box (Google TV, anyone?). But even if Google managed to dramatically improve set-top boxes, it's doubtful that cable and satellite companies would buy in. First, they'd lose all those ridiculously lucrative cable-box rental fees. More importantly, they'd have to give up control of the main entertainment device in most homes, and with it the opportunity to slow or stymie competing sources for entertainment. After the merger, notes Manjoo, Google could get several billion dollars by selling off Motorola Mobility's set-top-box division — a much surer payday than taking on Big Cable."
But there is a lot of viewership demographic data to gather, and no one harvests ad data better than Google. They'll be able to offer an online ad that matches one that the view didn't switch away from last night while watching TV.
I never knew it was broken. It sounds like people are trying to make a problem to fix.
They purchased Motorola Mobility, not Motorola....two different companies.
Can I have an HD version of my old ReplayTV? Fantastic interface, incredibly easy to use. Just add room-to-room streaming to make up for the loss of transferring every recording. (And I didn't even have the one that did automatic commercial skipping.)
People still watch cable? I mean I have it but I don't think Ive watched anything in at least a month. I mean with Netflix and bit torrent who needs cable as long as I got my fast internet connection. Now, if the cable company would let me order there high speed internet without getting basic cable that would be an improvement.
In Canada you can buy the same boxes or rent them. Some cable / satellite systems even have rent to own.
And when you buy them there is no per box outlet / mirroring fees.
But over hear in comcast land new software like tivo on the Motorola cable box does not make it out of the testing area.
Stuff like E-sata is locked out (a few other cable systems have it turned on)
Other cable systems have auto HD where they can tune to the hd channel when you enter the old SD number. Comcast has the half backed pop up the ask you to hit a button to go the HD channels (does not show up all the time)
The new Xfinity Spectrum box with 4 tuners is in testing but right now in test you have 2 and half tuners working and no AnyRoom DVR right now.
Ditch the set top box, get a Windows 7 Machine with a cable card (or just hook up an antenna), no fees, and the media center 7 interface kicks the but of any other DVR.
You come home, turn on the TV, and it'll ask you for your Gmail account.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It'd be interresting to see what Google could come up with.
Why MSWIndows with a cable card?
Why not Apple TV with a USB tuner? Makes about as much sense.
I'll just buy a tuner card or USB box for the Fedora box I use here. Or not. We've done fine without TV for about seven years now.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I made my own. http://cetoncorp.com/
I don't know how the Cable Companies do things, but one of the things I looked into after becoming a DirecTV subscriber was getting boxes that I owned outright instead of boxes I leased. What I discovered is that even if you own the box, they still charge you 5 or 6 bucks a month to use it with their system by calling it a "mirroring" fee.
Considering that everything I've read about IPTV boxes suggests that they have to actively request the content from a central line, and the more advanced cable boxes all need to interface with the central system for the purposes of knowing what channels are and aren't allowed, PPV ordering, and on-demand access, I can safely assume that there is no way you could slip some kind of box on to the system and have it just magically work in some kind of passive mode the way you could just hook up your old cable ready TV to the old analog systems. The companies are gonna know its there, and they're gonna charge you a fee to use it, regardless of if you own it or they do.
More importantly, they'd have to give up control of the main entertainment device in most homes
Interesting if true. I would have thought with Hulu and tons of other entertainment that cable's glory days were behind. I'd really like to know the % of homes that still have cable as I'm sure with the economy, many are considering other, cheaper alternatives.I know many that have ditched it in the past couple years and those that do have it, it's mainly b/c of ESPN/sports. At least around here, it is a non-trivial amount to add basic cable to your internet service, let alone any premium packages.
Google is deploying fiber to the home. I'm sure there will be a video offering, what else are they going to do with that bandwidth? So, why does google care what Comcast or Direct TV thinks? If they make a better box they can use it for themselves. If they find a better way to generate revenue with it, then maybe the other operators my take a look at it.
In the US you can purchase your own DVR (TiVO) too (Dish/DirecTV people excluded). For most people, however, the cost is not worthwhile as they either don't know better or aren't bothered by the lacking features and issues with their provider supplied box. It hurts that I paid (IIRC) about $600 for my HD, ~$14/month for cable cards, and ~$20/month (haven't wanted to recommit) for the TiVO service, but I still think it's worthwhile after suffering on Verizon's Motorola POS for about a year before I caved and went back to TiVO (previously had a DirecTiVO).
Personally I wouldn't want a Google DVR simply because I think they have too much information on me already, but that's me. That said, they couldn't do anything but improve the Motorola units (though to be fair as I understand it many of the issues are due to the cable companies ordering them with slower processors and less ram than Motorola recommends). I also disagree with the summary that Google would be going against the cable industry if they remade the devices in their image. They've proven they can work with similar industries (Android/cell phones) somewhat successfully. I think they could do the same here, but I'd wonder what the end result would look like and how (to the Techies) it would be much different from existing offerings after all the cool stuff we would want (e.g. you can forget shell access) is stripped out. I just don't see them going it alone like TiVO, at least not until they've built a good foundation of users and can then offer something above and beyond. Even then I'd expect they'd keep providing a locked down version for the cable companies and then offering an "elite" line for the small segment of people that want more from their DVR/TV.
Google could do some real evil and start adding onscreen ads, or just make ads clickable to go to an informational website while buffering the remainder of the show. If Google splits the click revenue with the cable cos, they would almost certainly go along.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So called 'big cable' only has a future as internet providers. Broadcast media, the already anachronistic channel paradigm, and tiered services are all as doomed as Blockbuster.
Apple TV* improved on the cable box more than anything else could -by removing it-
Now that I have an aTV, no one company controls what I watch on it; I can switch between my ipad or pc and tv in an instant and I can play *my* music instead of those stupid bloody cable radio channels. This all comes (nominally) from a single device that costs $119 up front and never requires you to pay another dime.
Cable TV is a dying (should already be dead) dinosaur of an idea. Even in canada where tv shows are expensive through itunes (we don't get 99c rentals) I would have to religiously watch about 16 entire seasons of tv shows a year in order to make up the money I used to pay for cable. The distinct plus of this is that I own those shows after I pay for them and can archive and re-watch them anytime. They're also of equal quality vs. the HD Cable (since nothing but sports is broadcast above 720p anyways)
Bottom line, Google is late to the party. Other companies have been doing it badly for years, and Apple finally raised the bar enough to make it great. The only thing that cable still offers is sports (which I still can't understand watching on tv). That said, for the people who watch sports AND a lot of serials, cable makes sense... just don't expect any innovation; everyone else is moving on.
*Yes, I am aware of the non-apple options, but since I don't have an irrational hatred of everything apple I recognize that aTV is just miles and miles ahead of all the other options.
I wonder if this purchase includes Motorola Wireless Broadband Equipment ?
Given almost the entire Comcast cable network uses motoral equipment from front to back I could see Google and Comcast working to spice up xfinity with a googletv version. The original GoogleTV was pretty crappy but by all account the honeycomb based updates is alot better interface wise but by no means is it perfect. We probably won't see GoggleTV done right till ice cream sandwich is out running on arm based boxes. I don't know wth Google was thinking with the x86 android version used for GoogleTV it over complicates the code base when they should focus on a common arm based platform
My understanding is that, if you wish to use any encrypted cable service, you either suck it up and rent the company's cable box, or you enter the delightsome world of cablecard 'compatibility' with so-called "host" devices. At present, because of the somewhat onerous(incidentally the 'open' in "opencable" appears to be a piece of gallows humor, not an actual description) certification requirements, specific Wintel hardware configurations are the only ones DRMy enough for the purpose, along with a number of STBs and TVs and similar appliances.
Apple's continued lack of enthusiasm for DRM systems other than their own makes adoption of Cable Card on any of their platforms less than entirely likely, and I'm pretty sure that there is a standing order at Cable Labs HQ that any Linux system not thoroughly Tivoized is to be stopped at the door and ejected by security.
If you are dealing with OTA signals, or snarfing analog feeds from STBs, or using non/weakly DRMed digital media, you have options; but if you want to talk to a commercial cable network, not so much...
Story submitter really doesn't have a good idea how the cable industry works. Not that I do, but I at least know that Google would not be selling the boxes directly to the end consumers. They sell the boxes to the cable companies, who then turn around and sell/lease them to subscribers. Google is in a much better position to write improved software for the boxes.
I'm really a low 5-digit Slashdotter, but this ID is where I am now.
Hopefully Google can do something about this too.
Atop TV sets, a constant power drain
It's called TiVo.
I'm not sure Google can pull it off. They have the engineering talent, but I don't think they would be able to negotiate with the content creators or put an elegant face on their software and hardware.
There are persistent rumors of Apple being interested in making a television and I think they could pull it off. They already have a bunch of deals with content people in place. They also have the ability to look at a market and see what could be rather than what is. They reshaped the music industry and cell phone industry and I think they could do the same for televisions, amplifiers, and all the other boxes surrounding my television. I would love it if they could do something about the mess of wires and confusing remotes that I have lying around. I bought a Logitech Harmony 1100 because I thought that might make things simpler, but it is a deeply flawed device and now I have another remote sitting beside my television.
I will also point out that even if you hate everything Apple with an irrational hatred of a thousand burning suns, an aTV makes a sweet XBMC box, then you really can be in ultimate control of the software on the box.
CableCard devices requires your PC software to follow DRM restrictions (copy once, copy never). So far only Windows Media Server have them implemented, any other OS/software such as MythTv will only receive the cable channels marked "copy freely" from the CableCard device (no premium channels, PPV, etc)
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
That is something I miss about Adelphia - they had the e-sata ports enabled. When I call Comcast about it the answer is invariably "it's in beta" - riiight. In other words, it's enbled in the Adelphia markets they acquired, but not on the the nodes running off the heads Comcast deployed.
You would think they would enable it - instead of customers breaking DVRs to get upgrades, they can enable the e-sata ports and let the customer plug in larger hard drives. When I lived in an Adelphia town, I had a 1GB HDD attached to the DVR, which gave me five times the capacity the cable company delivers. It might sound like a ridiculous amount but when you consider how much disk space HD recordings take up, it really is not all that much space.
IMHO retaining SD channels is a good thing; you can stretch out capacity by recording SD rather than HD. Is there a difference in quality? There sure is. But honestly, I still think native HD is overrated. I'm still happy with upscaled DVD most of the time. I do buy Blu-Ray discs from time to time but even though the video quality is amazing, it does not impress me nearly as much as the upgrade from VHS (240-line-at-best-but-usually-smeared-and-bloomed resolution plus poorly-encoded Dolby Pro Logic) to DVD (480 lines of resolution with perfect color all the time plus Dolby Digital Surround, Dolby Digital Surround EX or DTS). Cable HD is generally over-compressed so you get MPEG blocking and color smearing, which decreases the apparent resolution, plus many cable providers only give you 720p, so you're looking at over-compressed 720p which may not look as good as DVD (480p) viewed at 1080p courtesy a high quality video scaler.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Tivo will be a target for Google. This will happen within a year. Mark my words.
I think you need to ask yourself a more general question. What can Google do to maximize their ad revenue per person per hour spent in the living room? Well, obviously all the ads that the user sees should be personally tailored Google ads. How do you achieve that? Now keep in mind that you have the R&D muscle to design the innards of a TV from scratch and give away the blueprints to Sony et al. Okay, so let's design a TV...
1. The TV shall have an active internet connection. The obvious answer is to ship every TV with a built-in WiFi chip.
2. The TV shall be running Google software or Google web apps. The answer seems to be to put a version of Android or Chrome OS on every TV.
3. There needs to be a fun and simple way for the user to control the TV. This is probably the most part difficult part to get right. Perhaps it should be something like the Wiimote, or something like Kinect. Perhaps it should be a traditional button remote and on-screen menu system. Lots of work needs to be put into this.
4. There needs to be a huge amount of content available through Google-affiliated content providers that operate through the web so that Google can control the flow of ads that the user sees. These providers would be direct competitors to the cable companies...
So in other words it doesn't seem like there is much opportunity for cooperation between Google and TV cable providers, except for the fact that Google needs the cable providers to stay alive, because a lot of users connect to the internet through cable. The cable companies will probably want a cut of Google's ad revenue. Google will probably try to outmaneuver the cable companies by some form of mobile internet connection scheme and that is where it gets interesting from a nerd perspective. Is it possible to have everyone in a city watch HDTV (including live broadcasts) over some form of radio connection? What kind of technology could achieve that?
Perhaps it is possible to get the cable companies to morph into internet-based Google-affiliated content providers and avoid the conflict altogether.
Let's be really clear here for a moment that the cable companies are NEVER going to let Google implement what's possible or what the consumer desires in the way of a proper set top box. Don't you just implicitly expect things like Slingbox to just, y'know, work? Nope...impacts revenue. How about HBO GO? Hmm...no again, that's a problem from a demand forecasting perspective. The cable companies win today by limiting choices (options, bandwidth consumption, etc) and Google would invariably want to uncork that. Not going to happen. Oh, here's my other favorite: what happens when someone tricks out the API and gives the entire customer base free access to everything?
The cable companies are the RIAA of the airwaves and will never tolerate this happen. Expect more of the same...unless Google intends to start laying their own fiber, too. Oh, wait...
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
I had a 1GB HDD attached to the DVR /s/1GB/1TB/
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Build a Windows Media Center PC, add a CetonTV card, and rent a CableCard from your cable company for around ~$3 a month.
I can record four shows at one time, have a much better guide and interface, save a lot of power (because cable boxes don't give a damn about power usage, and you'd know that if you plugged in a Kill-A-Watt into it), and just in rental fees, I save over $400 a year for two cable boxes. I use my WMC PC in one room (and it's whisper quiet), and an Xbox to extend the DVR to another room.
If I want to extend it again, I just buy an XBox on ebay for ~$100 or so. Nicest thing is that regardless of what cable company I have, I will always have a good DVR.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The FCC already has a ruling on this:
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/digital-cable-compatibility-cablecard-ready-devices
It's kinda like the way it was with telephones. People could own their own but it took literally over a decade before it really caught on. I know you could buy your own phone back in the late 1970's. However, the telcos were making pretty good money off rentals until at least the early 1990's. Lots of people just kept renting.
On the other hand, those old phones were very well engineered and were meant to last decades. You could bludgeon someone with an old bell telephone and then use it to call an ambulance.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
Google bought a small company called SageTV a few months back. They were one of the only companies offering a "whole house" PVR solution via tiny thin-client media extenders running on multiple TVs, and PVR software running on PCs. They had an extensible UI, as well as a number of features (like local media file management) that cable company DVRs either don't do, or do very poorly.
My guess is that they intend to apply the SageTV team to making cable boxes suck less; especially whole house solutions. Obviously they won't be using clients PCs as the server any longer, but a lot of the technology is applicable.
We dropped our cable subscription a few months ago when they forced set-top boxes on us. We were already paying for something we hardly used, and the idea of adding even more electronics to our setup was distasteful. Our main home theater unit already has too many devices to list here, and two of the three other TV's are wall-mount with no reasonable place for a set-top box. I actually shopped around for satellite before realizing that every one of those providers force you to use their equipment as well. So now we have just basic OTA HDTV, yet get a lot of video from Netflix and a lot of other online sources.
My only regret is live sports. I'm a fan of one particular sport that is carried on a cable sports channel, and has virtually no online availability.
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
Now hiring ftth engineers... google tv to google set top, via google isp
I mean with Netflix and bit torrent who needs cable
You need cable Internet or fiber Internet for Netflix, and you need cable TV or satellite TV for anything Netflix doesn't carry. See archived pros and cons. As for BitTorrent, which owners of copyright in video make their videos lawfully available over that?
and you give up VOD and have to use add on SDV tuners in SDV cable systems.
Also can you get out of market sports packs on cable card? Event PPV?
$3 month ok but some systems hit you with a outlet fee and maybe even a cable card HD fee.
There is lots of Free VOD and cable systems like comcast are cutting down on HBO, SHOW, MAX and STARZ HD and they say that alot of that in on VOD in HD.
The cable set top box wouldn't really stay in Google's control. The cable companies themselves have to drive them.
Do you think they want Netflix running on your cable box that they subsidize?
If Google can get some kind of profit sharing model with the cable companies when it comes to advertising then they will get some traction.
Google also got into the whole ad scheduling space as well. This might give google the ability to insert local ads into youtube streams, which could be a decent revenue stream and really start getting way more customized ads into the streams.
Cisco is the other big holder by buying scientific atlanta a while ago.If google started doing dumb things cable providers could plop back to their products.
Can google fix the cable box? No.
This dude has no clue of what the fuck he's talking about. Motorola is a market leader in Headend (TV), DOCSIS (Data/Internet) and cable systems end-user CPEs (setup boxes, cable modems/MTA).
If anything, they can potentially cause a market shift, since the bought all that marketshare. Now there's chance for them to be completely on every living room on Earth. In fact, the only reason Google TV failed is because pretty much Cable Operators lock their users to their setup boxes, now that Google owns their setup boxes things change.
This doesn't harm the cable industry at all, if anything it helps it - gives it a "cool factor" vs Dish or DIRECTV. Most MSO/Cable operators already buy Moto setupboxes and rent them. So, I can't see how this would change what they already do (rent boxes which they purchased from Motorola or any other vendor).
This is great news for cable operators AND cable subscribers. Deal with it.
They're already in my phone, PIM, and POOM data, I don't need them harvesting my viewing habits for the Feds and advertisers as well.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
the system with auto HD moved the SD channels to new numbers IO cable moved some of them to 1000's and rogers did this http://www.rogersautohd.com/
When it comes to subscription television, I am glad three years ago managed to disconnect from the hive... some people may not see it as being in a hive state of mind, but for some reason people pay for a subscription tv serivce only to have the damn box turned off, or worst watch the same shows, movies and commercials over and over again Not anymore for me, I refuse to watch reruns of Law and Order on multiple channels
And all it took was a ASTC DVR box, OTA HDTV antenna and DVD's for my favorate shows per season.
Oh, and when it comes to sports - I visit someone stuck in the hive... and bring beer, lol... Problem solved, I am $150 richer (minus the beer money of course)
You can't fix cable without fixing the cable companies, not the box.
I8-D
Google won't need to take on Big Cable because the FCC is already doing so with it's ALLVid proposal. Here's the AllVid Wiki link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllVid
Google's comments on the subject should have been a clue into what they were actually planning to do... Buy a cable box company?
"Google has supported the AllVid proposal,[6] stating that "Google supports an all-video (“AllVid”) solution like the one put forth in the NOI. Consumers would be well-served by having such an inexpensive universal adapter available at retail, which would feature an easy-to-use, common interface, and employ nationwide interoperability standards to connect to televisions, digital video recording devices (“DVRs”), and other smart video devices. These navigation devices effectively would separate the network interface from the device functionality, making video more “portable” across platforms and devices."[7]"
"Do-no-evil magic"? Citation bloody needed. Those days are past. Look at the Google+ names fuckery - stuff like blocking Hong Kong users from their email because they don't think their names sound American enough. Even their own employees!
You are not the customer, you are the product. Eric Schmidt stated it clearly last year. Make no mistake: Google has decided it's finally time to cash in.
This has abolished their goodwill in an instant. I'm seeing people seriously question Google for collaborative documents, for email, even for search. How much bad will do you have to be running up for people to think Bing might be a better idea?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Build a Windows Media Center PC
Not many end users are willing to take hours of time of work to learn how to build a PC. What brand of off-the-shelf Windows Media Center PC is worth the money?
On 8/8/11 the new FCC rules on cable cards went into effect.
See http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cablecard-know-your-rights for more information
Open cable cards will hopefully set us free. If not, sic the bureaucrats on your cable company.
if you enable USB Mass Storage then sure you can connect your camcorder, but you can *also* connect a hard drive or USB stick and save/view recordings you have made on the box itself.
That'd be an argument for read-only Mass Storage, not for no Mass Storage at all.
There's a reason that the storage on the DVR itself is limited when it would be trivial to enable the box to save out to an external disk or array, networked or otherwise. They don't want you recording and keeping shows - they want you to buy the DVDs.
So in other words, they want camcorder owners to buy a computer with a BD-R drive on which to edit video and author BDAV discs. Do I misunderstand you? Or are you saying the networks want people watching their DVDs instead of home movies so much that they're willing to force the issue on cable TV system operators?
Farhad completely misses the opportunity. He sees only two worlds...a world where Google completely tries to change the whole paradigm of how cable service is provisioned and delivered, or just selling off the set-top division of Motorola Mobility. I agree with him that for Google to attempt to make the cable companies let people buy their own boxes is madness. I also think, however, that Google realizes this. Not only is there the history of the CableCard, but also the problems with support, the fact that cable companies would need to come up with a way to provision boxes not under their direct control, and so on. Competitors to Motorola in the space would have Google's lunch; Motorola's division is a major player, but if the cable companies no longer wish to buy their products or support them, that will disappear instantly.
What is possible, however, is for Google to infuse their expertise into the box. To improve the user experience, to potentially make the boxes more interactive by leveraging Android as a set-top OS, to make them more green so that they not only use less power, but don't heat up the inside of our entertainment centers do damned much. Farhad starts out describing a plethora of shortcomings these devices have, but then fails to make the leap of realizing just how easy it would be to fix almost all of them, without having to replumb an entire industry. And even more to the point...if Google can make a much better cable box, they will get even more market share in the space.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Forget about what the cable companies want. If Google produces a device everyone wants they'll have no choice. They didn't want TiVo or any DVRs at first, or multiple TVs connected, or IPTV or any kind. Popularity will force their hand.
Imagine if a $200 box made it realistic/simple/practical to make video phone calls, and the same box could surf the web, play games, show and record TV. Good hardware isn't the issue, it's good software with open and free SDKs. As long as they don't "beta" it to premature death (like Google TV) I don't see how Google could lose.
The key for Google is ensuring open standards because they don't control the platform. With hardware in every home they could guarantee the long term viability of WebM, OpenGL ES, NaCl, HTML5 (esp. offline storage and 2D rendering).
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
My Motorola cable box died recently and the new one that Comcast supplied did NOT have the Motorola name brand on it. In fact it only has the name Xfinity on it. I wonder If Comcast has designed their own box and contracted to have it made for them. (but by WHO?)
this article is a joke full of false information
The cable box is here to stay. Well at least for a while and Google should really be into that anyway. The Google tv was their attempt to get Google on tv's everywhere. If they have cable boxes too, that is another way to get that access to the tv. If we are lucky they will make smaller boxes and hopefully better. Who knows, maybe they will integrate it with the "cloud" somehow. Maybe integrate it with the cable internet and if you have cable internet and cable tv you can watch your cable shows anywhere on any device. Lots of speculation here, but Motorola was just sitting on its past success and the only thing good to come from Motorola has been some of it's upper end phones. It really needs someone to fix that company.
Only 'flamers' flame!
cuase dingbat, google just bought out the motorola division that makes the cable boxes for every cable service on this side of the globe and probably more
does windows media center or apple TV have their boxes as OEM products for big cable?
[Based on a post I made in another forum yesterday].
In terms of the Google TV proposition it will be very interesting to see how that goes. I don't have any inside information but I would expect that there will continue to be a considerablely more expensive hardware platform than a typical TV or STB although I wonder if some of that premium will move to the controller. Google TV does need fundamental product improvement as the initial products were both awful user experiences, Google does know this and has been working on this.
From a cable operators perspective I would be expecting one of two things:
1) A very substantial discount on hardware.
Or
2) Advertising revenue share.
This doesn't fit with the way Google has so far worked with Android and GTV manufacturers where nothing I have heard has indicated that Google makes any payments to anyone in their ecosystem.
From my experience working with cable operators I dont think that the larger ones would be prepared to give up as much control as they would need to and allow another company a revenue stream (advertising/UI/link space) without a very good reason (probably cash). Most cable operators are sufficiently close to being monopolies or have a stable satellite competitor and maybe an upstart IPTV provider burning cash to get customers but they don't feel the need for a rapid change or improvement in the user experience that they want to control.
I don't know if Google will be more flexible either on product than with Google TV for manufacturers or revenue shares than in other Andoid uses but to crack the cable TV Market. If you look at the limited differences between the Logitech and the Sony Google TVs you can draw some conclusions about permitted customisations in the last generation (I'm not expecting much more this time).
Google probably has a somewhat better chance with new more aggressive providers (mostly IPTV) but they will still need to convince them that they will drive viewers to their value added services rather than competing over the top services, which is slightly contrary to the concept of the Google TV.
When I had a digital cable box I just plugged a Firewire cable from my Mac Mini into it and wrote a dozen lines of Python code to control the thing. Video popped up in VLC and dumped into an MPEG2 file on the hard drive.
Oh right, they disable the firewire port in the US don't they?
Cord Cutting has become fairly mainstream lately, probably more due to the economy than anything else but the trend started with people just tired if paying insanely high bills. Cable companies have enjoyed monopolies on internet in many areas since driving out local ISP's. Prices here were actually reasonable when there was competition but as speeds increased smaller companies didn't have any ability to compete. Prices in my area have gone up over 100% since I first had it installed 8 years ago. What was $69 for the deluxe package then is now almost $200. I dropped it down to internet and basic cable only, but their recent trick has been to raise the price of internet only so now I'm saving a whopping $18 over the "bundle" cost and yesterday it was announced that they are planning to drop "basic cable" within 5 years meaning everyone has to rent a box or cable card. IMHO this is desperation...they realize many people simply dont need cable tv anymore.
In convincing my family to cut the cord I tracked channels watched for 3 months...out of the 400+ channels available we watched a grand total of 16 and none of those channels were in the top ten as far as per subscriber costs go. Cable wont adapt to ala carte programming willingly so the only way to convince them is to let them bleed customers...perhaps then they will realize that some money is better than no money. Being simply an internet conduit scares the crap out of the fat cats in the cable industry for too long they have been able to sponge money from pay per view, premium channels, forced bundles, etc and now that those are becoming unneeded there only recourse in their eyes is to go to extreme measures to make having "internet only" a bad deal. Luckily Google is moving here with their fiber network...once that happens I have vowed to never give my cable company another dime.
...it's about access. Expect Google to leverage their new position to expand and improve broadband.
S&P dropped their rating on Google stock from "buy" to "sell" after the Motorola acquisition, and knocked $200 off their one-year predicted price for Google stock. That's very unusual.
Google's track record with hardware is not good. They were in the direct sales phone handset business for only a few months before they had to exit it. Customers insisted that the hardware work, and wanted customer service when it didn't. Google couldn't handle that. Their approach to the "Google Search Appliance" (Mini size) is weird. There's no phone support for this rack-mounted enterprise device. If it breaks, they FedEx you a new one. After three years, the Google Search Appliance stops working and you have to buy a new one. Really. That's Google's approach to enterprise support. That won't fly with Motorola's customer base.
"Open" in "Open Cable" essentially means "open to more companies than just the two that dominated set top boxes when the standard was developed" (Scientific Atlanta and one other, I think Motorola); it has nothing to do with openness in the sense we understand it, alas.
Google doesn't need to get into bed with cable companies. Not when they can slip in between the cable box and the TV (Logitech Revue) or directly into the the TV (Sony). I think about the only thing you can expect to see from this acquisition is a new Google TV device from Motorola. GoogleTV may not have taken off yet but I believe it is only a matter of time.
Build a Windows Media Center PC, add a CetonTV card
In Requirements, Ceton wrote:
PCI Express Low Profile [...] 1 PCIe slot
jedidiah wrote:
Just buy a Mac Mini or any ION machine on Amazon.
I've seen Mac mini and ION nettops, and they don't have a PCIe slot. They'd need something that plugs into USB or Ethernet.
Seriously, why connect bother with traditional cable channels? Make a set top box that just delivers content, pay the creators with advertising revenue. Any good football/basketball/squadron based sporting event is PPV. Just apply the model to all sport content. We may have a little less sitcoms and a bit more MadMen/Breaking Bad/BSG quality content...but I'm sure we wouldn't mind that.
NBC/CBS/FOX can become content creators that will have accurate viewing statistics (fuck Nielsen) so they an fine tune their advertising deals.
Some cable set top boxes use as much energy as your refrigerator. I would dearly love for google to fix this issue.
pending committee review
I would have thought with Hulu and tons of other entertainment that cable's glory days were behind.
As long as they own the wire coming into your house they are going to have a LOT of influence. Hulu is only as good as the internet connection it is attached to and only a relatively small percentage of the population has what I would consider enough bandwidth to really make it work. Furthermore they have lots of legal agreements with the various networks (content providers) as well as owning some networks of their own (Comcast) and have the ability (the legal right is still up in the air) to block or slow data coming down their pipes. There is no fundamental reason they can't have their own competing services to things like Hulu and Netflix.
I think cable companies are going to have to actively respond to new technology developments but they aren't going anywhere for a long time to come. I know people who would sooner cut off their heat than stop paying for overpriced cable TV. I exaggerate slightly but only slightly...
If I recall correctly, the FCC requires that the firewire port be active; but nothing precludes its output being encrypted...
Aside from the rent-to-own and the reduced fees, it's not all shiny happiness here either.
E-SATA is usually locked out in Canada too. If it's not, you need an approved external HDD provided by the cable co.
Shaw's cable software is pretty much identical to Comcast's (but usually a few months behind), so that half-baked pop-up for instance is also there. There's no Tivo on the Motorola boxes or anything like that. As far as I know, Rogers is the same deal in the East.
But you have theme packs and the better WGN (if you are a sports fan)
(was gonna be a long post till I started over. unlike consumer electronics, corporate cable electronics is a you figure it out sort of thing. no appreciable support. the cable companies use proprietary software in the head end and on the boxes. developed in house this software dictates user experience and features. motorola as owned by google would have no say in the direction cable will go. not to mention comcast for example can use scientific atlanta boxes, now cisco boxes if they want to move away from google. imho google wants a way to push semi unlimited data plans if only by taking advantage of its internal network and ad $ generated by its phone users
Technology will default in society to its most rudimentary level:::stupid computers for stupid users:::
Considering that TiVO sues just about everything in the set-top box area, that raises its own patent problems.
1TB is fairly standard now in the UK - sky 1TB boxes are £50 to own it and virgin 1tb tivo is £100
If freedom really matters, it should matter more than the high definition or the premium content, etc.
"cuase dingbat" it's time to boycott.
Are we willing to take a few years of limitations on high-def and premium content to take a stand here?
....there is so much bullshit showing up in their results that Google search is nearly unusable.
Oh, and, we don't have cable card. The CRTC hasn't seen it to be necessary. Want to use your own cable box, or a PC for PVR? You're stuck with using an IR blaster, which frankly sucks.
Cable companies don't really want to own set top boxes because there is a high capital cost for buying each box. Subscribers may feel your pain of " ridiculously lucrative cable-box rental fees," but cable operators would prefer you go buy your own box at an electronics retailer, as you can now do with cable modems. Set top boxes secure the content, which is a requirement of the programmer, the owner of the content (TV shows, movies, sporting events, etc.). Cable companies are forced to buy boxes to a.) secure the programming (a contractual requirement of the content owner) and b.) it offers them a way to create a "walled garden" where they can guide subscribers to preferred or more profitable content via the interactive program guide and other navigation tools.
I think Google might sell off the cable business; that was my first thought. The real issue will be if cable companies will trust Google to provide set top boxes and have their industry interests at heart.
I wasn't signed in - jimcaruso
The cable dvr menus are clunky, slow and old fashioned, and with IP TV tv is going to become far more interactive and computerized and more the center of the "wired" household. So google is making a smart move there.