FCC To Allow Cable Companies To Encrypt Over-the-Air Channels

alen writes "The FCC is now allowing cable companies to encrypt free OTA channels that they also rebroadcast over their networks. 'The days of plugging a TV into the wall and getting cable are coming to an end. After a lengthy review process, the FCC has granted cable operators permission to encrypt their most basic cable programming.' Soon the only way to receive free OTA channels via your cable company will involve renting yet another box or buying something like Boxee."

Comments

Do Not Want

[halfEvilTech]

well there goes my HTPC build. For those that like to build their own media centers, dvr's, etc this is utter crap. Of course I can spend $200 to get a tuner card that will accept a M-type cable card but then that is yet another piece of equipment that I have to rent from said cable company.

who wants to bet said FCC people have coushy jobs lined up at some major cable company.

Re:Do Not Want

[Lumpy]

NO you are just using the wrong recorder....

eztv.it, set up the RSS feed and your torrent catcher.

Screw the cable companies and dish companies. Best $12.95 a month I spend is for a VPN outside the USA to get all the TV shows I want to record off of my DishTV.

Re:Do Not Want

[h4rr4r]

Don't give up on the HTPC, give up on cable instead.

Get yourself an OTA tuner, amazon/netflix/hulu plus and go for it. Unless you are addicted to some sport that is not OTA it really is the way to go.

Re:Do Not Want

[halfEvilTech]

My recorder is fine. I cut the cord long ago. But since the line is still active to me having a cable modem this solves the issue of getting a decent antenea in order to get the OTA's. Currently I can just plug my system / TV into the wall and still pickup those said channels as they are broadcast in clearQuam as required under current regulations.

This is just a move that gives me the finger and forces me to put an ugly ass antenea on my roof in order to get semi decent reception as my town of 20k people is at least 50 miles from the nearest broadcast towers which causes all kinds of issues with reception.

Now if they can also encrypt those channels over the same line even though they are free (as i don't need a subscription to get them). Guess i go netflix only and just do the over the interwebs route.

Re:Do Not Want

[jeffmeden]

Don't give up on the HTPC, give up on cable instead.

Get yourself an OTA tuner, amazon/netflix/hulu plus and go for it. Unless you are addicted to some sport that is not OTA it really is the way to go.

HDHomeRun is the way to go; install it in your attic (where the signal is probably strong enough even if you are a ways from the tower) and enjoy it on MythTV...

Re:Do Not Want

[Alex Belits]

Cable company's DVR won't skip ads, and I value my own sanity.

Re:Do Not Want

[Aardpig]

Highly recommend this setup. Have digital antenna up in roof, feed comes down to HDHomeRun in basement, and from there hooks into my Mythbox via ethernet. BTW, OTA digital quality is better than cable, since the cable companies re-compress the datastream and thereby degrade it.

Re:Do Not Want

[rollingcalf]

Except that when people build or buy an HTPC, it's usually not just for recording TV shows, it's also for playing games, music, ripped DVDs or Blu-Rays, Netflix, and other uses. The cable company's box won't do that.

Re:Do Not Want

[spire3661]

47 miles out from the transmitter and i get every major network on an attic mounted $60 antenna. CBS signal looks a bit weak on the meter, but ive never had a drop out yet, and im recording their entire weekday primetime lineup(stress test, dont judge me). Im recording using a Windows 7 VM on ESXi. About once a week I run the batch of Recorded TV through a Quick Sync conversion and throw it on my web accessible NAS.

Re:Do Not Want

[spire3661]

You REALLY dont want to have users doing random computer actions on your recording device. Play blu-rays, netflix, etc is fine as long as its a specified action, but once you throw gaming into the mix, recording reliability falls right off the chart. Treating your recording device as a general purpose computer is just bad planning.

Re:Do Not Want

[LocalH]

Anecdotally, I have Charter's DVR and it makes no distinction between program content and commercials recorded from standard broadcasts. I can easily fast forward through ads - it's certainly no "ad-skipper" but the interface is nice and with quick reflexes, you can minimize your exposure to advertising (press play the instant you see program content come back, and it will back up a few seconds and start playing from there - it actually feels very responsive).

Re:Do Not Want

[LordKronos]

For the money you were going to spend on that HTPC, you could easily rent the cable company's latest greatest DVR's for literally years before you got back to even. If you want to roll your own to satisfy your inner geekiness that's one thing, but if the cable company can rent you a box that does the same thing for cheaper, you will receive no sympathy from me.

Sorry, but the cable company's DVR isn't all that powerful. Aside from the stuff they just outright don't do, like:
ability to skip commercials
archive shows indefinitely
export the files to disc to be played anywhere
stream to a phone/tablet/laptop, including live transcoding to a reduced resolution to fit device capability and bandwidth limitations
ability to combine multiple cable/satellite/OTA systems into one interface
web interface for scheduling new recordings remotely.

the things that they do handle they don't handle all that well:

Typically only 1 or 2 tuners
They're inferior at handling programs moving around in timeslots and conflict resolution
Recording rules aren't very flexible.

The recording rule flexibility is a biggie to me. Some shows change their name each season and thus need to be continually tweeked to keep recording. Some shows have no non-generic guide data at all, and thus they either don't get recorded. Some shows have guide data that is just....wrong. Curiosity is an example that comes to mind. Discovery channel refuses to actually title the show "Curiosity" in the guide, so each episode ends up looking to be it's own standalone show with it's own title. Most DVRs would have to have that handled manually, but with mythtv I can say create a rule that looks for a combination of day of week, time of day, and program genre that gets the episodes with minimal effort.

Re:Do Not Want

[tgeek]

And if you really want save some bucks on an antenna, just google "single bay gray hoverman" for plans and instructions to a sweet attic antenna you can build for about $10-$15 (assuming you have to purchase everything). Or an outdoor version that'll cost a few bucks more (pvc frame, lightning suppression etc.)

Re:Do Not Want

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the cable head end has a device that takes the OTA signal and puts in onto the cable system and then drops their own comercials into the feed just like the feeds provided by either fiber or SAT downlink. 99% percent of this is now down as a IP multicast within the headend of the Video Head Office.

Best case cable signal of OTA has been compressed twice...once by the broadcaster and once by the cable operator to put into into QUAM if they do not do drop and insert insert comercials on that channel. Typicaly it is reencoded another couple of times for things like emergecy broadcast system, encrypting the QUAM has zero effect on the quality of the picture, just the accessablity.

How much the system operator compesses the locals is up to them... typicaly at a former VZ headed we took a 50mbit/sec HD signal off the OTA reciver and compressed it down as far as 10 mbit/sec at the reciever for the must carry geting closer to god shit... and left it at 50-40mbit/sec for the stations that had HD sports. It gets interesting when the local HD PBS station gets the agrement with Big Ten for rebroadcast rights. The operator then plays the game of steeling from one channel to get the other watchable.

When I left the industry 2 years ago it was practical not to have a single SAT dish in the front yard if you could accept the bill for 2 10gig circuts you could get the entirty of US cable broadcast channels in a redundant way via a portchannel. Now the authorization to present this to the cable custormer is where the cost of cable really is.

Re:Do Not Want

[Miamicanes]

> Simply use the net and get all the shows you want WHEN you want and with less commercials to boot.

Oh, really? And where, pray tell, is this magic IP-based virtual cable network that offers realtime IP feeds of the show that's literally running for the first time *right this second* -- as opposed to stuff that's either old (or at least non-realtime), low video quality, openly pirated, or some combination of the three?

There's no technological reason why CNN/MSNBC/Fox/TWC and the rest can't stream HD in realtime, and deliver encrypted copies of the shows you've already tagged for recording in advance & let you have the decryption key the moment the episode officially airs for the first time... but content providers just won't do it. And unfortunately, nothing can make them do it. Maybe the refusal of Dish and others to deal with AMC will prod them to do an end run around them and offer service directly to end users over the internet... but I doubt it.

As much as I'd like to believe that someday, someone will offer a boundary-free service over the internet that works like of like U-verse at the nuts & bolts level, but furnishes 19.2mbps content at original resolution in the native mode, and has a UI that's fully open & customizable by end users with programming backgrounds, I'm sufficiently nihilistic about the American content industry to know that when all is said and done, my monthly "TV-related" expenses would probably end up doubling compared to now anyway. Never, in the history of American TV, have prices genuinely gone down.

Competition from satellite HAS been nice, if only because it brought us Voom 5 years before Comcast even heard of HD, and brought us 200 HD channels on DirecTV when Comcast was still subjecting customers to "death of a thousand macroblocks" 10 new channels at a time, but don't kid yourself. One way or another, the industry is going to find ways to charge us a LOT more for a LITTLE more content, quality, and/or flexibility. And it'll probably compress the hell out of it, too.

Years ago, I laughed at my dad when he told me that color TV pictures were sharper in the 1960s than they were in the 80s and 90s. Then I saw my first DVD, and it sank in for the first time just how badly quality had been completely pwn3d by cost-cutting over the years. Now, the content providers are doing the same to us all over again. We have "HD", but the "HD" we have today via U-verse, Comcast, Dish, and even DirecTV is total and complete crap (minus 2 or 3 showcase channels) compared to the old days of Voom, where the SD channels had bitrates higher than U-verse uses NOW for its HD channels. MPEG-4 is good, but beyond a certain point, you can't fool mother nature. She's going to make sure you get blotches of red sparklies on areas that are supposed to be creamy white, just to remind you that someone is recompressing recompressed 12mbps video down to 6mbps. 10 years from now, we're going to be sold on "Super HD" with 3200x1800 resolution that, if we're lucky, will be indistinguishable from 60fps progressive 1920x1080 encoded at 25-40mbps, and basically just be oversampling with extra marketing and hype.

Re:Do Not Want

[MichaelJ]

It's not just the cable company. It's the production company, too. I have Verizon Fios, and on my TiVo, an hour of a 1080i AMC show like The Walking Dead is 3.25GB, while an hour of the ABC show Once Upon a Time is 5.86GB. It's very obvious, too, The Walking Dead looks blotchy, full of glitches and artifacts.

Re:Do Not Want

[swalve]

I didn't think cable companies were allowed to recompress the OTA signals? They just remultiplex the program streams into the QAM transport stream. Cable does have plenty of bandwidth though. I read a thing once where Comcast (I think it was) was designing their network to allow for a virtually unlimited number of channels by using on-demand streaming/multicasting. IE, the big channels are "on" all the time, but the channels in lesser demand aren't. So if nobody in a neighborhood is watching the Golf channel, its "slot" can be used for some other channel. By running fiber to the neighborhoods and carving them up into small enough groups, there is nothing they wouldn't theoretically be able to broadcast.

Re:Do Not Want

[BigDish]

My recorder is fine. I cut the cord long ago. But since the line is still active to me having a cable modem this solves the issue of getting a decent antenea in order to get the OTA's. Currently I can just plug my system / TV into the wall and still pickup those said channels as they are broadcast in clearQuam as required under current regulations.

This is exactly why they are doing this. What you are doing currently is considered theft of service.

Re:Do Not Want

[0100010001010011]

Why bother with a VPN? That of which we do not speak is $50 for 1TB. That's lasted me over an entire year of just my TV shows. I max out my home cable connection. I don't have to deal with seeding.

Just use Sickbeard and XBMC.

Re:Do Not Want

[Alex Belits]

Any MythTV will automatically flag commercials and let the user either skip them automatically or do it in one button press regardless of the length of the break (useful when commercial detection produces false positive or negative once in a while). Oh, and skip lists in the stored recording can be edited, so everyone after you will see it with no commercials even if autodetection was wrong.

Re:Do Not Want

[Bigbutt]

Seriously? I pay the cable company for my Internet access and they throw in Basic cable for free (which is, plug my TV into the wall and I get basic channels). Depending on where I lived would determine just which channels I'd get. Just a bit south of here, I would get some HD tv. Where I am now, I get all low def but I get the channels I want to watch (Local News and Big Bang Theory).

My ex picked up a cable box and HBO so she could watch True Blood (I think, or Breaking Bad or some other cable show). Now that she's gone, at the end of the 6 month trial, the cable box is going back and I'm going back to low def.

[John]

I'll take a third option...

[edcalaban]

And cut the cord. The streaming services out there are good enough for me.

Re:I'll take a third option...

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Me too. Most stuff is streamed plus an HD antenna for the OTA channels. Works even better because the "OTA" basic Comcast isn't HD.

CableCard, to the rescue!

[jeffmeden]

Wait, 99% of TVs sold today don't bother supporting it... Shit!

Re:CableCard, to the rescue!

[Cramer]

Make that 100%. None, Zero, Nada. No TV on the market today has a cablecard slot. The CE manufacturers had enough of the bullshit continuous changing of the "standards" and crap cable companies bolted on outside the standards -- PPV, video on demand, iControl(tm), integrated guide data, switched digital video... Switched Digital Video (SDV) was the last straw. Without a Tuning Adapter, unidirectional cable devices (read: all 3rd party devices) are almost completely useless.

So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just use an antenna to receive the free OTA channels directly without involving the cable company at all. You can get some pretty diminutive aerials these days for inside use if you can't mount one outside.

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[Andy Dodd]

There are many places in this country that the OTA signal is not reliable unless you have a massive antenna due to LOS issues.

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[Anubis IV]

My folks still do this, and it's what we had the entire time I was growing up (personally, I rely on Netflix, Hulu, etc. these days exclusively). They work great most of the time and can save a load of money on a medium where no one with sense should be investing big bucks at this point. I was surprised how clear the reception was with the relatively small, indoor antenna my parents had directly above the TV last time I visited them.

Strangely, it seems that many people are unaware that it's even an option. My folks told me about a husband and wife in their early-to-mid 40s that came over for dinner awhile back. The wife made some comment about how she only watches the major U.S. networks yet cable TV is so expensive. When my parents pointed out that they get those channels for free with an antenna, the wife was dumbstruck. Apparently she started insisting that it was illegal to watch TV without a cable subscription. After several minutes of reassurances from both my parents and her husband that it was perfectly legal and had been around since television was introduced, she was left feeling a bit sheepish. Even more so after her husband pointed out that most of the homes she grew up in didn't even have access to cable TV since it wasn't in widespread use at the time.

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[spire3661]

I have this http://www.antennasdirect.com/store/ClearStream-C2-VHF-Combo.html in my second story attic at 47 miles out from the transmitters, roughly 50 feet above sea level. Mounted it to an attic cross beam, aimed it with my iphone compass and was good to go. Works like a champ.

Go here http://www.antennaweb.org/Address.aspx to evaluate how your location in relation to your local transmitters.

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[evilviper]

Any good antennas you can suggest? Indoor or outdoor would be fine. I would prefer not to have to move it though. Multiple would also be better than having to move one.

First you should go to http://tvfool.com/ and check your address for OTA digital signals.

Note the "Real" channel on the tvfool chart. If it's 7-13, you'd need a VHF-high antenna, if it's 14-51 a UHF antenna will pick it up. If it's 2-6, you're probably in Alaska, and sadly will need an old, full-range VHF-lo/hi antenna.

Any channels that are Green or Yellow will likely work with a simple, cheap, indoor antenna (preferably in your window, facing towards the transmitter). The simplest old indoor antennas seem to work the best... better than more expensive indoor antennas that are tunable or have a useless (for short cable runs) amplifier. Nice long "rabbit-ears" at a 45 degree angle will do a good job for VHF (real: 2-13) channels, while a nice big "loop" antenna will do very well picking up UHF channels.

If you're in the red, or worse, you MIGHT be lucky and receive the station(s) with an indoor antenna with minimal dropout, but at this point, you're probably at the point that you should invest in a roof-top antenna.

VHF is pretty simple, and easier to receive over longer ranges, and around obstacles like mountains, buildings or trees. For antennas, you have a couple choices which are both about equivalent in reception and price (about $40):

http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=Y10-7-13&sku=716079000994">Antennacraft Y10-7-13 100mi 120" VHF-high
or
Winegard YA 1713 100mi 100" VHF-high

For UHF channels, reception is a bit tougher, as curvature of the earth, and any obstacles cause more issues. There's some debate over how the top 8-bay antennas should be ranked, but it's an easy choice when you see one of the contenders costs nearly half as much as the rest:

Winegard HD 8800 8-Bay 60mi UHF

Now, if you need both UHF and VHF-high antennas, connecting them with a splitter will cause you to lose a significant amount of signal strength. Instead, a purpose-built VHF/UHF splitter/combiner will perform much better. Just about any one will do, but here's a link for an in-stock $2 model:

Pico Macom UHF/VHF Band Separator/Combiner

And finally, if you're going to run the coax a non-trivial length, or if you are going to connect the antenna(s) to a splitter to serve multiple TVs or just multiple tuners (eg. TV+DVR) then you'll get a big benefit out of a mast-mounted pre-amp. The key is to get the lowest "noise" figure you can. There are a range of ridiculously expensive options that will get you a just-slightly lower-noise signal, but once again Winegard is much cheaper, and close enough:

Winegard AP-8700 VHF/UHF Pre Amplifier

Thanks to FCC regulations, you can put this all up on a mast as high as 12' above your roof line, without anyone being able to require you to get a permit or similar (unless you're in a historic area, or there's serious safety issues like overhead power lines). And if you happen to NEED to go higher to get reception of local stations, they MUST grant your permit request for minimal cost and in a timely fashion.

To deal with the risk of lighting starting fires or blowing up your TV, you need to ground your mast and the coax. A coax grounding block costs about $1, and like your mast, just needs to be wired to metal water pipes, or a grounding rod. Some more advanced coax surge suppressors exist, but I would never forego the simple task of grounding everything first.

That should be all the equipment you need, and the information on tvfool will tell you EXACTLY which d

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[girlintraining]

There are many places in this country that the OTA signal is not reliable unless you have a massive antenna due to LOS issues.

Funny... that old 1950s analog technology for beaming TV signals worked just great. No LOS issues, or anything else. But then, there was something about being able to make a ton of money selling off that bandwidth, then changing around all the protocols, technology, etc., so that consumers had to pay a fortune to get less and less... and now you can't even find something that can do what a VCR did in the 80s.

I suspect that lack of reliability is quite deliberate.

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[Cramer]

The difference is... with an analog signal, it was still watchable even with significant noise and/or low signal. With digital, there's a cliff; you either have enough signal to construct the data stream, or you don't, and without a near perfect, continuous data stream, there's no f'ing picture at all. You don't get a wavy picture, or snow; you get a blank screen.

Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly?

[evilviper]

Man, what did we do for ensuring we were purchasing quality goods before peer review?

Well, in this case an understanding of the laws of physics would have taken care of it. Anybody claiming 150mi reception of TV signals is a bald-faced liar. The curvature of the earth, and the propagation of the frequencies involved simply makes that impossible in the general case. The standard numbers are 60mi for UHF and 100mi for VHF. It's along the same lines as all those 12v air compressors that claim to produce 250psi... twice what high-end shop compressors are able to produce. They're lying, and once they're lying to you, who knows how many other nasty things they're doing, like cutting corners on build quality.

But to answer your question, we did a few things... First, we shopped at stores we could trust. These days retailers will stock any PoS they think they can make money on, and take no responsibilty for the items they stock, but it doesn't have to be this way, and it wasn't the norm, even just 20 years ago. I personally avoid Walmart, because they intentionally stock inordinant amounts of crap, because they want to advertise a lower price, and don't care that they're screwing their own customers for the sake of a few cents price difference. My favorite retailer is Sears. While they're not perfect, they still have some traditional values and try to stock products that aren't complete junk, and they usually do so at about the same price as the junk dealers like Walmart and Home Depot. Kenmore appliances are nearly as cheap, and put the low-end brands at Home Depot and other to shame in a big way, but for some reason, people haven't wised-up.

Second, there were brands we could trust... It was only 10 years ago or so that well-known brands decided to cash-in their reputation and start selling complete crap. You can see this in cheap HP printers, Levi's, Sony branding on DVD Burners and other devices they don't make, and much, much more. The brands used-to mean something, and people were caught off-guard when things suddenly changed.

These days, I've adopted a dual strategy. I still believe paying more for a good product is eminently good strategy, but I no longer just trust that a given brand is selling high quality products.

An Antenna...

[John Bresnahan]

will also work for many people. I recently cut my cable TV service when I realized that almost everything I was actually watching was programming being broadcast over-the-air. A $50 antenna and I'm all set

And this helps the consumer how?

[a-zarkon!]

Seriously, +1 Internets to the first person who can put a positive spin on this one. Wow. Just wow.

Re:And this helps the consumer how?

[turkeyfeathers]

Cable exec makes more money. Cable exec buys new car. Consumer gets to wash that car, earning cash to pay current month's cable bill. Win-win!

Re:And this helps the consumer how?

[h4rr4r]

So when will I be getting that check for their line that crosses my property?

They can do what they like when they start paying their own way.

Also this is not a free service, merely a requirement that any OTA channels they carry for their subscribers be broadcast without encryption.

Re:And this helps the consumer how?

[Linsaran]

Seriously, +1 Internets to the first person who can put a positive spin on this one. Wow. Just wow.

By requiring all TVs to use one of our new Freedom Choice cable boxes we can provide a better over all customer experience, features such as our on screen channel guide can now be utilized on all your TVs. Think of it as an upgrade for your TV.

Sincerely,

Your friendly local cable company

Re:And this helps the consumer how?

[circletimessquare]

give all the money to the rich people and they'll hire us to wash their car

you can get angry, laugh, or, like me, weep at the fact so many morons actually swallowed this crap, as they lose their job

Equipment fees

[Albanach]

So, after two years they can charge an equipment fee. If you have three televisions,each with a decoder and a $5/monthly fee, the cable company starts taking in $180/year in extra revenue from the lowest paying customers.

Still Waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll get cable when they make good on their original promise: Pay for TV, so no ads. Part (most) of the money you pay goes to the show to replace their ad income.

For all you young-lings, TV used to be completely free. To get people to pay for cable, their sales pitch was that you wouldn't get any ads.

They can pry my torrents from my cold dead heads or stop being lying, greedy assholes. Their choice.

Re:My guess

[h4rr4r]

You can digitize without encrypting. That is what clear QAM is for.

What this is really about is that they won't have to roll a truck for a cable install. Heck, they can fire all the techs too, or at least most of them. They will leave all the cables live all the time and make you come get a box to do the decryption. When you leave you give the box back, or if you don't pay they deauthorize it on their end.

Cable companies racing for irrelevance

[claytongulick]

You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).

Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.

Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.

Comcast = Earthlink in ten years.

Re:Cable companies racing for irrelevance

[twmcneil]

That's a nasty thing to say about Earthlink.

Re:Cable companies racing for irrelevance

[bill_mcgonigle]

Meanwhile, Verizon has halted most FiOS buildouts, is trying to get out of more, and is requiring copper removal where they're doing it because the install costs are so high. Hybrid fiber/coax with DOCCIS 3 will push 300Mbps and is cheaper to install and maintain. Cable isn't afrid of FTTH.

Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

This move will only make pirating television more appealing.

Thanks for nothing, FCC. I'm tired of every last fucking thing on Earth being monetized for no reason other than greed, and the so-called "regulators" doing nothing as the are getting huge sums of money from the parties behind the changes.

Re:My guess

[Lumpy]

Digitize for Clear QAM takes no more bandwidth than Encrypted QAM. Most areas have not had analog at all for 2 years now.

I used to work for Comcast in the headends and OTN locations, I know more about this than the CSR's or installers ever hope to know.

Re:My guess

[Lumpy]

Most comcast locations already fired all the techs. They use independent contractors. Most of the guys did dish installs, Direct TV installs and Comcast installs all in the same day.

Piracy: The Better Choice(tm)

[David Gerard]

That is all.

It seems most have missed the other part of this

[Anaerin]

The way this was agreed was if the cable company is encrypting their channels, they have to make them available unencrypted over IP, so devices like Boxee and others can still receive them, or work with PVR makers to make "Software updates" available so they can decrypt the streams.

Given that the daddy of all open-source PVR projects, MythTV, already supports IPTV systems (after a little careful setup), this is actually a good thing. And while it is basic channels only for now, hopefully the practise will expand into premium channels later on.

THERE GOES CABLE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Look! TV just killed itself!

I have two tween kids. They don't know what Cable, satellite or OTA are...

There's YouTube, NetFlix, Amazon and PutLocker.

They also know some suckers who pay for HuluPlus, to watch the unwatchable.

Re:THERE GOES CABLE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Tourette's (noun, medical) Definition:

No one gives a shit what you think. Not one shit.

So keep living like a hermit bum, fucking fuck.

Re:THERE GOES CABLE!

[Datamonstar]

You can watch Daily Show and Colbert Report for free online.

Re:THERE GOES CABLE!

[Talderas]

TV broadcasting has 10 years to unfuck itself. That's when their NFL contract expires.

OTA

[digitalaudiorock]

I know it's not an option for some, but I live where I can get New York OTA channels, and even Philly stations if I want, with my roof antenna and rotor. I record everything we watch on a MythTV system with a TB of disk space. I haven't had pay TV in 25 years.

I have cable for internet only. Every time the cable company calls me trying to sell me a TV package, I tell them exactly what I'm currently using, and exactly why I want no part of their any-consumer bull shit. I wish more people would do the same thing.

What sucks of course is that, because all the available internet providers are TV providers, you pay a premium for internet when it's not part of some fucking package. The whole situation just blows to put it mildly...and the fucking FCC, whose supposed to be working for us, can go straight to fucking hell too.

Re:OTA

[Alien Being]

Yep. FCC went too fucking far this time.

I'm putting a big fucking antenna right on the roof of my condo, laws and bylaws be damned. Anyone who tries to take it down is in for a fight.

Two points

[rickb928]

1. When I was buying my first flat-panel TV, I went into a 'high-end' retailer (no, not Best Buy) and wanted to see the picture on one of the midrange sets. After realizing there was no OTA cable atached, the salesperson admitted they couldn't show me a picture. I found a paper clip, stuck in the jack, and got 3 channels. OTA is not always to hard to get.

2. MY cable box now is an SA Explorer 3xxxHD something. It has, for a tuner, you guessed it. A CableCard. Next tiem I hear Cox jerming someone around for getting their CC working, I'll send them the spec. Cox knows CableCards, they USE it.

So I guess I am getting satellite after all. And OTA. Almost everything we want to record is OTA anyways.

Re:Dish, Direct, Antenna, or cut the cord

[prestonmichaelh]

If your kids are young, then cut it now. A few Rokus and a Netflix streaming subscription and you are set. I have a 4 year old and if needed, she can work Netflix on the Roku herself. Doesn't mind watching the same seasons/episodes of Dora, Fresh Beat Band, Franklin, Barney, etc. over and over and over. I find most kids to be like that.

People like to complain a lot about Netflix content (or lack there of), but they actually have quite a bit of kids content.

Re:It seems most have missed the other part of thi

[tapspace]

Making money off the elderly and out of touch, the way God intended.

WHOA...watch out for UHF only!

[digitalaudiorock]

These so-called "HDTV" antennas were sold for years with the incorrect assumption that digital TV would stay on UHF and it most assuredly did not!

In the New York area for example, several of the UHF digital networks moved their digital signal to their original VHF frequency when the switch over occurred.

Don't buy one of those unless you're sure that all the digital networks in your area are on UHF. If any are, you'll need a combination UHF/VHF antenna.

Re:It seems most have missed the other part of thi

[spire3661]

WE should get the IP streaming without being forced to agree they can DMCA lock signals that are being broadcast over the air for free. WE own the right of way these companies operate under, we should be demanding more from infrastructure, not less.

Sports and political talk

[tepples]

There's YouTube, NetFlix, Amazon and PutLocker.

Do these services have live sports or political talk shows? In my survey sample, one head of household, would rather go back to dial-up than drop ESPN and NBCSN (formerly Versus), and the other would be lost without MSNBC.

Re:Sports and political talk

[EdIII]

These are kids he was talking about. Political talk shows are out.

As for sports, that is the only real thing holding back a lot of guys I know from switching.

That being said, Cable Companies keep raising the costs year after year above and beyond what people are receiving in cost-of-living raises . ESPN, especially. They can go fuck themselves.

Young people are cutting the cords faster than ever, and in the case of kids, never accepting the cord in the first place. That's why the Cable Companies will die.

1) No incentive to younger people to shell out $50-$60 per month (base rate). It's hard enough for younger people to find money in the first place, let alone spend it on stupid shit. It's basically a cell phone plan, or Internet plan in terms of cost. What does it deliver that is as attractive, or more attractive, to younger people than Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu or pirating ?

2) Pricing themselves so high that older people are increasingly looking to save costs by switching to something else. Guys that need to have sports are really just buying it for sports then. That's not an audience that will keep revenue streams at the levels they are now, which means sports would need to increase their revenue streams even more.

Re:Sports and political talk

[Charliemopps]

You've been taught to watch this stuff. You may not realize it, but it's a fact. ESPN being the most glaring example. Because media companies continue to refuse to accept the new world they live in, the gap is being filled by others. They are going to be replaced, and it's their own fault. Their ratings will continue to slide into oblivion while they blame it all on piracy. Meanwhile my wife drops $16/month on some MMO I've never heard of. Imagine if CBS could get $16/month from all of their viewers... oh wait, they could, if they didn't have their heads so far up their asses.

Re:Sports and political talk

[maugle]

The ONLY reason I got into watching (American) football was because my MythTV setup allowed me to skip the commercials. Without commercials and delays, football is exciting. With commercials, plus the tedious announcers and the multitude of delays between every down, the game just drags on way too long.

ESPN should be frightened, because I doubt this is limited to a single sport: It's simply not worth watching a sport on TV anymore without the ability to skip the commercials and the boring bits.

Re:Sports and political talk

[SeaFox]

These are kids he was talking about. Political talk shows are out.

As for sports, that is the only real thing holding back a lot of guys I know from switching.

That being said, Cable Companies keep raising the costs year after year above and beyond what people are receiving in cost-of-living raises . ESPN, especially. They can go fuck themselves.

I would agree with this but it's not the cable companies that are the problem -- it's the employers. You can replace the phrase "cable companies" with any number of other groups, "grocery store chains" and "oil companies" being the first that come to mind. The real issue is the "cost-of-living raises" people are getting (don't know who this is btw, I haven't gotten a raise in over four years) aren't meeting the actual increase in said costs. It's supposed to be a reactionary adjustment to compensation. The result is everyone is actually taking pay cuts but the employers can still say "we're paying you just as much/more than we were last year."

As long as people don't collectively stop putting up with it, it will continue.

Re:Sports and political talk

[shiftless]

Do you not realize what's going on? The businesses are being squeezed by the government! If you only knew how many certifications, and mandatory courses, and paperwork, and bullshit, and red tape that the simplest business has to deal with, it would blow your mind. Stop blaming business, and start blaming the GOVERNMENT, who are the source of 90% of America's problems today.

Re:Sports and political talk

[theCoder]

You could only stream the Olympics (in the U.S.) if you had cable (they required a log in). Even if you could watch it OTA, you couldn't stream it.

Re:Sports and political talk

[DarkOx]

Lost without MSNBC? Seriously they are about as reputable as Fox News.

Re:Sports and political talk

[Jerry Rivers]

I bought a $5/month VPN and streamed every single event I wanted to see directly from the
BBC Olympics site. Fuck NBC and fuck cable.

Re:It seems most have missed the other part of thi

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems you missed the other other part of this:

Unfortunately, smaller operators like Cablevision and Bright House (each of which tally millions of customers) are exempt from these restrictions for now.

Re:It seems most have missed the other part of thi

[Anaerin]

The law requires them to offer an IP-Based unencrypted method of getting the transmissions if they broadcast them over the wire in an encrypted format. Nothing is mentioned about it being over broadband. So, if your cable provider uses encrypted cable transmissions, the cable box provided for that will have to have an Ethernet port, which provides an IP interface. It might not be a connection to the internet, it could simply be a closed network. Do remember, while the Internet runs on TCP/IP, TCP/IP is not only the internet.

Understandable, but need software cable card

[crow]

I can certainly understand why the cable companies want this. They have too many Internet-only customers who are getting local TV access without paying for it, and they don't want to have to send out trucks to install and remove filters. This is a perfect solution for them.

As a consumer, I don't terribly mind, as long as I can decrypt the signals. (Yes, it's a bit frustrating that my QAM tuners are now junk.) I don't want to pay a monthly fee for a cable card, along with expensive tuners that accept them. What would be much more reasonable is a software-only cable card, and there's no reason we can't have that. This would allow any QAM tuner to still be useful. The FCC should require cable companies to support this, and toss out any copy restrictions--if we are paying for it, we should get the raw digital stream to record as we see fit.

Re:What is their obligation to you?

[Jafafa Hots]

They are required to because cable companies use public rights of way for their cables. The rights of way are typically controlled by the city, and the city generally requires that the company serve the general public interest if they are going to get to use the rights of way.

Serving the general public interest included providing the over-the-air channels that they get FREE and that they are allowed to rebroadcast for FREE in order to make sure that people don't have to have cable AND rabbit ears. Cable companies WANTED to include local channels, and they generally don't PAY for them.

So they don't get to CHARGE for them since the originator of the programming gets nothing from them.

Satellite companies use public airwaves for their transmissions.

The commons is rapidly (and immorally) becoming privatized.
Rights-of-way, eminent domain being used to give property to private companies, increasingly intrusive IP laws and the weakening of fair use, etc.

If the cable company doesn't want to feel like the owe the community something, then they can tear out and take down the cables that they run through the community's property.

Re:What is their obligation to you?

[RLaager]

Cable companies...generally don't PAY for [local channels]. So they don't get to CHARGE for them since the originator of the programming gets nothing from them.

For what it's worth, this used to be the case, but is not any more. Many local channels have switched from "must-carry", where the cable company has to carry them, but doesn't have to pay, to "retransmission consent" where they can charge the cable company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry#United_States