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Coming Set-top Box Mandate May Help Break Pay TV Firms' Hold Over Viewers (latimes.com)
Joe_Dragon sends a report from the LA Times about proposed regulations that could disrupt the cable industry's hold on consumers by targeting set-top boxes. These boxes are required to view most pay-TV programming these days, and consumers often require multiples if they have more than one TV. The rental fees add up to almost $20 billion in revenue for the industry each year. Yet the technology within these boxes is nothing special, and alternatives could easily arise if there was incentive to create them. "The changes aren't coming fast enough for some lawmakers and consumer advocates as well as tech companies such as Google Inc., which are eager to jump into the set-top box market. They want the Federal Communications Commission to require that pay TV providers make their services more easily compatible with third-party set-top boxes or similar devices. ... Such a mandate could allow consumers to access their pay TV and streaming services through one device instead of having to switch between two or more. And it could lead to innovations such as an ability to search for programming across services to determine, for example, whether a movie is available on Netflix or on-demand via a pay TV provider."
Cablecards were suppose to usher in the great revolution in consumer set top boxes, breaking free the need to rely on cable companies expensive STB rentals. Aside from Tivos, Ceton InfiniTV products, and Silicondust HDHomeRun Prime, there's really not much out there for a compelling consume device.
WMC was the only HTPC-related software that was certified to play encrypted non-copy-freely channels from a InfiniTV and HDHomeRun. And with many content providers/cable companies marking many/most/all channels copy-once, it really hurt the usefulness. Extenders for WMC were basically a non-starter, and with Microsoft killing WMC in Windows 10, it'll be all but dead in the near future.
Cable companies and content producers aren't going to let up on their demands for DRM/restricting content/etc. STB mandates aren't going to suddenly open up a market that was already extremely tepid. And even if the mandates were passed, cable companies will do everything in their power to find loopholes around them, actively discourage customers from using 3rd party devices, offering no support for them if not outright lying about being able to use them, or otherwise making it a PITA to try to use one.
Yes, I was going to say that Cablecard technology was developed years ago with this in mind. The problem is that very few devices support it (Tivo being one of them). There was nothing to stop MS (or Sony) from putting cablecard slots into their console if they really wanted to do a "one device to rule them all." But most device manufacturers chose not to.
The only downside of Cablecard is that you have to get the cards from your local cableco. But there aren't many practical ways around this.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"The cable companies simply don't give a crap about consumers. They never have, and never will. And they sure as hell aren't going to make it easy to stop paying them."
You are correct. They don't care about consumers. They do, however, care about money. A lot.
We "cut the cord" almost 2 years ago. We only have internet through our provider. Over the last two years we've received some crazy decent offers from them to "add on" tv service ($10/mo for basic cable) + a cable box (at no charge). At first, for a year, then 2 years, then indefinitely at no charge for the box.
They are bleeding money because they are bleeding customers. They'll change or they will die.