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Cable Lobby Steams Up Over FCC Set-Top Box Competition Plan (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cable TV industry lobby groups expressed their displeasure with a Federal Communications Commission plan to bring competition to the set-top box market, which could help consumers watch TV on different devices and thus avoid paying cable box rental fees.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that would force pay-TV companies to give third parties access to TV content, letting hardware makers build better set-top boxes. Customers would be able to watch all the TV channels they're already paying cable companies for, but on a device that they don't have to rent from them. The rules could also bring TV to tablets and other devices without need for a rented set-top box. The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that would force pay-TV companies to give third parties access to TV content, letting hardware makers build better set-top boxes. Customers would be able to watch all the TV channels they're already paying cable companies for, but on a device that they don't have to rent from them. The rules could also bring TV to tablets and other devices without need for a rented set-top box. The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
It's funny how most cable companies allow their subscribers to purchase their own cable modems and routers, but now those same companies balk at the idea of their subscribers buying their own set-top box.
2. If it's software-based, it'll be cracked and pirated within a month of release.
You would think so, wouldn't you. However, Windows Media Center is software based, and yet (as far as I know) nobody has managed to crack it to enable open source software to mimic WMC and trick the cable card devices into giving full access to the Copy Once and Copy Never content.
The FCC learned pretty good from how the Cable Companies subverted the Cable Card mandate. This one forces them to pass the data out of their system via open standards, it allows them to continue to pass on the restrictions and other stuff they are using but the key here is everything is in software. There won't be any hardware to rent from the cable company. This is going to make it very difficult for them to subvert like cable card.
They subverted cable card by getting the FCC to OK creating a certification laboratory. They called this cable labs and they used it to throw so much red tape in front of companies that it became nearly impossible to get hardware through. On top of this they would add conditions about software and other things that they had no business putting into the certification process. On top of this at first they made the cable card process extremely complex to begin with including partial implementation so that anyone that bought a cable card device would find the process either broken or impossibly hard which would bias the public about cable card being bad.
The software option is going to block all this. They have to pass the data out in an open published way. The FCC just basically made them implement an API and pass everything out. Because there is a lack of hardware there can't be a certification laboratory and because they are required to use open ISO approved standards they can't game the software side.
I'm sure if there is a way to subvert the process they will find it but this cuts almost all of their current methods off. It should be easy to develop hardware and software systems to implement the standards and if the cable company isn't complying with the standard you should be able to complain to the FCC.
If you're like me and get your TV and internet through a coaxial cable connected to a fiber network you should favor local loop unbundling. Make the local loop a public utility and let the content providers compete for my business, both internet and TV. Let the content providers pay the local loop utility for access to my business (yes I know they'd pass the cost on to us but as a utility the local loop would have regulated rates). Then you wouldn't have to regulate the content providers (and ex cable companies) at all. Wouldn't that be a free market?