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FCC Votes To Fight Cable's Reign Over Set-top Boxes (engadget.com)
Last month, reports surfaced that the FCC planned to pry set-top boxes out of hands of cable and satellite companies. Today, the Commission passed the 'Unlock the Box' plan that would do just that. The proposal aims to introduce more competition when it comes to the boxes users rent from television providers. Under the new rules, cable companies would have to give third-party device makers the information they'd need in order to build set-top boxes.
This is nothing but fighting over horsewhip handle designs. Cable industry days are numbered.
Queue the various senators and congressmembers trying to tell us that actual competition is somehow anti-competitive and will stifle innovation in 3... 2... 1...
You need their box to use their service. It just seems stupid to charge a separate fee from something you need. They can't just charge more per month for the cable and build the cost of the box into the fee?
It's just another bullshit pricing scheme to make prices seem less than they are. Airlines are great at it. I'm waiting for the day when you buy a ticket and pay all the other fees (like the fuel surcharge that never went away when fuel prices collapsed) and they'll charge a seat rental fee.
Didn't the FCC solve this with the Cable Card thing? I have a media server that emulates a cable box for my whole house. Works great.
The only real problem here is that with the demise of Windows Media Center and Windows 7 there isn't a viable fully vetted option for me to turn to that will allow me to watch and DVR protected content. Yes, Silicon Dust is working on a version, but it's not yet certified (as far as I know) for protected content.
The FCC already solved this issue. Why are they trying to solve it again?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent.
Its money for old rope. Its just an artificial dependency who's only purpose is to scam you out of another $15/month or whatever.
Why not provide the channels in clearQAM?
In town both cable providers still have a lot of channels on analog cable. Both still charge extra if you want any digital channels.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Clear QAM is what we should have all demanded as a service. It basically is just like cable tv used to be only digital/HD and you can use any standard tuner including the ones built into TV's.
The technology is there, they just don't want to use it.
Michael Powell, former FCC Chair and now head of the Cable & Telecommunications Association, writes in a letter to the NY Times today that "Big Tech" doesn't need help from Big Government -- it can negotiate for rights like everyone else. Let me know when your cable company lets you hook up a 3rd party cable box you bought on ebay for $35.
Exactly, I bought Tivos when I was younger, hoping to get better features and no monthly service fee for the boxes, ended up saving maybe $1 a month with the card over their boxes.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I've only done the tiniest bit of research but it looks like Cable Card is not sufficient to support current technologies and there isn't a standard successor.
Seriously? The Cable industry ensured Cable card wasn't viable.
I know someone who bought a TV with a cable card... it *never* worked right.
Same way they make cheese... 3D printing.
The problem is that there is near zero incentive for making these boxes. They need to prohibit cable manufacturers from supplying boxes - i.e. you can buy service from them, but you can't get a box. Nor can they carry a stake ownership in any manufacturer of a box.
Seriously, why would you compete with someone who can (and will) always undercut you on price and also make it impossible for you to implement all of the features (because they own the rights to the cards). You said it yourself - "there isn't a viable fully vetted option for me to turn to that will allow me to watch and DVR protected content." Everyone who has been involved in the SmartCard market for TV has gotten burned. The smarcards should be portable and easily swappable but, for example, DirecTV linked your smart card to your box S/N effectively making the smart card superfluous (necessary but not sufficient). The cable cos allowed smart cards onto the market and then as soon as they were in the wild they changed the standard ("extended" was the term they used iirc) so that everyone who had a single stream box / card was unable to get to much of the premium and on demand programming. You had to use their box and their card, essentially destroying the value of every existing cablecard box and adapter.
Until you pry the lock from their hands, nobody else will bother to deal with them.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
See, back in the day I built my own DVR with an NTSC tuner card and a Linux box. When they made it next to impossible to build your own DVR - I quit.
That's right, I haven't had cable or satellite in years.
I now watch whatever I think deserves my attention (not much) via Netflix, Amazon, occasionally the network/show website, or buy buying the disks when it comes out. Hulu was sort of in the mix for a while but I refuse to pay for commercials so it's off the list. I understand they may have a commercial free option now, I haven't bothered to look.
If you really want to send a signal to these companies that you don't like being manipulated into getting their unnecessary spy^H^H^H tuning equipment you can start by not accepting their tuning equipment and keeping the dollars they so desire.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
And... for some mysterious reason, the cablecard/tuner adapters don't work as smoothly as the cableco boxes. These pieces of shit are slow to switch channels, channels drop out often, they need to be power cycled often, the channel guides are often incorrect, etc. But the cableco boxes are magically perfect. We'll see if these aftermarket cable boxes work as good as the cableco ones, but I doubt they will.
It seems clear that the whole need for a set top box is artificial, and that it s actually just another mechanism to justify the cable company adding another fee to your cable bill.
All TVs already come with digital tuners, so serious question: Why can't they just legislate that cable companies have to supply standard QAM to the consumer, then we can do away with the whole stupid intermediate box thing entirely, and all the extra power/heat/cables/remotes that it requires and consumes too.
With a Republican Congress (and probably soon a Republican president), you can forget anything that favors the consumer over big business. It's never going to get implemented, and even if it did, it will be so full of loopholes as to be rendered useless (much like earlier attempts to support CableCard).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
What are you talking about? The rates for a cablecard are ALREADY strictly regulated. Comcast charges $2/month for a cablecard, compared to $20 per DVR-enabled cable box. (Also, you can watch six channels at a time per cable card, but one channel at a time per cable box.)
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent. .
In my case, this is not true. Your basic set top box on Verizon FIOS costs $12/month and the DVR box $25/month (as I remember). My cable card costs $5/month and I only need one card to watch/record on up to 3 programs at a time on as many screens as I can attach to my network.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
FWIW, Comcast doesn't charge me for the CableCard which is installed in my Tivo, so no monthly cable box fee.
That's fine. They will just have to cap your viewing time at x number of hours per month. Anything over that will be $10/hour to make sure that they do not loose money on set top boxes.
You should do some new research.
I just made the switch back to Cable from U-Verse. I did this partly because of my love of the Tivo software (I was an early adopter on the original Tivo), and partly because of the cost savings.
For each cable box, it would have been about $7/month. I need 1 cable card (M-Card) which only costs $3/month. For 3 TVs, this is almost a $20/month saving. Tivo service fees are less than that difference, so it's a net savings. Plus, I get to use the much superior Tivo software. If I didn't want the Tivo software, or wanted to save additional money on fees, I could always opt to go with a homebuilt DVR setup, or one of the other options available that don't incur the Tivo service fee.
Some access can be done via the cable card. However some companies require their boxes to make use of video on demand and other features.
Since those extra features are what will keep you with that company verse another they then require that you get a box as part of any discounted offer. You don't have to use it and the discount more than pays for the box but it is still something that kills off competition and 3rd party boxes.
Last time I used Verizon's set to boxes they where far from perfect. In fact, I found them to be incredibly slow, and unstable. My Cable Card tuner has not been unstable in the least. I cannot remember the last time I had to power cycle the thing and I don't have serious problems with video quality even though I'm usually streaming HD. My biggest problem is the network stability, but that's because I'm a cheap scape who still runs 100 Base-T switches because I've not yet ready to part with the cash for gigabit switches (Yea, I know, they are cheap..). 100 Base-T is marginal when you are streaming multiple HD streams, so sometimes the network gets congested.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I've only done the tiniest bit of research but it looks like Cable Card is not sufficient to support current technologies and there isn't a standard successor.
Back when Suddenlink was the only cable co available, I had a SilliconDust HDHomerun with cable card slot and a laptop with media center on it. Card was $1.50 a month and laptop was free. Biggest problem I had was the week schedule update that happened Sundays night going into Monday morning, which always required me to pull and reseat the cable card.
Quite a bit cheaper than the $15 for the SD DVR, or $30 for the HD DVR plus another $15 for the electronic program guide.
OK but my point is that you're still paying $5 a month for it.
This FCC vote broke down according to party lines, with the two Republicans voting against increased competition in regard to cable boxes and the three Democrats voting in favor.
You are welcome on my lawn.
>> You should do some new research.
eah OK last time I checked, Cox were charging $15/month, which is why I said what I did. I just checked now, its 1.99/month which is far more reasonable. I guess all the cable-cutters have had a real impact.
Completely untrue. Mine cost 1$ a month and is capable of decoding 4 streams at once.
This isn't the FCC's utopian future. I bought all this stuff last year. The technology for this is already available to consumers. TiVo evidently already has all the information they need to build the boxes because they already built one and sold it to me.
What is the FCC mandating here?
There is no excuse for a TV to require a separate set-top box. Every digital TV already has all the hardware it needs build in. With this ruling we might even finally get TVs with Tivo functionality built-in.
:T:R:A:N:S:
OK, so if the cable company offers streaming services, then the FCC has a point, but watching TV or having a DVR solution is already a solved problem. All they would really need to do here is mandate that the cable company provide a web interface for their streaming content which is available to customers on their networks. Something tells me though, the FCC won't go with the obvious solution....
BTW, most of this already IS standard's based, even at the video streaming level. I forget the exact RFC's involved, but, at least for Verizon FIOS customers, the streaming solution is standards based.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That sounds like an oversight by Comcast in your case, not general policy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cordc...
Did you get your Tivo from them? Maybe it was an already used one that they forgot to remove the cablecard from.
I would keep quiet about it if I were you.
A Linux (MythTV) compatible Satellite receiver-card (or possibly USB device which supports the encrypted streams. I might actually consider paying for some Satellite/TV channels if I could funnel them to my MythTV box for PVR'ing or displaying on my mobile devices within my home.
Cable (comcast) might make less profit?
Say it ain't SOOOOO
Did someone elect a Democrat or something?
CableCard lacks some handy, modern features:
OK, but given the encryption part of how all this works, I'm not sure how else to protect the video content but though some scheme where you have some kind of physical token that cannot be modified and allows the cable company to manage the content you are allowed to see. My point is that the FCC has mandated this solution to be Cable Cards, which works fine.
Now if you are wanting to insist that we be allowed to purchase and own our own cable card from a provider and force providers to support customer supplied cable cards, I can support that.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So... If it takes one printer 9 months, can you get 9 printers to make one in 1 month?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I had a run-in with a real jerk of a Comcast rep over this. Here was what I was told:
1) They have to give you the cable card if you don't rent a box from them. This is a matter of law.
2) Once you rent a single piece of equipment from them...no more free cable card. If you have two TVs, you get this choice:
Rent box and cable card for $9.95 and $9.95, respectively (gee, nice price)
Rent two boxes for $9.95 each
Rent two cable cards for some other sum of money I forget but I don't think either one was free.
He assured me that they were in full compliance with the law...which apparently says nothing about charging me $10 for a box from 2008 (really) that drops the HDMI signal whenever there's a critical play in the game. I reminded him that they probably wrote the damn law with their lobbyists. "Oh, we don't do things like that!"
I went to DirecTV when I moved. They play games too but the service is much better at least. I have equipment from the second half of this decade, something Comcast down here in Houston was unwilling to offer me until I was canceling. Yeah...I asked for that 6 months ago and you told me no. Or that I could call back every few weeks to see if they had gotten in any equipment made during the current administration. Screw you guys.
My PUC makes Comcast rebate me per-each CableCard device I use.
Because FIOS isn't regulated by the PUC, FIOS is $10-12 per-device more expensive than Comcast and that plus the requirement to rent a a FIOS modem makes them an unattractive option for me.
Didn't the FCC solve this with the Cable Card thing? I have a media server that emulates a cable box for my whole house. Works great.
The only real problem here is that with the demise of Windows Media Center and Windows 7 there isn't a viable fully vetted option for me to turn to that will allow me to watch and DVR protected content. Yes, Silicon Dust is working on a version, but it's not yet certified (as far as I know) for protected content.
The FCC already solved this issue. Why are they trying to solve it again?
There is no reason they can't just do it with software and a protocol for key exchange.
The network is rock solid, and getting full 100mbs speed. The SNR is good, the signal strength is good. The cableco just this month dropped CQAM and went full encrypted digital, meaning all TVs now have to use a cable box. No more getting even basic cable on cable ready TVs, unless they have a cablecard slot AND the USB port for the tuner adapter. COX TV sucks more than Lewinsky.
If the FCC really wanted to bring about change, they would team up with the FTC and prevent ISP monopolies in certain areas and level the playing field for other companies to come in and compete.
I bought Tivo and am not switching back.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
All are available for CableCARD devices if you know where to look. I will admit that the schedule data is going to cost you.... But it costs you something when you use the Cable Company's version too.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
OK, but given the encryption part of how all this works, I'm not sure how else to protect the video content but though some scheme where you have some kind of physical token that cannot be modified and allows the cable company to manage the content you are allowed to see.
They could always just provide the card as part of the service without an additional rental charge.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I used to care, then I sent Comcast packing, got an antenna and found other things to do with OTA and interweb streaming services didn't hold my attention.
It probably depends on the market. In my LCOL area, cable boxes were $10 each except for the first, which was $0. When I turned in my cable box in favor of a cable card, they started giving me a $2.50 bill credit. (That was a few years ago -- back when they were forcing me to bundle to get the cheapest price -- so YMMV.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Cablecards aren't regulated, Verizon charges $4/mo on top of their TV services.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The set top boxes you get from Comcast, Verizon or whatever all complete crap. The interfaces are horrible, the boxes are bulky and ugly, yet the cable companies charge $10 per TV for it. And why not? They have virtual monopoly; the can have substandard product and still charge premium for it.
Verizon charges me $5 per card.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Ok, I get it, not everyone lives where I do...
But I have gigabit fiber to the home now, in fact both Verizon and AT&T have run fiber to my house, so I have both choices.
If we would simply commit to deploying fiber to every home in the nation, removing all the old cable and phone lines, have you purchase your Internet connection from a regulated utility the way you buy power and water, then let the various companies (DirecTV, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) compete to sell you packs of channels, or channels by themselves, or better yet, programs and seasons, we'd all be better off.
The need for cable/sat existed when everyone was on dialup or DSL, but with high speed cable or fiber growing, I think the days of that are numbered.
No, I don't think so. CableCARDs fit into a lot of things, TV's, TiVo's and other Third party devices so there is some costs, both up front and monthly for the cable company with CableCARDs. If you could request 20 of them for free, this might not be fair to the cable company. Perhaps if you had some kind of limit on the number you can get for free or something... But even then, they will just roll the costs into their prices...
Right now, things work fine. For a very low monthly cost, they provide the card and the managing the infrastructure that keeps everything authorized for the right things. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
No they haven't solved this. Cable Card is not available every where and does not work well in all locations. This is another avenue. Letting people by different STB is a good thing.
Never had a problem with my Verizon DVR so it most have been A LONG time. I don't care fore the interface. Thought Time Warner had a better one.
It's called encryption keys. No need for a dongle.
Be like Canada where you can buy the box with no outlet fees (at lest up to 4 boxes on most systems)
and they are getting pick and play real soon as well.
They are regulated [1], but the price isn't FIXED at an exact value. I have been paying Comcast $2/mo for mine since 2008, and my first card is now free since I don't have a Comcast STB (in my area, the first STB is included with service). This is substantially cheaper than both their STB and DVR.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf...
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Good grief it's not an obvious solution. You don't understand people do you.
LMOL...you proved his point - know where to look
I have Cox in California, and CableCards were $2 from the day the FCC mandate requiring them to offer CableCard service went into effect. I deployed 4 HTPCs at 4 different locations that week.
Good-bye
You cannot seriously think the Cable Company is going to just toss you the necessary keys to decrypt every channel you purchase without there being some kind of physical token that cannot be duplicated to control who can decrypt that stream. Or can you? The whole point here is to prevent unauthorized users from being able to decrypt the channels they've not paid to see, but only have to send the encrypted stream once. How do you do that without some kind of physical token?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It doesnt work 'fine' it works ok. Tuning adapters piss me off. The one they gave me was THREE TIMES the size of the PC i was going to use (Intel NUC) to record TV on. CableCards suck because the cable companies did everything in their power to fuck it up. Its the shittiest of compromises, not a great solution for providers and consumers.
Good-bye
CableCARD is mandated by FCC rule. If you have cable TV, your provider MUST provide you a CableCARD if you ask for it. If they don't, please complain to the FCC and get the situation fixed.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Try Google... Yahoo even has sources... Good luck, I think YOU might need it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I don't know there... I was able to set up my Homerun Prime with Windows Media Center in an afternoon... Based on your other posts you don't consider me all that bright so it cannot be THAT hard. Had I purchased a TiVo, I'm sure they have excellent customer support for new users. It's not like this is rocket science.
Now if you cannot figure out how to make this work, you get to pay your provider for their turnkey solution and nothing the FCC can do will make that any different. The Cable Company isn't going to support your Windows Media Center (or what ever solution you choose) install unless you pay them, I don't care what the FCC does at this point.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Cable card would have been a solution had the FCC not allowed the cable companies to create a certification laboratory that allowed them to throw red tape in front of any manufacturer. They also should have required that the Cable companies provide cable cards at no charge. The companies quickly figured out that charged a $10 rental fee for the card while only charging $12 for a full DVR quickly killed any market for the cards.
Unfortunately because of the mistakes the FCC made in the cable card specification it's essentially a dead standard at this point as can be seen in the marketplace as the only commercially available DVR at this point is the Tivo.
Even the streaming solution is somewhat solved in that Comcast and other cable companies provide a means for you to stream their On-Demand content to your PC/tablet/phone. Of course with Comcast that uses up part of your monthly bandwidth limit if you are streaming to a device on their network (that isn't a STB/Cablecard) so that's still an issue.
Yea, I've not used Verizon's STB's for almost 8 years. Prior to that, they where slow with lagging user interface updates and didn't have what I considered an intuitive user interface for things like parental controls and hiding content I didn't whish to see. My last STB would also spontaneously reboot multiple times a week and require that I unplug it about once a month. I sure hope they fixed that stuff.
But I don't want the STB anyway. It costs too much, It offers all that streaming on demand garbage and insists on splashing advertisements on my screen when all I want to do is change channels.
If you like it, have fun writing the monthly checks to pay for it. Personally, I don't.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"...and ensuring that what consumers watch on television remains none of Google's business."
So says an AT&T rep, now owners of direcTV which already has access to that info.
I firmly believe this is a step in the right direction, but more than anything I'd like ala-cart channel selection. I want my sports, which I can't get unless I pay for the upper tier package which include dozens of movie channels I never tune into, many music stations that again never see the like of day on my TV. The delivery service, content producer lines have been so blurred it only makes sense to open the market up wholesale.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Correction -- I just checked my bill. They charge me $1.50 per month for the CableCard, but they deduct $2.50 each month for "customer owned equipment".
CableCARD has been constantly crippled by the cable cartel through collusion and their certification body 'Cable Labs'.
Facts:
- CableCARD original spec included PPV
- CableCARD original spec included VOD
- CableCARD original spec included full metadata / guide data delivery
- CableCARD orginal spec allowed two way communication
Also facts:
- an industry MOU to the FCC stated they were unilaterally modifying the spec to remove all of the above parts
- The same MOU banned any MVPD from providing any of the above features should they desire to
So now what you are left with is:
- A channel map
- Access to linear channels
There's no metadata, VOD, or PPV, yet you are paying as part of your service for that metadata and VOD.
Nope, nope, nope...
Just go ahead and declare the internet a utility.
( It is necessary for hospitals, doctors, other utilities, and actually contacting the Federal Government....
communications, finances, bills, and such...... pervasive enough, now )
Regulate it like water, sewer ( hee hee ), gas, electric and phone (landline) companies.
limit profit, evaluate service claims, slap down false advertising claims....
And while you're at it - do the same for cell-services.
I didnt say it was hard, i said it was a half-assed compromise that no one wanted. Why dont you just post 'RTFM' and go back to stroking your beard. I have been running a HTPC since before the term came to be. I have remote DVRs in two different locations (antenna for signal), with fault tolerance, automatic compression, upload and failover. i can handle the tech side. CableCard could have been a lot better, but no one cared enough to get along and do it right so we get Tuning adapters and ever-shifting channel lineups. P.S. I use HDHomeRun Gear too, for almost a decade now..I melted a Q6600 quad core processor trying to record and compress the entirety of the 2008 Olympics. But please, lecture me more......
Good-bye
Comcast will license any third party their program schedule and all necessary information for $99 a month for the first 6 months. After your trial period it will go up to the standard rate of $1200 a month per device instance.
You only even claim that it is untrue once. How many times is it true? Completely untrue, or just it has a few exceptions that prove the rule?
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent.
My cableCard from Comcast is free.
You can bet that any settop box solution that the FCC demands will have an encryption device that is not provided by the third party.
And thanks, slashdot, for stuffing ads onto the same page where the "disable advertising" checkbox is still checked.
Near as I can tell, it costs about $2 a month for a card. The thing is that I believe most cable companies throw in one set-top-box for "free", though.
I didnt say it was hard, i said it was a half-assed compromise that no one wanted.
What else can I assume if you are unhappy and having difficulty making it work for you. IF you wanted a turnkey solution, call TiVo, if not, roll your own. I don't see any reason the FCC needs to do anything else beyond the CableCARD. We already have third party access to the STB market though CableCARD. Now if your provider is messing with you and that's why you are so unhappy with your CableCARD solution, I suggest you file a complaint with the FCC...
It may be that the CableCARD solution was unwanted, but it's what we have and it's sufficient for this purpose. Which is MY point. The FCC has already addressed this issue and doesn't need to mess things up further.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
they already have a 93% profit margin. Maybe if they rape us even harder then the rest of us can shout down the "Free market is best!" crowd and turn it into a public service like it should have been day 1. Why the hell we build these huge infrastructures with our tax dollars and then hand them one after another to the 1% for little or nothing I'll never fully understand...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's the 3rd or 4th time the FCC has done this. So far, cable companies 4, consumer 0, FCC ???
I am a Comcast California subscriber. Not only is the first Cable Card free (if you dont use their STB), you also get a $2.50 credit.
Here is the link: http://www.xfinity.com/equipme...
"Comcast provides a credit to customers who have an activated CableCARD installed in a customer-owned device (e.g., TiVo or CableCARD-equipped television) or customers that own a qualifying converter (See Customer Owned Equipment Policy) if the customer subscribes to a Comcast video service that includes equipment as a part of the service. Customers who qualify will receive a monthly credit of $2.50 for each qualifying activated CableCard device or converter."
If like most cable subscribers, you get internet and something more than basic TV over your cable you're probably paying well over $100/month. I suspect cablecards are really not expensive for the cable company to bu, maybe $10? IT seems like a negligible one-time cost compared to what the customer pays every month tp get the channels it enables.
It doesn't work on AT&T UVerse.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
It's interesting that Thomas Wheeler's FCC seems to be much more consumer-friendly than its preceding incarnations.
I still remember the gloom-and-doom discussions here on /. when the ex Cable lobbyist was appointed by Obama... Fortunately, Wheeler seems to be a man of character, which is pretty rare these days.
I haven't read this new proposal, and don't doubt that it has NEW features/capabilities.
But it has been UNTRUE that you are "required" to get a cable company's box, for around a decade now at least. (I used "cable ready" devices before that, and yes, had all analog equipment. At one point, I could even get HBO through my cable company with no box, but that was long long ago.)
You can get a cable card, and use it in whatever box you have. For example, Tivos, and there have been cable card tuners for PCs for a long time now.
We've had this functionality since ~2007 with several generations of Tivo boxes. Yes, you have to rent a cablecard from Comcast, but it's about $1.50 a month per cablecard, times two cablecards. We can afford that. Yes, you have to pay monthly or yearly for Tivo service, but that funds guides and software upgrades and doesn't go into Comcast's pocket. With the 2nd-to-newest Tivo generation (Roamio), we get all our Comcast channels, Comcast on demand, Amazon, Netflix, Vudo, etc. etc., all from our Tivo. The only Comcast equipment in our home is the two cablecards. This is a solved problem. Buy a Tivo!
the need for removal of cablecard and drm because microsoft dropped media center in win10 and i cannot view tv via hd homerine prime tuner to any media player bec of drm only main server ....
Pretty much the same here in New Mexico. Getting the CableCARD working with my TiVo was a multi-week agony though.
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent.
Not quite true. They do rent them, but Cox is currently charging me a bit over $5 a month total for all of mine, and I have 6 in various TiVos. Two of their Cox set-top boxes would run me far more than $5 a month. I was pleasantly surprised my cable bill dropped a smidge when I upgraded TiVos to the CableCard versions.
Now what they don't tell you is that those cable cards are buggy as hell. Once they are set up right they work like a champ forever, but I had to go through about 15 of them to find a set that worked. Their installer they finally sent over who is a CableCard install expert told me that's not really all that unusual. He brings all the extra he can get his hands on whenever he gets sent out somewhere.
The main issue here I think is that this isn't the typical customer install path, and it makes Cox less money. So while the government makes them support it, the cable company has little incentive to make it more painless.
Even with that though, I'm quite happy with this setup.