Comcast To Allow TV Customers To Ditch Set-Top Box (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In response to the FCC's efforts to open up the pay-TV set-top box market, Comcast said today it will allow some of its subscribers to watch TV without leasing a set-top box. Customers with a Roku TV, Roku streaming media player, or 2016 Samsung Smart TV will be able to watch Comcast's TV programming through the Xfinity TV app embedded in the TV set or Roku devices later this year. However, customers will still have to subscribe to a standard cable TV package from Comcast's Xfinity brand. "We remain committed to giving our customers more choice in how, when and where they access their subscription," said Mark Hess, a Comcast senior vice president, in a prepared statement. The FCC has responded to Comcast's recent announcement saying in a statement, "While we do not know all of the details of this announcement, it appears to offer only a proprietary, Comcast-controlled user interface and seems to allow only Comcast content on different devices, rather than allowing those devices to integrate or search across Comcast content as well as other content consumers subscribe to."

Comments

"Some" of its customers...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not all???

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[PopeRatzo]

Obama

DRINK

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[rmdingler]

Obama

DRINK

Here's to "It's already clear he'll be better than the next President."

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[PopeRatzo]

Here's to "It's already clear he'll be better than the next President."

I think you mean, "she".

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... you must've been shocked at Obama quadrupling the debt "Reagan" made, worst US recovery EVER. Unemployment not even calculable any more because they keep fudging their numbers. Billions still given to Wall Street and now talk of negative interest rates, not to mention the USSR buzzing our navy ships and building up troops in Syria while North Korea and Iran threaten us with nuclear weapons and numerous terrorist strikes on US soil redefined as "workplace violence"

You must've been wearing rose colored glasses the last 7 years.

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[93 Escort Wagon]

Because this was never about Obama sticking it to the cable companies - This was about Obama overriding regulations to let comcast and time warner become de-facto internet content controllers.

Sorry, you only get half credit. You did manage to pull the Obama reference out of your ass; but you forgot to work in something about SJWs.

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's because of stuff Republicans forced... but lets not talk about that... Lets give credit to Obama even though he fought spending cuts tooth and nail...

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[Etherwalk]

Why not all???

If you want fancier service they will want to control the hardware so that they can stream ads at you, better track your viewing, maybe deliver nonstandard signals, etc...

If you want basic service the only point of the set top box is to increase your cable bill and then WAY overcharge you if it doesn't get returned when you disconnect service.

If their move is in favor of consumers generally, they will discontinue the need to have a box with basic service. These are probably the people most likely to leave cable anyway--they don't have the money to waste an extra hundred bucks a month to see a bunch of big guys tossing a pigskin oblong around a field through a fake window in their living room.

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[afidel]

What? The deficit was almost 100% from the Bush era tax cuts (Republican policy) and waging two wars (neo-Con Republican policy).

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[ganjadude]

time warner has been offering this for months (years if you count the ability to use the TWCTV app on a roku. still needed a box but could use rokus everywhere else)

the most likely reason its only some customers is a general small roll out to check for quality issues before loading up millions on a stream of something rather than going through the normal channels (pun intended)

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[nanoflower]

Because this is a test phase. After all they want to be sure that no one can get their service for free. They did say this is a trial so it may eventually become available for everyone, but they still expect most customers will continue to use set-top boxes.

Also take note that the service isn't going to be tied to only people having Comcast as their ISP so they hope to take customers away from other cable companies by allowing them to use their application to watch Comcast TV even though they are using XYZ Internet service. Which is likely to make any ISP that also provides TV service but currently doesn't have a monthly bandwidth usage limit seriously think about starting one to help keep their customers from looking at a service like Comcast is providing.

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[Ol Olsoc]

What? The deficit was almost 100% from the Bush era tax cuts (Republican policy) and waging two wars (neo-Con Republican policy).

That's part of the strategy. Declare war as a economic stimulus package, and through the magic of emergency appropriations, move the payback to another administration.

Which for all of the dehumanizing of Democrats, all of the hardly veiled racist hatred of the Kenyan terror baby, What happened from 2008 to now is amazing.

The real estate meltdown, the credit card debacle, coupled with the two front war, waged on the layaway plan, and payoff day arriving - and we were poised to make the 1930's look like good times for all. It took smart, cool heads to avoid a US led greater depression.

I'm no Democrat, but I give credit where credit is due.

Only in slashdot world, can a person present actual history, and be called a troll

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[Coren22]

You do realize that the recession was caused by deregulation passed by Clinton don't you? Removal of regulations put in place for exactly the reason the recession happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But that is ok, feel free to partisanly blame Bush for Clinton's failure.

Re:"Some" of its customers...???

[Coren22]

Did Obama get a sex change? I must have missed that in all the news recently.

I did this a year ago.

[Lumpy]

Bought a HD Homerun that supported Cablecard. Installed that in the basement and use the Nexus Players in the bedrooms and the Living room to watch TV. The MythTV server in the basement records and the shows appear in the PLEX list. Works fantastic.

Plus My way the recordings are not encrypted and kept locked away from me, so when I fly out to a customer's job I simply load what I want on my laptop and I have them in HD glory. I'm too cheap to pay for Plex Pass so I cant stream to my phone across the internet.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[Obfuscant]

This. I have no idea why this is news, or what is new about it. They were quite happy to let me turn in my set-top box in exchange for a cablecard. That was two years ago, now.

The only not-fantastic part of the problem is that HD View cannot keep up with HD content on either of my PCs, and SiliconDust dropped support for HD Quick TV. I'm now using VLC which seems able to keep up.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[FictionPimp]

I took a different approach. I installed a playon server. Pointed it at free streams from CBS, NBC, etc as well as paid streams like Hulu and have it make them available on demand via my roku devices. Plus for shows that are of limited availability or commercial overflowed I have the playon server record the episode and play it back at my convince.

So my cable bill has been reduced to a HBO, Hulu, Free streaming from the networks, and amazon prime subscriptions (I'd have amazon prime either way though).

Re:I did this a year ago.

[michrech]

You don't need Plex Pass to stream content from your Plex server to your phone. I do it all the time. All you have to do is forward the port (32400? I forget now) the Plex server uses. I have a DynDNS domain that I use to directly access my server, but if you don't want to go through that, you can go to the Plex web page, log in, and it provides a link to your server. :)

Re:I did this a year ago.

[squiggleslash]

Because this has nothing to do with CableCards? I mean, I know the headline is kinda basic and could be read as meaning they're finally providing some alternative to STBs, but what the headline actually meant is explained in the summary, which is talking about Comcast offering itself on some IPTV platforms such as Roku.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[Obfuscant]

Because this has nothing to do with CableCards?

That's right. They would have allowed me to turn in my set-top box whether or not I was getting a cableCARD, and that was years ago. Allowing "some customers" to "ditch" their STB is not news.

Nor is the fact that Comcast will allow customers to watch content online. I've had the Xfinity app for a long time. And over the net. The fact that Xfinity content can be viewed online is not news.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[Curunir_wolf]

I really like my SiliconDust tuner. I've used it for many years with Windows Media Center, but I've recently started hooking up other devices (Kodi on Raspberry PI and Fire TV stick).

Unfortunately, their DVR software is still a work in progress, so most of the recording is still done by WMC. You may be having better luck with Nexus Players, though. The View client for Android is ahead of all the others. That only works on my 7" phone. I think they're mostly working on the Windows 10 client right now.

Not sure what you need Plex for, though. I played with it a bit and it crashed a lot trying to run on my QNAP. So recorded content is just a big file share that Kodi handles just fine.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[ncc74656]

I'm too cheap to pay for Plex Pass so I cant stream to my phone across the internet.

I've never paid for Plex Pass either, but streaming works like a champ for me on my phone and my Chromebook (the latter just uses the web interface).

What phone are you using? Plex apps for Android and (I think) iOS are free, but they're charging (via Plex Pass) for the Windows app. Then again, the web app works pretty much the same on Windows devices as it does on Chromebooks (just tested it on an HP Stream 7 to verify), so you don't really need the Windows app.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[Coren22]

Plex is much like Kodi (as far as I have read about Kodi), it allows streaming of video to whatever device, and it on the fly transcodes video for each device so it receives its optimal resolution/bitrate/codec. It may be that your QNAP doesn't have the horsepower for the on the fly transcoding, I know my Synology rack mount SAN/NAS did not, and actually crashed trying to do it. I run Plex on my file server, which used to point to the NAS, and now points to local drives as I have decommissioned the Synology I was using.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[Curunir_wolf]

Kodi doesn't have any kind of server component - it's just a client. It can play from content from file shares, DLNA, and other sources. SiliconDust has a Kodi plug-in that plays Live TV from the HDHomeRun tuner, and recorded content from where ever that's set up on the local network. Pretty handy. Kodi doesn't do any transcoding.

For MCE content, I use MCEBuddy to transcode the MCE recordings into mpeg4, and I can point Kodi to that file share. It plays those files very nicely, even over Wifi.

I think you're right that Plex needs more horsepower than the QNAP can provide - it's a small 2-bay and very low memory. I might try it on the server just to see how it does, but frankly I don't think it's going to buy me anything that I don't already have. What I really want is the SiliconDust software finished and feature complete so I can ditch the MCE box. I'd do it now, but the wife's favorite show is on NatGeo, which is "copy-once" flagged and MCE is the only thing that can record and play anything from that channel.

Re:I did this a year ago.

[Coren22]

I understand the feeling on the SiliconDust stuff, I used to have a triple tuner cable card unit from them (and a dual antenna one before that), but when MS dropped Media Center, I went out and bought a Tivo to do the same things I was doing on the computer. MCEBuddy works pretty well with Tivos too, the only thing is automating the retrieval from the Tivo, which can be done with other software. For some reason MCEBuddy is a little flakey with Tivo recordings, but when it works, it works really well.

The neat thing about Plex, is streaming across the internet. I can share my library with friends or family, or I can just watch it on my devices. I don't think Kodi can swing that, but if it can, all the better.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[charlesbakerharris]

You've clearly never used their set top boxes. They're not spending any meaningful amount of money on those, trust me. They're terrible. Changing channels should never take more than 8 seconds. Or 1 second, for that matter.

Integrated...

[The New Guy 2.0]

In a related development, Roku TV and Samsung Smart TVs have integrated a Comcast set-top box into the TV set....

Re:Now you see it, now you don't

[The New Guy 2.0]

I wonder, was the FIOS/Samsung partnership broken by not working, or by Comcast's checkbook?

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[The New Guy 2.0]

Set-top boxes were built too-soon by companies hoping Digital Cable would have been more popular. Therefore, most have low-end chips that were high-priced back then, now they're obsolete leading to the unacceptable performance.

Here's a brain fart for ya

[fustakrakich]

Instead of regulation, why not just take away their monopoly status and all other exclusive contracts that block the competition?

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[Obfuscant]

You can't take away a monopoly status that wasn't granted by the government. I.e., you can't just "take away" a defacto monopoly. To do so, you'd have to force other companies to compete.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[fustakrakich]

The corrupt local/municipal/state authorities grant and protect the monopolies. That's why we need to call in the Calvary to pry open the market.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[Obfuscant]

The corrupt local/municipal/state authorities grant and protect the monopolies.

No, they don't. The franchises are non-exclusive. That's not a monopoly. You want to meed the standards of the franchise ordinances, you can get a franchise, too.

The only monopoly involved is the defacto one created by economic realities. You can't legislate that monopoly away.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[fustakrakich]

economic realities

Yes, the economic realities of kickbacks... how to make a monopoly not look like a monopoly...

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[afidel]

The franchises are non-exclusive

Eh? The VAST majority of franchise agreements in Ohio were exclusives for a class of service (ie phone vs cable) until the state of Ohio passed a universal franchise law at the behest of AT&T and Verizon which wanted to offer triple play bundles. I happen to use an overlay cable provider (W.O.W) because my community was one of the few without an exclusive franchise agreement and let me tell you, competition works, $25/month for 30/5 internet with no caps.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[squiggleslash]

In some parts of country that may once have been true. It's not true now and it's complete nonsense anyway. Most of us have at least two, sometimes more, TV providers. Over here, at minimum, I can think of Comcast, at&t, and Dish Network. There's probably a microwave provider as well that I'm missing.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[Obfuscant]

Eh? The VAST majority of franchise agreements in Ohio were exclusives for a class of service (ie phone vs cable)

I have yet to see an exclusive cable franchise, despite asking for links to one every time this discussion about "monopolies" comes up. Yes, the phone companies have exclusive franchises based on a long history, but every cable franchise I've seen has been explicitly non-exclusive.

You are talking about your internet service, which is not the same as a cable franchise. I know of no ISP franchises, and there are plenty of ISPs. I have at least two choices for ISP using DSL, for example.

The delivery system is franchised, however, but the cable side is non-exclusive.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[fustakrakich]

Yeah, and they really aren't competing against each other as much as they are fixing prices. It's kind of an old "Standard Oil" thing.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[squiggleslash]

My Dish Network bill is about 60% of the price offered by Comcast for roughly the same thing, so if they're colluding in some way to fix prices, they're not doing a very good job.

The reality is your anger is misplaced. Cable costs a lot because of the pricing structures of content providers, not so much the cable operators. Most of us would be happy with TBS, TNT, USA, perhaps a sports channel, MTV, and the antenna channels. The cable companies literally cannot offer that package, they're obliged to tack four or five additional channels on for each of those from the same content provider, because that content provider only offers them in a bundle.

Does that mean Comcast is innocent? No, their customer service sucks, as does their selling practices. But if Comcast were to be reformed tomorrow, banned from offering special offers (that expire midway through your contract, etc) and contracts, your cable rates would probably still stay steady at a relatively high amount of money, more than satellite because the latter doesn't cost as much to provide.

TL;DR: Just because Comcast is dishonest and shadowy and generally sucky doesn't mean they're to blame for everything that makes cable TV in general suck. Their high prices are the fault of Disney ABC, NBC Universal, Viacom, et al. As is the fact you may have 100 channels, but there's never anything good on...

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[fustakrakich]

I have no anger against the companies. They only do what comes naturally, whatever they can get away with. It is the government that protects them from the consumers, and to cut to the chase, it is the consumers that vote for that government, and that is where my "anger" is always directed. People are just too mousy and submissive in the face of authority. The push back is insufficient. I only want to open the market to competition. Comcast, Disney ABC, NBC Universal, Viacom all share ownership in each other. Heh, kinda reminds me of the old railroads screwing over the farmers, in addition to Standard Oil.

My Dish Network bill is about 60% of the price offered by Comcast for roughly the same thing...

Look a little deeper, quality of service, latency, etc. I would wager that the difference isn't as big as it looks. "roughly the same thing" is kinda open ended.

The infrastructure needs to be public access, just like roads and waterways and the beach. Communications have to be treated the same way. All that is needed is a big fat content agnostic dumb pipe. All lawsuits against muni/state provision of service need to be dismissed with extreme prejudice. We won't get fast, reasonably priced internet without competition from the public (government). But the public has to demand it first.

*If you wanna end the war and stuff, you gotta sing LOUD*

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[fustakrakich]

I have yet to see an exclusive cable franchise, despite asking for links to one every time this discussion about "monopolies" comes up

I believe the one I provided sums it up pretty well. Cable, phone, internet, let's not pick nits. Communications is a heavily protected industry.

Re:Here's a brain fart for ya

[kbdd]

"You can't take away a monopoly status that wasn't granted by the government. I.e., you can't just "take away" a defacto monopoly. To do so, you'd have to force other companies to compete."

I bet AT&T may disagree.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[arbiter1]

Um its a ton faster then crappy satellite.

Will there be outlet / mirroring fees? missing cha

[Joe_Dragon]

Will there be outlet / mirroring fees?

DVR modes locked out

missing
local channels

local RSN's
local RSN alts
other channels

PPV events
MLB EI
NBA LP
NHL CI
VOD

Cablecard fees

[ArchieBunker]

So you're still paying an extra monthly fee for the cablecard. There is no difference.

Re:Cablecard fees

[mveloso]

My cablecard is free. Isn't everyone's? ISP: comcast.

Re:Cablecard fees

[Obfuscant]

1. I'm not paying a fee for a cablecard.

2. If you've never used a cable card, then you wouldn't realize that yes, there is a difference.

Re:Cablecard fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Cocks cable charges $2 for each cablecard, but you also have to get their "Tuner Adapter" or you will only get 1/4 of the channels. The TA is about the size of a 14" notebook, plugs into the USB of the Tivo or other tuner, and is between the cable inlet and the wall outlet, and requires yet another wallwart to power it. Cocks cable went total DRM on all channels, so cable ready TVs won't work anymore unless it has a cablecard slot. Fucking pirates they are.

Re:Cablecard fees

[Lumpy]

Why are you paying for a cablecard fee? Cablecards are free unless you ask for 3 or more of them.

your cable company must really suck compared to Comcast as the first two are free with them.

Re:Cablecard fees

[peragrin]

You do realize that Comcast changes the terms based on what city you live in correct?

For me Comcast charges $170 a month for their triple play package and 25mb internet. if you want faster internet you pay another $30 a month.

Re:Cablecard fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they went SDV (switched digital video), which means instead of flooding all the bandwidth of the cable with every single channel whether you're watching them or not, they only send you the channel(s) you're tuned to. This is why you need the tuning adapter: it tells the headend which channel(s) to send. If your Tivo or cable-ready TV was SDV-ready, you wouldn't need the adapter, but none are yet. Since a ton of bandwidth is freed up this way, they can offer much faster Internet service. Also the tuning adapter is much smaller than a 14" notebook. Ours are about 1 inch tall and 4 inches square.

Re:Cablecard fees

[Coren22]

$3 on FiOS TV. Also, this is a 6 tuner card I have in my Roamio.

Re:Cablecard fees

[Coren22]

From what I read there, Verizon is still correct. The STB rental is $12, the CableCard rental is $3, they discount your plan by the $12/mo if you don't use a STB anymore.

I still have to return my STB at some point, it is just gathering dust.

Re:Cablecard fees

[mrchaotica]

Back when I involuntarily* had cable, I accepted only the single "free" SD cable box. Then I got an HD HomeRun and when I traded in the "free" box for a CableCard, suddenly an extra credit appeared on my bill. Perhaps you're right that even the CableCard isn't free, but it's certainly the closest Comcast will let you get without further FCC intervention.

(* Comcast wanted to charge me more for Internet by itself than for Internet + basic TV that year)

Not an improvement

[BigU 03C0in]

Since using their app which you then have to install on your hardware, instead of theirs, will probably do something to make you hate them. If you don't understand that statement, you've never been a Comcast customer.

They'll still find a way to screw you.

[bogie]

This is Comcast we are talking about. I'm sure watching the video counts towards your data cap.

Today I got a flyer for Comcast w/DVR for $89 month. Great! Right?

Actually let's see what the real price is. $89 base fee+$5 Broadcast TV Fee+$3 Regional Sports Free+$10 HD Technology Fee(what? you thought HD was included?)+$10 Cable Modem Free+Other taxes and fees. So really that $89 is actually $120 month plus tax. And after 1yr it's $130 month plus tax.

Comcast, "we charge 40-50% above our teaser rates because we can".

Re:They'll still find a way to screw you.

[operagost]

Don't forget all the taxes they're allowed to pass on directly to the customer without mentioning them until they're on your bill.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Set tops are fucking expensive at scale ($100-250, average of 2.5 per US home). They also have to decrypt each digital stream, hence part of the delay when changing channels - everything is digital now.
Source - IPTV provider

Look at the fear!

[rahvin112]

The set top box rules have them scared. It took the cable companies nearly 10 years to shape cable card into a controlled non-open platform and the companies are scared that the new attempt by the FCC to open up cable access will actually succeed so Comcast is working preemptively to try to head off the rules again. Just like Cable card when they asked the FCC permission to build a certification lab that became the gateway to denying any device that didn't work exactly how the cable companies wanted and as poorly as possible to discourage their use they will use they independent contracts to ensure any non-set top method of access is both crappy and second rate.

I own Roku devices but I don't trust Comcast and I know without a doubt in my mind this is another attempt to undermine open access. With a Roku contract they can build a channel that is both second rate and crappy in every regard and then point to that and tell customers that's what they get when they don't rent a box. Roku being the sellouts they are will also allow Comcast to do this.

Don't cheer this, recognize it for what it is, an attempt to end run the open access provisions by letting Comcast write the rules, just like they did with cable card.

That's mighty nice of 'em

[rsilvergun]

seeing as how they were about to be forced to do it at gun point.

Xfinity App streams like shit

[Nyder]

I live in Seattle, have Comcast and their Xfinity App streams the channels like shit. Some shows I would be unable to watch because it would keep dying out. And this is using a decent Comcast internet connection. Going thru the web was usually a bit better, but not much.

All in all, and a Comcast customer, I would not recommend using the Xfinity app, i would recommend using usenet service or torrent sites if you want to watch quality versions of the show.

Because it's a natural monopoly

[dlenmn]

That won't work because this is a textbook example of a natural monopoly: almost all their costs are fixed (maintaining infrastructure) and the marginal cost per customer is basically zilch. (You turning on the TV costs them almost nothing.) Even without a government-granted monopoly, their monopoly status would happen naturally.

Why is it a natural monopoly? Suppose you had two different companies, each with their own cables running down your street. The two CEOs would look at eachother and say: why are we wasting all this money maintaining two sets of cables. We should just merge, maintain just one set of cables (saving money in the process), and become a monopoly to boot! (Exercise for the reader: understand why not all situations lead to natural monopolies. E.g. why do we not have natural monopolies in grocery stores?)

That might sound silly, but that's basically what we have now. Many houses have access to only two internet providers: the phone company and the cable company. Since TV signals are digital nowadays, they often offer the same services. The only thing keeping cable and phone companies from merging is government regulation.

What's the best solution? I'm not sure, but taking away their monopoly status will not foster competition on it's own. In my area, it would just lead to an ATT-Charter merger, which sounds horrible...

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[fustakrakich]

All monopolies require state protection.

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[iamacat]

What does any of this have to do with TV? Keep the wires as either a municipal utility or a regulated regional monopoly with capped rates. Allow anyone interested to offer content or provide end user customer service on equal basis. Apps will be on every cheap smart TV and streaming box in no time and high value networks will be motivated to offer standalone services rather than subsidize unpopular channels.

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[dinfinity]

What's the best solution?

Nationalizing all infrastructure that is critical to society.

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why this still applies. If I have a Roku box, why not pay Comcast and get the Xfinity app to watch TV even though I live in a Time Warner region? Cable cutting taken full circle virtually?

Not that I would while they're bundling,

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is to separate content from delivery.

The cables( or fiber) should be a regulated monopoly the same way water, sewer, electricity is. They should be content agnostic. But unfortunately that would be efficient and make sense.

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[hey!]

All monopolies require state protection.

...Never heard of Standard Oil I take it? Or U.S. Steel?

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[dlenmn]

All monopolies require state protection.

[citation needed]

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[fustakrakich]

Yes, they needed the government to lock out the competition and back up their anti union activities. And without the "Pnks" (Pinkertons, basically a private government agency) and the regular police and their guns, they would be no bigger than anybody else.

Re:Because it's a natural monopoly

[fustakrakich]

Why was that modded down? That is precisely what is needed. The state builds and maintains the infrastructure and leases it without prejudice. Freedom of choice will then sort out the chaff.

Comcast has been already working on this

[sizzlinkitty]

Comcast has a internal "Darling" division called VIPER (Video over IP Engineer & Research) already working on the possibilities of eliminating the set top box. They have known trouble has been brewing on this front for awhile now.

Re: Nothing new to the customer

[Miamicanes]

Pffft. I remember what Dish Network was like back in 2000... With their crap gear, changing channels took upwards of 5-15 seconds. It was LITERALLY impossible to channel-surf in any meaningful way.

Voom (circa 2003) was a million times better... High-quality high-end hardware that, if anything, was somewhat over-engineered (I think they were planning to make any box DVR-capable by plugging a hard drive into it, but shut down before they got around to it). Going from Voom to Comcast and their Motorola boxes was downright painful... Not quite as bad as Dish, but nowhere near as responsive and snappy as Voom. In 2008, my DirecTV HR-20(21?) was almost as good as Voom's boxes... until they changed the firmware around 2010, and almost overnight the box became glacially slow.

In retrospect, I think the fastest cable boxes I ever had were there Scientific Atlanta boxes from the late 80s/early 90s... Literally instant channel-changes. You could hold the channel up or down button, and let it rip through at least 2 or 3 channels per second. Sigh... Two steps forward, 1.97 steps back...

Multicast?

[Comen]

I could go one about this stuff, but to make it short, I am surprised that they would want customers to stream everything to boxes that most likely are not able to do multicast stream joins. Current cable technologies like SDV do something similar to IP multicast streams being joined at the edge, just in a really bad way using new QAM frequencies per stream, but if they just used settop boxes that did IP multicast joins directly to the network it would way be better and still save tons of bandwidth.
Most people that have Roku boxes are behind NAT routers that most likely do not forward multicast packets via PIM/IGMP so every stream they watch is a entirely new unicast stream of bandwidth, when big events happen like a sporting event the bandwidth would be multiplied by how ever many people are watching that stream instead of sharing the stream with multicast, seems like a HUGE waste of bandwidth to me.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[Anonymous Coward]

STBs never cost much to make. Even high-end HDVRs are nothing more than crippled PCs running limited OSes. Cable companies charge the best part of $20/month (inc taxes) to rent a box that costs about $80 to build. Hold your head in shame for fabricating costs and defending this shady scam. Furthermore, the same tech is used elsewhere in the world and is yours after just one year of a contract.

Wait til you use up your bandwidth cap

[RubberDogBone]

Most of this can be done now with the Xfinity streaming video website, and of course some channels have Roku apps or stream on Youtube which has an app.

But there is one big problem with this: All of it uses your meager 300GB of Comcast bandwidth. Every stupid moment of it uses bandwidth.

Watching cable TV the old fashioned way with a set-top box does not use bandwidth. I can leave all the TVs in my house on whatever channel I want all month long and it won't use even one kilobyte.

But if I put NBCSports (only for F1) or QVC on my laptop or Roku, bam, I am gobbling up bandwidth like crazy. This happens even if I go somewhere else and use an Xfinity hotspot to watch. The system counts that bandwidth against your account.

Use too much bandwidth and you get to pay more for overages. Xfinity is gonna make bank "letting" people watch TV on their Roku boxes. How nice of them.

Now I could pay for unlimited bandwidth and my total Comcast bill would be about $130 and I could watch all the TV I want. OR I can keep it as it is, and have a nice TV package with a couple hundred channels, and pay $119. HMMM. Sure I only get 300GB that way but that's enough for my current use.

Why not TiVo?

[gnookie]

I had Comcast for past two years (I recently switched to AT&T) and didn't lease a set-top-box from Comcast: I have a TiVo Premiere and just rented a cable card from them. I have never had a Comcast DVR (been a TiVo owner since TiVo model 1), so I can't compare their features. But since I've always bought with lifetime subscriptions from TiVo, I've never been a renter. It works fine and even has a (crappy UI) working Xfinity on-demand app.

Do Not Want

[Thelasko]

As the owner of a Samsung Smart TV, I don't want this option. Samsung's Smarthub OS is glitchy as hell. Maybe they have fixed it since I bought my TV...

They'll allow us!

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

They'll allow us! Are they not merciful??

Re: Nothing new to the customer

[Voyager529]

In retrospect, I think the fastest cable boxes I ever had were there Scientific Atlanta boxes from the late 80s/early 90s... Literally instant channel-changes. You could hold the channel up or down button, and let it rip through at least 2 or 3 channels per second. Sigh... Two steps forward, 1.97 steps back...

Well, yes - those were an entirely different ballgame. In the 80's, we were still dealing with analog cable, meaning that all the box had to wait for was a vertical sync pulse, of which it got 60/sec. Now that we've gone digital, and we're running MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 streams everywhere, the boxes need to wait for a complete I-frame before they can display...which may involve some form of decryption and a number of other factors.

The old boxes were much better, because they were much simpler.

Re:Now you see it, now you don't

[Grishnakh]

And THAT is why the right to choice in how subscribers access programming must be required by regulations instead of relying on the kindness of pay-TV providers.

I don't see why. If you don't like the (crappy) terms or requirements for viewing some programming, you don't have to subscribe to it. You don't *need* to watch cable TV, so if it's too expensive or too much of a PITA because you have to use special equipment, then don't. It's not like internet service, which is a communications service which has become basically a necessity for modern life. You're not going to have problems getting a decent job because you didn't watch some football game live.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[nanoflower]

The problem with slow changing of channels on Comcast with X1 is due to the one changing a channel is tied in to their head end servers. They end up having to communicate with the head end to get the updated info on the new channel and that slows things down instead of just immediately tuning in to the new channel the way it used to be. So you get all the info on what show is airing when you change channels (whether you care or not) at the cost of slower channel changes.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[charlesbakerharris]

Uh, yeah, I meant they're not spending anything *on developing passable* STBs. Great reading though.

Re:Nothing new to the customer

[The New Guy 2.0]

The mistake is that the cable companies paid hundreds of dollars for each box that now is woth $80.

Want a good STB? Get a TiVo that was manufactured recently. Those have plenty of margin on them, because all of the other competition seems to have folded.

Re: Nothing new to the customer

[Miamicanes]

I'm pretty sure that in the worst-case, ATSC MPEG-2 frames have at least one I-frame per 15 frames, so the total latency should still be well under a half-second per channel EVEN IF you had to wait 1/4 second for an I-frame, then spend another 1/60th of a second analyzing it and another 1/60th of a second outputting it to the display. If switching between a 720p60 and 1080i60 channel, maybe add another 1/15th of a second of delay (assuming the box can't transmit the resolution/framerate metadata with each frame, so the TV could get started with switching output modes even while the box was still waiting for the next I-frame).

Insofar as encryption is concerned, there's no reason why the box shouldn't already have a copy of every channel's current encryption key pre-negotiated and ready to go. It's not like RAM is actually expensive anymore, and 2GHz+ quadcore ARM processors are now almost free. Worst-case, maybe add another dollar or two for a second DSP to constantly walk through the channels, update its metadata, and renegotiate encryption keys as necessary in the background.

I really wish I knew why American HDTVs are so completely "dumb" in their operation. On paper, at least, there's NO REASON why a broadcaster shouldn't be able to seamlessly transition from a 720p60 newscast to a 1080i commercial, then transition to a 720p50 imported TV show and follow it up with a 1080p24 movie (all with more 720p60 and 1080i60 commercials seamlessly inserted along the way). I'd love to know where in the transmission chain the whole thing breaks down and makes mode-changing such a big deal. IMHO, changing from 1080i60 to 720p50 (for example) should AT WORST cause 1/60th to 2/24ths of a second of blackness before resuming video display in the new mode.

By the same token... it drives me nuts that 1080p60 wasn't one of the official ATSC modes. Yes, I know that realtime compression of 1080p60 back in the 90s would have been almost impossible (at least, at an acceptable quality and keeping the bitrate below ~19mbps). HOWEVER, I also have a pile of old VCDs I made from ripped DVDs using TMPGEnc that got near-DVD quality out of 2.7mbps burned to a CD-R, so I know what's possible when you can let the encoder take its time to chew on the file and re-analyze the video at its leisure... especially when variable bitrate and long GOPs are available options. With the exception of sports, news, and award shows, almost NOTHING gets literally encoded in realtime anymore. And even news & awards shows now get delayed by 15-30 seconds so they can prevent the transmission of anything obscene or shocking (like someone blowing his head off on a live news feed, or flashing a boob at the superbowl). For any other content, there's plenty of time to aggressively cross-reference frames & use motion-estimation to shave the 1080p60 bitrate down to something you could send at high quality with just 18mbps.