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Cable Companies Pledge Industry-Wide Commitment But Want Control Over UI (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the meet-in-the-middle dept.

The FCC proposed rules to force pay-TV providers to make video programming -- and the right to record video -- available to the makers of third-party apps and devices. Under this model, third-party app and equipment makers would be able to create their own interfaces through which cable TV subscribers could access their programming. On Thursday, cable companies noted that they still cannot fully comply with FCC's attempt to open up the set-top box market, but have resigned themselves to accepting some form of regulation. From an Ars Technica report: Cable companies still aren't giving up on the apps approach, but now they say they would agree to rules that make it mandatory for large operators to build apps providing access to all the video customers subscribe to on a wide range of devices. Pay-TV companies with at least 1 million subscribers would have to follow the mandate. Industry representatives told the FCC that they are open to the commission "enforcing an industry-wide commitment to develop and deploy video 'apps' that all large MVPDs [multichannel video programming distributors] would build to open HTML5 Web standards," they said in an ex parte filing released today. The filing describes meetings with FCC officials involving the cable industry's top lobbyist, National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) CEO Michael Powell, representatives of Comcast and AT&T/DirecTV, and reps from cable networks Vme TV, Revolt TV, and TV One.

83 comments

  1. Uh-oh by Yvan256 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Industry representatives told the FCC that they are open to the commission "enforcing an industry-wide commitment to develop and deploy video 'apps'...

    Oh great, even the news are going 'apps' now. Can't wait to see the 'apps AC' comment on this one.

    1. Re:Uh-oh by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Really, a lot of compression can be done to graphical displays on television... the CNBC Ticker is an example. Rather than bloat the satellite signal with a ticker that is quickly getting outdated, they can send the ticker as a bunch of compressible letters and numbers, and then reassemble the ticker at the cable headend.

    2. Re:Uh-oh by omnichad · · Score: 1

      The only reason the hardware can keep up with video playback is hardware acceleration. Trust me, cable or satellite boxes trying to display a ticker smoothly at 60Hz with no tearing will be a complete failure.

      And if you want to talk about signal bloat, how about having to have two separate feeds for the same channel (which this would require) just to support older receivers?

    3. Re:Uh-oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cable goes apps
      No longer Luddite
      Appy App?
      No Luddite?
      Appy App!
      Burma-Shave

    4. Re:Uh-oh by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      cable or satellite boxes trying to display a ticker smoothly at 60Hz with no tearing will be a complete failure.

      How long before they have credible GPUs with pixel shaders? Can't be long.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Uh-oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's always going to cost more though, and you can bet they want to be producing set top boxes for the lowest possible price.

    6. Re:Uh-oh by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      That's always going to cost more though, and you can bet they want to be producing set top boxes for the lowest possible price.

      Now that cellphone SoCs and GPUs are powerful enough, I'd think that they'd be thinking about using them for the next generation. Just making the hardware smaller makes it cheaper, once someone else is already paying for the miniaturization.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:Uh-oh by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Even a $30 SoC is more than these guys seem willing to spend. Your average cable box (pulling a random Motorola) has a 175MHz MIPS32 CPU, which I'd be willing to guess is well under $10.

      There's literally no motivation to compete. They only see other cable companies as competitors (they are generally a local monopoly) and satellite, which also uses garbage hardware. Nevermind that a Roku is more responsive than a cable box - and is my primary UI for Netflix (one of those competitors they're still in denial about). If one company moves to a modern SoC for any reason, that might motivate some competition.

    8. Re:Uh-oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chromecast is $30 and plays full screen video. The Raspberry Pi 3 is $35 and can render N64 games. I think they can figure SOMETHING out that is affordable, as we've been racing to the bottom for a while now.

  2. Missing app:Local on the 8s by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

    Here's something they could really improve on... we know that every TiVo or DVR has the ability to show a weather display... so why not teach it how to find the maps and numbers to make The Weather Channel's Local on the 8s work with a detail level of showing exactly where you live and work.

    Just connect the box to a secret channel filled with weather data (similar to The Weather Star of the 80s), get the box to pull the nearest METAR data, and then draw the big temperature number and fill in the other things like humidity and air pressure, then wait for a signal from the MPEG stream to insert the as-local-as-it-can-get info. This would be the kind of DirecTV upgrade that would really sell receivers... there's already room on the access cards to do this, they just need the fonts and image sizes to begin.

    1. Re:Missing app:Local on the 8s by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      Heh - I remember "the weather channel". My grandparents used to watch that.

      Why aren't you just bookmarking "weather underground" or leaving that as your homepage on your box?
      e.g., https://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:75201.1.99999

    2. Re:Missing app:Local on the 8s by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      Weather Underground: Weeknights at 6pm ET on The Weather Channel.

      Right now, Wund.com was sold with Weather.com to IBM in a vendor-in-control situation. It's really just the same database displayed differently.

    3. Re:Missing app:Local on the 8s by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      Weather scan is there but's it's sd only and stuck on older star tech.

    4. Re:Missing app:Local on the 8s by ShaunC · · Score: 1

      Heh - I remember "the weather channel". My grandparents used to watch that.

      It isn't your grandparents' Weather Channel anymore, gone is the 5 minute loop of local conditions playing over cheesy music all day. They have some interesting shows on now. Three Scientists Walk Into a Bar, Extreme Weather, Storm Riders, Weather Gone Viral, Hurricanes 360. I think they're all a bit informative and entertaining, good enough to have on while I'm winding down at night, even if I'm not exactly glued to the screen. My only complaint is there aren't more episodes, they're all from last year and they haven't come out with new seasons yet.

      --
      Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
  3. Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by denis-The-menace · · Score: 2

    meanwhile, they are horrible at designing UI.
    -Inconsistent UI
    -un-intuitive UI
    -too many buttons needed to control the UI

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
    1. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by omnichad · · Score: 2

      And the hardware is generally so underpowered that the UI latency is painful.

    2. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      Yep, TiVo's ad skipping feature only works on shows that accept it... I.E., TiVo paid them to supply the data!

    3. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You guys really need to use MythTV's auto commercial detect. It's not flawless but it works really well.

    4. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the hardware is generally so underpowered that the UI latency is painful.

      I can't ever buy that particular argument. The UI on old DOS and Amiga games responds instantly, Except for disk reads, the UI of the Amiga WB or MS Windows or GEM responds instantly. Those computers were hundreds if not thousands of times slower (you can't just compare clockspeeds, a 400MHz embedded PPC dispatches about 100 times more instructions per seconds than a 33MHz 80486).

      It's all just lazy and bad programming wrapping things in layers of indirection and HTML, Java or JS interpreters, not to mention the significant taskswitching overhead of vmunix/vmlinux kernels. I have a couple of TVs from the late 90s that are faster and more responsive than my newest Smart TV. They have colour graphical overlays, and one of them is HD (pre-HDMI, compatible with VGA, HD-LD and D-VHS HD output).

      The stupid and sad reality, is that the performance problems we see with every consumer product today are not caused by inadequate hardware, but by a shift off incompetence from productivity tools to generate high performance programs to shipping developer's productivity tools inside the device, at the expense of performance. Where in the past someone might have bought a tool that turns a model UI into a high-performance C++ kernel, today, they just bolt on webkit and drop the the HTML+JS files into the device, customer UX and battery life be damned.

    5. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by omnichad · · Score: 1

      The fact remains that even with the poor programming, you can throw in a cheap Android SoC and be orders of magnitude more responsive without rewriting a thing.

    6. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by Miamicanes · · Score: 1

      Let's not forget other stupid things, like boxes that insist upon doing HDCP re-negotiation every goddamn time you change the channel and add a minimum of 3-5 seconds to the time it takes. It's 100% sloppy programming and design. HDCP's rules don't even require that they go that far... they just can't be arsed to bother optimizing channel-changing speed for boxes that have a captive market anyway.

      IMHO, it should take AT MOST about 500ms to change channels (assuming that at the moment of change, you missed the I-Frame & had to wait for the GOP's end 15 frames later, then wanted to pre-buffer a full GOP to avoid artifacts from network hiccups and interference). And if the DVRs were REALLY smart, they'd put unused tuners to use watching the adjacent channels, so they'd be ready to switch to them in a literal instant instead of having to slog through the whole thing all over again. With a 4-tuner DVR that has one tuner recording a show, you could have the other 3 tuning the channel being watched and the one above & below it. Once the user starts changing channels, both of the spare tuners could be temporarily re-allocated to the next 2 channels in the same direction.

      If it weren't for HDCP and DRM, we'd already have stuff like this, because people would be able to make their own tuners using FPGA dev kits if products like that didn't exist commercially. HDCP has made it almost completely impossible for small, nimble companies to design cool niche home theater stuff anymore, because the HDCP people won't give the keys to their castle out to anyone who works for a company smaller than Samsung, Sony, Phillips, or Huawei.

    7. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least for the common Scientific Atlantica boxes, it's supposedly the cable company firmware/software that is super slow. The factory software, before the cable company messes with it works much more smoothly, from what I've heard.

      Really these devices need a swift kick-in-the-pants disruption from outsiders to improve the experience. Cable companies simply don't give a shit.

    8. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Let's not forget other stupid things, like boxes that insist upon doing HDCP re-negotiation every goddamn time you change the channel and add a minimum of 3-5 seconds to the time it takes

      Don't they have to? If the resolution changes (and it usually does), would the old HDCP negotiation be invalid?

    9. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Generally, the UI runs on 1080p or whatever resolution is set as default. The picture is scaled as necessary, but the TV is not changed between screen resolutions, or the UI would get blurry on SD channels.

    10. Re:Why? To prevent you from skipping ads by Miamicanes · · Score: 1

      They're required to re-negotiate if the sink device changes, or a sink is added or removed, but at the other end of the chain, a source is a device, not a service provided by the device. It's 100% legitimate for a source device (like a cable box) to negotiate the key exchange with all sink devices (like TVs, home theater receivers, etc), authorize the channels allowed for a customer, then switch between channels without fully re-negotiating the HDCP link from scratch. They just do it because it's easier to code and cheaper to develop & get certified, and they're unlikely to actually lose a single actual sale over it (because their customers are TV service providers & NOT end users)... so they just do it, end users be damned.

      THAT is one of the things the FCC is specifically trying to prevent... companies steamrolling over consumers and subjecting them to shitty hardware and policies just because they CAN. This is a worthwhile effort by the FCC, even if it doesn't ultimately save consumers a cent. Or even if it ultimately adds to the cost of the hardware. The experience of using something matters at least as much as the cost of using it.

  4. I wonder why they resist this by goombah99 · · Score: 2

    I don't quite see why they have to be forced to do this. It would be better if they didn't have to do it by regulation. Isn't there an advantage to making their services more customizable and accessible by third party apps? Are they affraid of things like slignbox or soemthing?

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I wonder why they resist this

      Competition is detrimental to profit margins.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    2. Re:I wonder why they resist this by suutar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, there's a disadvantage because they won't be able to charge set top box rentals if customers can get a box from somewhere else.

    3. Re:I wonder why they resist this by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Are they affraid of things like slignbox or soemthing?

      Yes. And CableCARD. And any attempt from the past 20 years to let consumers have some control over their TV viewing.

    4. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      more like tivo / roku / atv / etc
      right now comcast shits out cheap boxes with late 90s pc specs for next to no cost
      then *rents* several of them to most subscribers
      and as an extra fuck you they rent the remote seperately
      this is free monies that they don;t want to give up

    5. Re:I wonder why they resist this by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      Slingbox should now be banned. Why stream the cable channel from your side of the cable connection back over the cable modem when you can grab it from a TV Everywhere datacenter? That has less delay, and keeps from your neighborhood clogging up the local wire.

    6. Re:I wonder why they resist this by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      DirecTV never really offered enough savings in the customer-owned equipment era to compete with cable box rental fees... really box rental is itemized so they can charge less tax.

    7. Re:I wonder why they resist this by omnichad · · Score: 2

      Because it's the Internet and what I do with the pipes I pay for is my business. If the ISP has undersold their bandwidth, that's not the fault of the neighbor and their legitimate use of the Internet.

    8. Re:I wonder why they resist this by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      Really, there should be nothing stopping a national cable company, competing with two national DBS companies, and in most areas the local phone former-monopolies.

    9. Re:I wonder why they resist this by DarkOx · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Quite honestly I think the problem is they don't really have much to compete on. I mean its not like they don't all buy the same content and roll it into very similar packages. Assuming you are in one of the few places where you have a choice what makes ComCraps vs. IndirectTV vs. GIOS vs. MyVerse offerings much different.

      In terms of media very very little. Pretty much comes down to Internet service offerings being better on Cable or Fiber than the DSL that gets packaged with Satellite providers.

      Independent of if you think Internet service has reached the 'good enough point' for most people or you think the industry has colluded to make it universally crappy they have basically decided as an industry they don't want to compete on Internet service, if they did data-caps (at least on wire-line products) would not be a thing. I get that too the risk of municipal ISPs and other disruptors like Google Fiber showing up and blowing their Internet business out the door are pretty high.

      So these guys literally want to keep user experience as a potential ground to compete on. I think this is a bit silly as the usability and features of these things is likely to converge quickly anyway, but I can still see their motivation to try. if it works it a low cost potentially high impact way to compete. XFinity X1 really is way nicer than most of the alternatives. All things being equal otherwise it would be a reason to choose Comcast over the others.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    10. Re:I wonder why they resist this by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

      I don't quite see why they have to be forced to do this. It would be better if they didn't have to do it by regulation.

      I rarely find monopolies like cable companies have little incentive to innovate when they can force customers to rent their to use antiquated boxes at $10 per month. From what I know the companies are milking the boxes for every penny of rental fee they can.

      Let's talk about quality in my personal example. My box hasn't changed in 6 or 7 years and it was old when I got it. It's painful to navigate. Clicking a button could take a few seconds for the box to respond. I've asked for newer box which I cannot get unless I want to get a bigger package.

      Let's talk about changes designed to screw over customers: For example in my area Time Warner offered basic analog cable (40 channels) for under $50 a month. Then they switched from analog to all digital (SDV). In the conversion, they made my digital TV basically useless without a digital adapter which I have to rent for $3/month. They said it was to save bandwidth as moving to switched digital video (SDV) means that they no longer have to broadcast 300+ channels at once but instead only channels being watched need to be sent. However, I didn't magically get 1080p for all those channels: No I still get 480p which is down-converted from HD. Can I buy the adapter (which should cost $10 total)? No. Do I get more channels? No if anything I have fewer channels than I did before. So I have to pay $3 more a month for the less. For 1080p, I have to get the "digital package" for $50 more a month for channels I didn't want and rent the more expensive $10 per box TV.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    11. Re:I wonder why they resist this by farble1670 · · Score: 2

      XFinity X1 really is way nicer than most of the alternatives

      The alternatives must be really, really bad. X1 is an example of an overly-flowery interface running on inadequate hardware. 300-500ms to react to a touch in my remote isn't acceptable.

    12. Re:I wonder why they resist this by H3lldr0p · · Score: 1

      Quite honestly I think the problem is they don't really have much to compete on. I mean its not like they don't all buy the same content and roll it into very similar packages. Assuming you are in one of the few places where you have a choice what makes ComCraps vs. IndirectTV vs. GIOS vs. MyVerse offerings much different.

      Exactly. And the entire industry doesn't want to have to find terms on which to compete.

      This is why they're going after NetFlix, YouTube, Twitch, etc. That is competitive content differences. Ones they don't know how to counter them save for dropping their prices. That's not an option in the CEO's mind because then their bottom line is going to be impacted and his salary is usually connected to that somehow.

      It's not just cable cutters who frighten these companies. If it's not something they can put into one of their channels, they don't know what to do with it.

    13. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You write "really" a lot.

      Really.

    14. Re: I wonder why they resist this by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

      There are many reasons for them to want to control the UI. One is that it is a platform where advertisements could be placed and they don't want to give that potential revenue up or let anyone else profit from placing ads there. Nevermind that consumers are revolting against the ads inserted into their television programs by their Samsung TVs; there's a potential that they could get it right.

      Then there's the issue where they want to make sure that it is a human watching the cable and not a device. Time-Warner Cable pushed the "mystro" software to their cable boxes decades ago as an upgrade to their UI/UX. I was in a forced beta-test market. The way it displayed guide data interfered with the changing of channels by channel number. If you started changing the channel, the banner would pop up, the show information in the banner would be updated, and in the update the digits you'd entered would be thrown out. When raised as a serious bug, they discounted it because the workaround was just for the user to enter the channel number again and it wasn't that big of a nuisance to bother fixing. But the underlying issue was with DVRs attempting to change the channel on the cable box, which had no way to tell that the channel change failed or even that the channel change that occurred was the correct one, thus could not send a corrected channel change, and would proceed to record the wrong program off the incorrect channel. The only workaround for DVR users would be to not to change the channel on-time but skew it by a minute before. But as networks were starting to skew their own shows by a minute or two forward or back, even that could cause the channel you're *leaving* to trigger the bug. And that was conditioned on having a newer DVR that had that feature; older versions had to resort to timed manual recordings rather than ones driven by guide data, regularly titling recordings with the preceding program's information, made the guide data useless for its primary function, and network shift *still* affected them. They'd managed to design an effective captcha into their cable box to prevent usage of DVRs with their cable boxes until the CableCARD came out. So they rolled it out nationwide without a fix, because to them it *was* the fix.

      No repercussions for the involuntary the beta test. Rumbles in the city government, but no effective change. They have a local monopoly.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    15. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      The problem with cable's "compromise' as described is they can charge for the app instead of the cable box. And with limits on recording as well, its essentially a continuation of the existing lock down. I hope the FCC isn't stupid enough to fall for this.

    16. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You write "really" a lot. Really.

      like like like lots

    17. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Because perhaps I want to see my recording with the furry bunny ears pasted on top of "The New Guy 2.0"'s head?

      Oh, and I'm not interested in the ISP knowing when, where, or how often I watch New Guy 2.0.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    18. Re: I wonder why they resist this by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      There are many reasons for them to want to control the UI. One is that it is a platform where advertisements could be placed and they don't want to give that potential revenue up or let anyone else profit from placing ads there. Nevermind that consumers are revolting against the ads inserted into their television programs by their Samsung TVs; there's a potential that they could get it right.

      Then there's the issue where they want to make sure that it is a human watching the cable and not a device.

      Those are 2 reasons I would drop cable entirely. As it is, I watch nothing live, and much of my recorded video is replayed through my (not windows) HTPC which allows for all sorts of things to occur as I wish, including rewind, skip back and forth, and stop and restart at any time, from where I left off or some regular chapter markers. VOD and all the other things the ISPs try to sell me are of 0 interest to me, much like cloud anything. It's not different, if it's not on my HD, it's not mine. So why should I pay more for it than a netflix rental (less than $1)?

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    19. Re:I wonder why they resist this by Ingenium13 · · Score: 1

      Comcast's set top boxes have always been awful and horrendously underpowered. I just moved to an apartment where I could finally get Fios, and the boxes respond instantly, as they should. It's inexcusable in 2016 to have a new set top "platform" and cheap out that much on the processor, yet still charge what they do for the box rental.

    20. Re:I wonder why they resist this by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      I'll agree the UI performance is abysmal even on the newest kit. My parents just got new boxes and I was visiting them a couple weeks ago and its still slow. It would be a pretty nice UI otherwise. Their 'apps' are nice my dad showed them to me on his Android phone and mom's Iphone. They both performed very well and were pretty usable.

      I can't get cable where I am. I dropped DirectTV last year because I don't really watch enough, I can't get thru other distribution channels to justify the expense. Their UI was an atrocity. It was like 2003 called and wants their cable box back. They kept adding features but it was all willynilly no sense of organization and the list of choices just got longer and longer. Scrolling thru the line up the most basic feature was painful slow.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    21. Re:I wonder why they resist this by JRV31 · · Score: 1

      The problem is all the companies and governments want to protect your privacy. From everyone but themselves.

  5. Which HTML5 extensions? The DRM-enabled ones? by Frobnicator · · Score: 1

    Is that the HTML5 variant with DRM embedded? So basically "We will allow third parties to port our app to any device that they want to, as long as they use our web page to do it. Thanks for the free port to your device, chumps."

    --
    //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  6. Moot by rlp · · Score: 1

    The problem will solve itself as more and more consumers "cut the cord" dropping cable and switching to streaming.

    --
    [Insert pithy quote here]
    1. Re:Moot by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      That works for entertainment (why pay for HBO movies when they'll soon be on Netflix?) but for video news you're basically down to CBSN.

    2. Re:Moot by omnichad · · Score: 2

      Online video news is distributed per-story, not in half hour episodes. I assure you that there's a lot more content providers out there. What the Internet lacks in better curation, it makes up for in convenience.

    3. Re:Moot by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      Sorry, they thought of that. Internet-only packages are priced such that it's stupid not to add in the bundled TV.

    4. Re:Moot by Miamicanes · · Score: 1

      Um... you might want to Google "SlingTV", "Playstation VUE", and/or "Southern Fibernet". The first two are available now, the third is in beta.

      I pay $14/month (with T-mobile customer discount) to get SlingTV's multi-stream service (including CNN, FX, Comedy Central, AdultSwim, History, NatGeo, and HGTV). The only thing that sucks about it is the lack of DVR functionality, which means that CNN is one of the only channels I actually watch on it (the other channels do have some/all of the current season's episodes of popular shows available on demand, which partially makes up for it).

      If Vue would allow me to subscribe to the packages they offer to cities WITHOUT local channels (I have a perfectly good antenna and Windows Media Center DVR, thank you), I'd probably switch... but I refuse to pay for local channels I can get perfectly well on my own for free.

      SFN looks interesting, and DirecTV/Uverse is planning to launch a streaming service of their own later this year. There's also "USTVnow.com", which is supposedly for overseas Americans, but will reportedly allow anybody with a valid credit card to subscribe.

      My predictions: two years from now, every rural and Mom & Pop cable company in America will be jumping into the nationwide OTT streaming market.

    5. Re:Moot by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      why pay for HBO movies when they'll soon be on Netflix?

      Because usually they're not.
      I love my Netflix, but the content companies have been fighting a cold war with them, starving them for content. If I only had Netflix streaming, I'd cancel the subscription in a heartbeat. It's not worth much.

  7. People use this crap? by slk · · Score: 4, Informative

    A TV is a monitor into which you plug your Chromecast / Roku / Apple TV / Media PC and stream stuff. The whole "Cable company DVR" / "Smart TV" / etc is just a pile of legacy mess that will go the way of the dodo bird, Microsoft Bob, and (hopefully) vendor Android skins.

    --
    ERROR: Null .sig, core dumped.
    1. Re:People use this crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wish the Smart TV would go away, but sadly every TV that comes out now is a Smart TV. It can't go away if it's the only option for something bigger than a computer monitor.

    2. Re:People use this crap? by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      My current monitor comes with speakers that can register as a sound device in my Mac Mini... now if only it came with a remote.

    3. Re:People use this crap? by butchersong · · Score: 1

      Pretty much. This would have been awesome in the 90's or early 2000s but now? Who cares.

    4. Re:People use this crap? by locopuyo · · Score: 1

      And you simply don't connect it to your network and behaves exactly like a monitor.

      --
      The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
    5. Re:People use this crap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except for the ones that refuse to work without phoning home for "updates" first.

  8. Always want control, don't they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gee I signed up for a deal with Comcast, had not had TV service for a long time. But was a deal going to get faster internet for a year with basic TV. I said sure, and they sent out a receiver that reminded me of a VCR 10 years ago. Couldn't even find a place to put it, and couldn't believe nothing but RF out worked! My TV had a built in tuner but alas was not able to tune anything in but one channel reminding me that I need a cable box to receive channels. What a crock! I sent it back pronto and can't believe we have Roku's the size of hockey pucks that do HD TV. But Comcast sends you a archaic giant old school receiver for basic channels in SD? No wonder the FCC wants people to have a choice. I should be able to install a small like a SIM card system that would solve a lot of this. Sadly this is also an issue with satellite TV too.

    1. Re:Always want control, don't they? by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 1

      A TV box has to be the size of a small computer, because that's what it takes to decode MPEG2/MPEG4 streams, you need a full circuit board. Gotta have room for encoding it into HDMI/DVI, sound out, etc.

    2. Re:Always want control, don't they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My cellphone, an old s4, can decode mpeg2/mpeg4 streams and has hdmi and sound out. Tell me again why you need a big useless box?

    3. Re:Always want control, don't they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm assuming that's sarcasm. With the he current generation of video chips, like the arm+dsp+video hardware davinci family from TI, you can put together HD video decoder the size of a pack of cigarettes. I know, 'cause we sell them.

    4. Re:Always want control, don't they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow are you completely clueless or just shilling for someone?

  9. Negotiable Laws by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cable companies still aren't giving up on the apps approach, but now they say they would agree to rules

    People, I have been thinking about whether or not I should agree to laws that I abstain from burglarizing houses, and laws that I should pay a certain percentage of my income as a tax. Should agree to be bound to society's laws on these things, or should I offer society my terms?

    1. Re:Negotiable Laws by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who cares what they do. The people who torrent everything don't agree to any silly rules either.

  10. How about actually deploying cable first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Many areas have no cable, despite subsidies, guaranteed monopolies, and FCC "broadband" mandates. How about we GET cable, before we start dicking around with equipment?

  11. uh - is this what we want? by ripvlan · · Score: 1

    the ability to "record" streaming content?

    I thought I wanted an integrated TV & PVR so that I could record shows from HBO/local-TV/any-cable-channel without having to pickup 3 remotes. Let Sony/Toshiba et al build a smarter ecosystem that competes against the cable box. I don't need to record Netflix.

    But wait - do I want this set-top box to be able to play content from the cable companies streaming library (or instance - I can watch sports shows later via the Xfinity app). These too?

    Seems that the cable company might be trying to change the request.

  12. “Noted that?” by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cable companies noted that they still cannot fully comply

    Nice bit of editorializing there. Here, let's make that a bit more accurate...

    “cable companies noted that they will not fully comply”

    Capcha: lobbying. 'k, that's a good one.

  13. They also want the outlet/mirroring/access/BS fee by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    They also want the outlet / mirroring / access / BS fee. per box

    The POS i-guide with ad's on each f***ing page.

  14. Control over the GUI? DO NOT WANT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This sounds like Android versions given by carriers: twisty little passages --all different.
    A huge part of iOS's success is the homogeneity of the experience regardless of the smartphone's carrier. You can get that iPhone from any of them even if you switch. Android? You got Samsung's flavor, Moto-blur's, Verizon's, etc.
    Despite sharing the Android version 4.4, it comes up in all sorts of little annoying ways, from being unable to invert colors on all phones, to having different emoji interfaces and keyboards, swiping app lists vertically rather than horizontally, getting different dialer and contact list options, lacking a uniform SMS app, and last but not least, having all sort of different bundled apps... you'd be surprised how much on your phone isn't available on the public Android app stores. I wanted to get a universal remote from my LG to mother's Samsung, but all I can find are the ad-ware apps and random TV-specific non-universal offerings.

  15. Content Security XOR Protecting Copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An FCC spokesperson released the following statement: “Chairman Wheeler is heartened that the industry has adopted the primary goal of our proposal, to promote greater competition and choice for consumers, and agree it is achievable. We all agree that third-party access to pay-TV content, integrated search and the protection of copyright, content security, consumer privacy and minority programmers are critical. There is a lot more work to do. We look forward to seeing additional details so we can determine whether their proposal fully meets all of the goals of our proceeding and the statute. We will continue to work with all stakeholders to develop rules that allow innovation to flourish and ensure consumers have real options for accessing the pay-tv programming they purchase."

    Notice how "content security" is now openly a distinct concern, separate from "protection of copyright." Even when you repeat a lie all the time, it can sometimes be hard to remember. This guy slipped up in public.

    Unfortunately, once you put the two together in the same breath instead of lying, it's obvious to everyone that you have glaring contradiction: you can protect copyright xor you can secure the content, but you can't possibly do both.

    "Content security" is exactly why you can't have a good UI, because it's impossible for UIs to be developed competitively when only a small handful of people in the world are graciously granted permission to implement players.

    And it's because of that, that so many people give up and fire the services. Once you have the pirates' files, everything gets easy and the UIs are awesome. There are so many different players that Just Work and they all totally humiliate the DRM-compatible ones.

    Yet here we are, where "we all agree" to a contradiction. Content security -> cannot be open -> few implementations -> shitty UI -> piracy to fix the UI -> copyright subverted. Copyright protection -> must use standards -> cannot possibly have DRM -> no content security.

    Pick one. Which is it: do you want to be in control, or do you want people to pay for it?

  16. Re:They also want the outlet/mirroring/access/BS f by omnichad · · Score: 1

    Just be glad they don't want to add a camera and charge per viewer. Make sure they don't hear me say that, because it will happen.

  17. Re:Movie Online by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    You do realize that the reason a bunch of those are sequels is because people paid for them, right?

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  18. Re:They also want the outlet/mirroring/access/BS f by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    https://www.engadget.com/2012/...

    and they want to charge $5 mo to rent a web cam.

  19. control over UI? by v1 · · Score: 1

    no, I think what they really want is control over U and I.

    Really, does anyone doubt me here?

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  20. Competition? by DewDude · · Score: 1

    What we're going to wind up with are 30 "different" cable boxes running the same lousy cable company code with the same lousy restrictive features. They need to realize it's crap like putting banner advertisements on the guide is why people want someone elses hardware. This will do *nothing* to competition. It will only saturate the market with the exact same crap.

  21. HTML5 so they can use DRM by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    What they really want to do here is lock the content with DRM using the EME. This is the real reason they chose HTML5 for the "UI".

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  22. Not just no.. by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

    But hell no! I don't want to be forced to scroll through all the shopping channels and Spanish channels to find what I want.

  23. You can bu this car in any color by houghi · · Score: 1

    ... as long as it is black.(*)

    So as long as you do what they tell you to do, you are free to do that and otherwise they will force you to do so.

    (*)Yes, I know it is not correct.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  24. Kill them all, and let new companies sort it out. by Keybounce · · Score: 1

    Here is the problem:

    On Thursday, cable companies noted that they still cannot fully comply with FCC's attempt to open up the set-top box market,

    Supposedly, all the big hoopla with "Cable Card" was that it would permit third party companies to provide services. So just require the companies to use this for their own boxes. If they can't? Then maybe this "Cable Card" solution wasn't a solution after all.

    We have the right to record and time shift. That right was established by the supreme court back in the days of VCR tapes. These companies have a business model that is based on "Deny rights to end users".

    Worse, "DVR Service" is considered something that is a $10 per month additional fee. And, if you stop paying it, it's not "You can't record more", it's "you can't even watch what you've already recorded".

    What would I like to see?

    1. A refund of 50% of the fees charged to customers as compensation for violating the law and rights of consumers.
    2. A fine to the government for failing to obey the law.
    3. A sufficiently large penalty for past violations, paid over the next several years.
    4. Prohibiting a raise in rates just as a way around this.

    What would be the expected results?

    Why, they'd go out of business. Have to auction off all the parts of their network/setup/etc. Other companies get a chance to get started and move in.

    I'm sorry. Kill off the old, and let something new start up. Mass extinction event for these abusive dinosaur companies.