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

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.

Comments

Re:I wonder why they resist this

[DarkOx]

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.