Why The FCC Chair Says Set-Top Box Reform Proposal Could Change (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Hardware costs are down yet fees still seem to climb. The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said he might change his proposal to allow tens of millions of U.S. pay TV subscribers to ditch costly set-top boxes and access video programming online. At a Senate hearing on Thursday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler defended his revised proposal, which is scheduled for a final vote on Sept. 29. The plan, announced last week, lacks some of the most controversial aspects of the original proposal unveiled in January but includes a new licensing body to ensure that pay-TV companies do not enter into anti-competitive agreements. The plan is aimed at ending the cable industry's long domination of the $20-billion-a-year set-top box market and lowering prices for consumers. Nearly all pay-TV subscribers lease the boxes from their cable, satellite, or telecommunications providers at an average annual cost of $231. Those fees have jumped 185% since 1994, while the cost of televisions, computers, and mobile phones has dropped 90%, the FCC has estimated.

Comments

Almost changed my mind on Wheeler

[interkin3tic]

I'm becoming concerned that Wheeler actually is, as feared, a shill for comcast et al. I'm wondering if the net neutrality issue he tried to push was designed to fail, I'm not a lawyer nor have I read much about it. Now he's backing down from opening up the cable industry to competition. Is it possible his job was just to lull us into not worrying about it, and letting the telecos get everything they want?

Re:Almost changed my mind on Wheeler

[H3lldr0p]

To be fair, his is a political position. He's having to deal with the uncertainty that the Beltway media has thrown up around who the next president should be as well as the two jackass Republican members of his committee who are currently fighting with Congress about turning over public documents their offices generated.

I'd be coy about things in that position myself. I'd be trying to build a consensus and gaining as much political ground myself after the past few fights have landed in court. Not that they had to go there, but with the way things are right now everything he does has ended up in court. I'd be tired of being second guessed and smacked around, too.

Re:Just give me Google Fiber

[NatasRevol]

Hard to watch sports on the internet without a TV subscription.

I pay $130/yr to watch all the NHL games. That's a great deal.
I'd do that with NFL, but their streaming option doesn't do live! Unless you have a TV (DirectTV) subscription.
MLB is $120/yr to watch all out of market games. That's a decent deal.

Good luck watching anything on ESPN without a TV subscription. Streams are either virus infected, taken down in a few min, or just plain suck.

All the TV companies saw this coming, and tied up as many sports as they could before it got here.

What we REALLY need is an a la carte right!

[dublin]

The most important reform we could have of cable, satellite, and other programming bundle vendors (SlingTV, etc.) is that the consumers should be able to pick and choose (and pay for) only the channels they want, with no economic penalty for choosing unbundling. Right now, a fair fraction of cable bills goes for channels that almost no one wants or watches.

I'd love a service like SlingTV, but with the ability to select only the channels I want (for instance, to address the very real sports problem mentioned above, I'd take Fox Sports Southwest, so I could watch the Rangers, but I don't want a dime of my money going to the SJW Nazis at ESPN, which sucks huevos, anyway...)

There is no neutrality, and no real freedom for consumers, until we can CHOOSE what we actually want to buy!

This is the media programming equivalent of saying it's OK for a car dealer to force you to buy bogus upgrades like "paint protection", "upholstery protection", and "fuzzy dice package", or "dealer prep" (beyond ordinary make-ready) regardless of whether you want them or not. (This sort of thing has been such a problem that many states have outlawed this sort of chicanery in recent years...)