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FCC Delays Cable TV Apps Vote, Needs Time To Work Out Licensing (arstechnica.com)
The FCC has delayed a vote on a plan that would require pay-TV operators to make free TV applications, so cable subscribers will have to wait longer for an alternative to renting set-top boxes from cable companies. ArsTechnica reports:The FCC was scheduled to vote on final rules at its monthly meeting today, but the item was removed from the agenda just before the meeting began. The commission's Democratic majority still seems determined to issue new rules, but there have been objections from the cable industry and disagreements among Democratic commissioners over some of the details. "We have made tremendous progress -- and we share the goal of creating a more innovative and inexpensive market for these consumer devices," Chairman Tom Wheeler and fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel said today in a joint statement. "We are still working to resolve the remaining technical and legal issues and we are committed to unlocking the set-top box for consumers across this country." The vote could happen at next month's meeting, but the commissioners did not promise any specific timeline.
This is a waste of time and effort. Cable TV is not a need, it's a luxury service, and it's quickly becoming obsolete anyway. Internet service is a real *need* in modern society, just like other telecom services and electricity, but cable TV is not like this, it's purely for entertainment. Let the cablecos treat their TV customers however they want, and focus regulation on ISPs (which also happen to be cablecos in many cases).
Why should I care if Rolls-Royce, Coach, or DeBeers were screwing over their customers?
force ISP to let your own hardware or may it part of the base rate.
Comcast business class with static ip forces you to rent with an fee on top of the static ip fee.
ATT forces you to rent their gateway.
Now with app based tv the ISP can say for security we must own the gateway and we want the gateway to do all.
I understand the reservations, and on a certain level I agree with you.
However, cable companies don't really work like the rest of the free-market economy.
1) You have local monopolies. There is no normal invisible-hand working to help the consumer vote with their business. Sure, there are alternatives popping up in recent years, but no true direct competitor. Monopolies have to be governed to prevent abuses.
2) They could become crucial information disseminators in times of invasion, natural disaster, or other emergency. Government has a vested interest in being able to reach the population in times of emergency.
3) It's something people care about so, right or wrong, government feels it has to be involved. Government regulates all sorts of stuff. That's what they do, they govern. Depending on your individual political outlook you might want them governing less or more, but governing stuff is what they're all about.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The previous plan to require the cable companies to support a software-only cable card was better. That would allow TVs and set-top boxes to be built with native cable support--you would just need to do some configuring. It would use the same encrypted QAM signal that is coming in over the coax.
The app approach can be helpful, but it involves streaming the channels over the Internet instead of using the QAM signal that is already being sent. This has a number of downsides. Streamed video may be more highly compressed. It may be subject to dropped packets. Streaming may be subject to WiFi interference in places where coax already runs to the TV.
Another advantage of the virtual cable card is that cable cards allow for recording. I know people are shifting to streaming on demand as the most popular option, but many of us like to record on DVRs. I love my MythTV, and many people love their TiVos.
And then there's the privacy issue. How many times have I heard people complain about smart TVs sending data back to corporate servers for who-knows-what purpose? With a streaming app, you can't easily block that.
All said, what really makes sense is both. Require both a freely licensed streaming app and a software-only cable card. Prohibit charging a rental fee for cable cards or set-top boxes until they comply with the regulation.
Let's all hope that this ends up not happening. It'd be an extremely minor improvement which only prevents any serious improvement from ever happening.
If the government is going to use force here, then it should be that any interstate commerce in TV must use standards. Why demand a free-as-in-beer app when you can just demand free-as-in-speech specs? That would get us all plenty of free-as-in-beer apps anyway, except that you get as many are needed, until everyone agrees it's competitive enough. Don't like Company X's TV player? Try Company Y's, or this one on githib, or write your own. A week after specs are published, you're going to have way better stuff available than any app Comcast is ever going to make for your Roku, which will be the next thing for you to be constantly bitching about (assuming you're still using the Roku when the app comes out).
If you're not going to force the use of standards, then don't bother using force at all. Why go to so much trouble just to do it wrong? You're setting us up so that when we tire of this next failure, the cable companies will be able to say "but we did what you want! It's not fair to make us change again!"
Protocols and interoperability are what have value. Stop stressing implementations so much. Doing things is fucking trivial, compared to figuring out what to do and being allowed to do it. Freedom gets you diversity, which gets you performance. Does anyone really still pretend to not know this?
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