FCC finally holding the cable companies feet to the fire?

[Mistergq]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business...ness-headlines

No more delays allowed, cable companies are going to have to allow cable cards to go further.

Now if we can get this vista and drm requirement to go away, we will be making progress.

[ClamsTheCat]

Honestly I don't see how they should be allowed to encrypt anything. They should just unplug you at the street if you don't pay. Not a complicated issue, they just want the extra $5 a month. The boxes probably cost them very little considering the quantity they get. They would have us believe they are like $300 a month. We all know that is a joke.

[Joe The Dude]

Originally Posted by From That Article

David Cohen, executive vice president of cable giant Comcast Corp. in Philadelphia and its top political liaison, said consumers won't benefit from the change.

"I'm not sure it's a piece of technology a consumer needs to own or wants to own," he said. Once a newer set-top box comes out, "Circuit City won't take their old box and give them a refund to get a new model. They have to buy a new box to get the newest and fanciest upgraded technology."

Uhhh....What?
Newer and Fancier Technology in a Cable-Card Ready Set Top Box?
What on earth could that be?
All I can think of is a new version of a Tivo with extra tuners and hard drives ~ Not something that I'm interested in anyway, since I'm using BTV...

I mean, come on...
It's not like the cable companies are gonna keep switching to diffrent compression techniques every couple of months...

Or am I missing something?

[DonK]

That article showed the cable companies for what they are and actually if you read between the lines, it's pretty damning for them.

Ask yourself the following:

Why is it the cable companies are having so many problems with Cablecard and yet the decryption card system of DirectTV works fine even though they have a plethora of different boxes too?

All cablecard is, is the decryption mechanism that is supposed to be *standardized* and is really a mechanism that all the boxes and tv's themselves are simply relying on just for *decryption*, not for features itself. The tuning/interactive/recording features are built into the boxes, it's like a "function call" programmatically to get the decryption sequence. Why is it so hard to do this?

DirectTV has programmable smart cards that provide the decryption, why couldn't Cable Labs devise a system like that, where you get a "key" from the cable company, and have addressable box specifications adhered to by all cable box makers?

To be "CableCard" compliant they just have to support a base set of features in their hardware that *all* cable providers will adhere to and everything will "just work" fine. They got DOCSIS to work, why can't they do cable cards?

The answer's pretty obvious, it's not in their best interests to do so. It cuts into their bottom line not to charge someone 7-12 bucks a month for a box in perpetuity. The boxes themselves don't cost that much, and like when I was in Ohio, I had a box (actually at least 2 at any given time, sometimes 3) for dang near 7 years that I paid 7 bucks each in addition to another 5 a month for a HD box with DVR that I never really could use. You can't tell me that the boxes weren't paid for after the first year or two, not when they get them at volume....(3 boxes at 7 a month x12 x7 = 1764 bucks!)

[crush157]

Originally Posted by DonK

The answer's pretty obvious, it's not in their best interests to do so. It cuts into their bottom line not to charge someone 7-12 bucks a month for a box in perpetuity. The boxes themselves don't cost that much, and like when I was in Ohio, I had a box (actually at least 2 at any given time, sometimes 3) for dang near 7 years that I paid 7 bucks each in addition to another 5 a month for a HD box with DVR that I never really could use. You can't tell me that the boxes weren't paid for after the first year or two, not when they get them at volume....(3 boxes at 7 a month x12 x7 = 1764 bucks!)

This is true, but Satellite has their scheme with the cards that work as well. For every key card you need for the sat box, they charge you the $5/month access fee beyond the first one. So cable companies could adopt that and give the same level of service.

[DonK]

Yup, and with Sattellite (at least I know with DirecTV) you can own your own equipment and they charge you per box. The FCC is basically saying that cable customers should have that option too.