The CEA, TiVo and Public Knowledge continue to hammer the FCC, due to the government agency’s bungled Charter waiver, and appeal to the body that “its regulations be reinstated.” Some choice quotes:
By misreading the law, the FCC took away your ability to buy alternative set-top boxes like Tivo and Smart TVs. We think that’s wrong. (Public Knowledge)
The Bureau’s Order, like the Charter Request, deals in assumptions and hopes rather than in facts. The Commission cannot let stand this nullification of law and regulation, without process or public comment. (CEA)
By vacating these rules, the Court created an unhealthy amount of uncertainty in the industry — uncertainty that harms innovation and competition as well as settled consumer expectations. (TiVo)
Due to a variety of factors we won’t rehash, beyond TiVo, CableCARD and retail cable set-top boxes have never really taken off. And even TiVo’s market penetration is suspect. I reached out to the NCTA and was informed there are about 600,000 CableCARDs currently deployed (plus Verizon FiOS). So that’d include TiVo hardware, Windows Media Center, and any legacy smart TVs that support the tech. It also encompasses households with multiple cards, as the TiVo Series 3 requires, and to serve folks with multiple devices — meaning there’s something less than 600k active CableCARD homes. Now, that’s not necessarily a number to scoff at. But it pales in comparison to tens of millions pay TV subscribers and burdens cable with additional infrastructure and support costs – including 40 million+ set-tops they themselves provide with CableCARDs.
We rarely shed tears for big cable and have been TiVo proponents for many years, yet it’s an interesting exercise to imagine a post-CableCARD era where Section 629 is met by iPad, Roku, Xbox, and Apple TV. Discuss.
ironically, downloadable security is the industry standard they should have gone with in the first place. I am still a mostly analog holdout but the new TiVo boxes soon to come out may have me getting cable cards from TWC….
So I sorta support this waiver though it needs to become an industry standard to be of any use to 3rd party hardware of course.
I’m pretty sick of the entire situation. I def’ don’t fee like fighting for a technology that works as good as CableCARD. At the same time, I’d sooner stop watching TV then to stop using CableCARD. I’d rather focus on my energy on pushing for a new standard, than to keep fighting for one that never delivered as promised.
I am definitely with Ben. I want a new standard but I fear what we will lose. If my only option was to rent cable boxes, I wouldn’t be a subscriber.
I really hope whatever replaces CableCARD eventually is worth the wait.
I have 4 cable cards, and was just about the first in my area to have one when I had Cablevision install one in my Cablecard-ready Panasonic Plasma in 2003 or 2004.
Now one can’t buy a cablecard-ready TV, and that’s a real shame, given that cable companies have ended analog service. I’m not getting a cable box for an undercounter kitchen TV (form factor), or a guest room legacy TV for a rarely used guest room (unnecessary expense). Some of that usage is replaced by Cablevision ipad app, but if cablecards had been better supported from the start, it would certainly be an elegant solution today to buy a small LCD with cablecard input. What might have been.
“the FCC took away your ability to buy alternative set-top boxes like Tivo and Smart TVs”
this line has got to be a joke. no one was buying alternative set top boxes or cable card ready TV’s before the FCC made the change. only one box is even for sale today and Tivo hardly bothers to try to sell it directly to consumers anymore. at best they killed an imaginary market.
Not to mention TiVo hardware is still for sale and fully supported by the cable industry… although perhaps now on a voluntary basis and until who knows when? But it sure is a dramatic proclamation and presumably designed to stir things up. Would be interesting to know the back story and how/if TiVo helped Pubic Knowledge and the CEA with their positions given the small number of folks who follow this stuff and actually care.
As long as AllVid (the successor to cablecards) is an open standard with RAND licensing that companies like TiVo can implement without having to ask, “Mother, May I?” to the cable companies, I’ll be OK with the death of cablecard.
Until then (July 2014?), Cablecard must live on.
CableCard was an abysmal failure.
If I remember correctly, it was part of the cable TV act of 1994.
Here’s some fun:
I lived in Canada in 1991 and there you could buy TVs with special addressable tuners that got around all of this nonsense. It was supported by the cable industry in Canada. If you wanted HBO then you called them up, asked for HBO, Poof! HBO was on your TV.
So from 1994 to around 2004 our cable industry ‘implemented’ the cableCard. It took them 10 years to do something fairly simple. Then SDV came along and, make no mistake, I think SDV makes a lot of sense, but the cable industry decided that any cableCard users had to deal with Tuning Adapters (thus killing any usefulness in previously sold TVs with cableCards – no one was going to update their firmware and they probably didn’t have USB ports, anyway).
There was talk of just having some server that my TiVo could talk to that would do the same thing that a Tuning Adapter would.. The cable industry nixed that.
So I have a 4-tuner TiVo today with a cableCard and a Tuning Adapter that every once in a while must be reset in order to continue to have working TV.
This is now how it will be for me going forward. If they come up with another lame plan like this I’ll just drop cable TV and move on (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Aereo.. these are all viable options for me).
I’m tired of the BS. Allow my internet-connect TiVo to talk to your systems to authorize channels on the fly or I’m done in the not to distant future. No more half-baked solutions for me.
@Anthony,
AllVid isn’t the ‘real’ successor to CableCARD. What should have happened but didn’t was a downloadable software-only successor should have been introduced that would have been nationally portable across all cable operators. There was a push for this a few years back that never came to fruition. That would have been a simple change to replace the hardware CableCARD with a software alternative that retail devices could adopt. AllVid was way more complicated as is the proposed IP standards that include provisions for two-way control of IP content that are mandated in 2014.
The current chief of the Media Bureau at the FCC recently (Mar 2013) offered these remarks regarding the current CableCARD rules, AllVid, and an IP successor.
“MR. LAKE: Yes. The AllVid proposal is still out there. We’ve continued to watch the developments in the marketplace. And there have been a lot of developments since we’ve made that proposal. I’d like to hope and think that maybe the proposal would help to spur some of those developments.
One thing that’s happened is it’s clear that whole home solutions are something that consumers increasingly want. They just don’t want one box in each room separately. They want a system in which they can record in this room and watch in that room, and so forth. One thing we did last year was to impose the requirement that boxes have an IP output. Whatever the status of that first box in the home, we wanted to make sure that there was a retail marketplace for all the other boxes that would be connected to it. And that would be enabled by having an IP output on the first box.
Whether that rule survives the EchoStar decision is an open question. We know that our CableCARD regime took a real hit in that decision. One of the things we’re thinking about is what we do in terms of reinstating some or any of those rules. And, we’re thinking very much about what will be the replacement for the CableCARD regime in an IP world. It’s not designed for an IP world.
The AllVid solution was proposed at a time when we were farther from an IP world than we are today. So we’re open for suggestions as to exactly how we ought to treat the whole set-top box issue when cable has gone IP.”
“only one box is even for sale today”:
-TiVo Premiere
-TiVo Premiere 4/XL
-HDHR-3CC
-HDHR-6CC
-Ceton InfiniTV
-Hauppauge DCR-2650
Just because you don’t want to use it, don’t restrict our choice. Some of us enjoy converting video as quickly as possible to IP and never having to worry about running coax, instead of ethernet/WiFi.
I have a Tivo Premiere XL which is mainly used to access HuluPLUS, Youtube Pandora and StreamBaby. But there are days that my Tivo just don’t cut it with network outages, hickups, and so I plug in my Asus Notebook into the HDMI port and run PLEX and Hulu Desktop direct. Sorry Brighthouse but this January 2014 we pull your cable offline and focus directly on web providers your just not cutting anymore. Better hurry up TWC and acquire Hulu before you miss the boat.
“meaning there’s something less than 600k active CableCARD homes. Now, that’s not necessarily a number to scoff at. But it pales in comparison to tens of millions pay TV subscribers and burdens cable with additional infrastructure and support costs – including 40 million+ set-tops they themselves provide with CableCARDs.”
You’re better than this, Dave.
Not only do those 600,000 (plus FiOS) customers consist of quite real people, but the very threat/menace of forestalling 3rd party CableCARD solutions has forced MSO’s to offer their offerings more readily, and at lower cost, to the broader audience.
Everyone wins with CableCARD.
What I find interesting is that 350,000 of those CableCARDs are installed in Comcast consumers boxes. Outside of Comcast’s 21,995,000 Video subs I think there are another 40 million or so consumers that could have access to CableCARD. The percentages don’t make sense to me and I’m guessing that the 600,000 number might be a significant underestimate to pad the NCTAs case against CableCARD.
More details on the NCTA report can be found here –> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApZGN1EG2HMRdGk5UGV1alU0SnptMm5sNm5UZzM4LVE&usp=sharing
There is a separate workbook/tab that shows the details of Comcast’s new installs quarter-over-quarter.
There are so so many ways for the Chicken FCC to get outfoxed by the cable companies AGAIN on this transition. I’m very concerned.
Like others I will NOT be abandoning my TiVo’s for a Comcast cable box. I’ll be switching to DirecTV most likely. Prior to eventually cutting the cord completely.
But there are not that many of us for them to be concerned about. We’ll see what happens.
Here’s a game everyone will like: Guess how the cable companies will outfox the chicken FCC this time! Your choices are:
A) The industry develops something but the standard is so loose that its impossible to implement and know that the two ends will talk. CE vendors abandon the standard.
B) The IP part is done very nicely but the contents is encrypted and none of the CE vendors have access to the keys. CE vendors never support it. Cable companies claim they did what the FCC asked.
C) The whole thing is great but the cable company’s drag their feet rolling it out so that in 2014 there’s one trial in one city and big promises of others but over the coming years it just doesn’t seem to be happening and the CE companies give up waiting.
D) The whole thing is great but the approval process by Cable Labs is arduous and expensive. It looks like it might be okay for a while, some companies claim to have submitted products and we’re just waiting for certification, but over time support withers.
E) The whole thing is great but deploying it in your house requires a truck roll and a technician who hasn’t been trained in the process (since of course there are so few people using the standard, why would they train them for this?) and it all sounds so much like CableCARD everybody bails.
Even without my need to have cable cards in my three TiVo’s I see a major need for continued cable card technology in my future. SIZE.
I was the first in my town to have FIOS Internet but only recently added FIOS TV. Since FIOS TV is all digital you can’t just plug a cable directly into a TV and see your local channels and other broadcasts typically under channel 100. I expect Time Warner will soon do away with analog signals soon. When first introduced here FIOS didn’t have a box small enough to be used on some of the TV’s in our home. When FIOS finally offered the Motorola DCT-700 Digital Adapter which is 5.5″ x 6.6″ x 1.75″ and under a pound did I upgrade to FIOS TV.
Even though they’re Standard Definition with no EPG, my bathroom and kitchen TV’s can now get all the available channels. These wall mounted TV’s don’t have room for a normal HD converter box. Ideally, I should be able to get a wall mounted HD TV that had a cable card slot. Unfortunately this isn’t an option and given this flaw in the law I see no reason for TV companies to provide a cable card slot in the future like we once envisioned.
Since the time of our first cable TV subscription which included a box with a slider to change channels, connected to the TV by a wire we wanted
1) Premium TV choices
2) NO BOX
3) A single Remote
These remain popular consumer and enterprise needs. Cable cards are still the best solution.
@BradB the only time ive seen cablecard was being used in canada was a bestwestern in ontario other than that ive never seen it used in any other way. as for sdv its just another way for them to push their crappy cable boxes & slowly phase out clearqam
i find the cable industry in canada is in dissaray they seem to be forcing users to use these combo docsis modem/routers that are sometimes locked down to being almost insecure.
http://www.cedmagazine.com/blogs/2014/07/house-authorizes-death-of-cablecard
I think we Tivo users are probably about to get screwed. I just bought my Roamio and Mini in March with lifetime subscription. Hope that wasn’t for nothing. I’m rooting for the Senate to shoot it down. I don’t know what our chances are though.
If it goes through, I wonder how long we have with the cards? Whatever the new standard will be, I hope it doesn’t kill Tivo and they can come up with an alternative that will work with the existing hardware. I’m bummed out
Well CableCARD can’t last forever but there’s incomplete info out there… here’s kinda where we are:
1) What the House has rejected and what the Senate has yet to approve is cable companies no longer requiring CableCARDs *in their own hardware*.
2) There’s discussion about cable companies being required to continue supporting CableCARD *in retail devices* -despite the Echostar ruling that might have vacated it. Not clear where that will land.
3) TiVo has worked a deal with Comcast for next generation digital authentication that includes indefinite CableCARD support. Charter has something similar going on and I imagine TiVo will get on-board with them as the cable companies would prefer to operate with limited government scrutiny.
Two good articles here:
https://zatznotfunny.com/2014-07/tivo-plots-a-future-beyond-cablecard-tuning-adapters/