Cable Industry to Standardize Under Tru2Way 216
smooth wombat writes "In a move to stave off the FCC, cable operators have now agreed upon one standard to allow TVs and other gear that will work regardless of cable provider. This standard should allow the development of new services and features that rely on two-way communication over the cable network. The core of the matter is this: there are tvs and other devices which can receive digital programming but cannot talk back to the network. As a result, subscribers must rent out boxes from cable companies. This new standard should, in theory, do away with having to rent a box. There are two downsides to this standard. First, Sony has not signed onto the cable industry's idea and second, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to put forth a proposal for a more open and competitive environment using a completely different standard."
Mythtv guide (Score:4, Interesting)
Building this stuff into the tv is a good idea? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Almost certainly this will benefit advertisers (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched NBC for the first time in months last night, just for American Gladiators. i could have done laundry, and dishes in between their commerical breaks. In 30 minutes of broadcasting all of 13 minutes was actually spent on the program, the rest was ads. Let's not get started by the in program advertising, brought to you by Subway.
Oh, for f***'s sake. (Score:1, Interesting)
Why is the industry not pushing to get fiber to the freaking premises for broadcast comms? You do that, you remove the frequency and bandwidth limitations that exist on the current cable networks. Sure you may have to have new equipment at the IDF, and at the house, but once the infrastructure is there, it's there. Is the price of copper or coax going down where you are?
Why is there an incessant need for the Broadcast Corp's to put off the inevitability that is fiber optic to the home on mass scale? The longer they wait to do this crap, the more people they are going to permanently push to the web for media entertainment and news. And, the more likely they are never to return to the zombie box.
Re:Almost certainly this will benefit advertisers (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I Tivo most programs (ugh, there I go verbing again), and seldom watch any commercials, but mostly because they are crap.
If there was a way to Thumbs down every feminine hygiene, Burger King, and other junk I'm not interested in, and Thumbs up things I like,
pretty soon they'd have an idea of what I like. Then they could insert targeted ads into the commercial break (which could now be shorter
since the dollar value per minutes would be higher since it is target specific). Then I'd only see what I'm really interested in,
and I might actually watch a commercial or 2. Hell, if they really want to capitalize on this, why not let me push a button and get
MORE information on the product (a detailed video clip) or have them send me dead trees if I prefer.
Re:For a moment ... (Score:3, Interesting)
In Typical fashion... I think a large part of the cablecard issue is typical washington politics. The FCC was complaining about wanting to seperate the security of the cable system from the settop box. As a result, they pretty much said that after 7/07 all systems must use cablecards. The problem is that between the time they decide on the cable card standard, set the rules, and the deadline comes, the technology and the market has changed dramatically. HD is a MUCH bigger thing today with many more options than were available even 5yrs ago. Interactive services like VOD were cutting edge 5 years ago and has pretty much become a standard. VOIP has matured meaning cable-co's now have the ability to easily offer a triple play. Phone companies have started rolling fiber to the home and have started offering TV. (Interestingly enough, I know that Scientific Atlanta offers a version of their DNCS designed to control an IPTV settup). All this change in the marketplace means that the cable-co's need to evolve the technology and bandwith is at a premium.
SDV is at this point one of the easiest to implement, and overall best current option for reclaiming some RF bandwith while still allowing customers to have the services they both expect and have become used too. It may also allow for cable-co's to free up some bandwith to allow for them to finally upgrade the digital signal from mpeg2 to mpeg4 encoding. Because you have some older devices that simply can't decode a mpeg4 codec on the system, during the upgrade there will be a period when simulcast of the 2 different video signals would be required to limit customer impact. That means more bandwith for just the existing video services, but improved quality and compression allowing for again, more services in the future.
I think in some ways the FCC's overall problem is the same you see in Washington on a lot of issues. The people involved in making the decisions tend to be more reactionary than they should be. They don't consider the advances in technology or market when they set a rule, and deadline, so many times the market may already be beyond the point they've ruled on when it comes time to implement. And often they make a half-assed attempt at a rule in order to try and make the loudest parties happy politically, even if it's obvious due to the current direction of the marketplace and tech that by the time things are in place, it would cause more hassle and confusion for the common consumer.
I think I remember hearing that when the cablecard spec was ruled on by the FCC, the cable-co's were already saying that it would cause more problems because the spec couldn't handle the way the tech was going, and they therefore were already working on the opencable specs as a next-gen replacement. The problem was that everybody just assumed they were fighting cable-cards because of the monopoly power and it wasn't very politically wise to listen to the people you are trying to force to do something.