New Agreement May End the Cable Box 216
esocid clues us to news that Sony and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have come to agreement on the way forward for two-way TV without set-top boxes. The actual agreement was not made public, pending review by other members of the Consumer Electronics Association, and as a result the coverage of the agreement is uniformly pretty incoherent. The background is that the NCTA and the CEA submitted competing proposals to the FCC on how to handle two-way, interactive TV services. None of the articles I turned up made clear what the future of the CableCard is to be. This was an interim solution to allow competition in set-top box manufacture, but its adoption has been plagued with problems. "Sony and the cable companies — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision, and Bright House Networks — agreed to adopt: the Java-based 'tru2way' solution powered by CableLabs; new streamlined technology licenses; and new ways for all those involved to cooperate in the development of tru2way technology at CableLabs."
Species traitors (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineer: Faster, cheaper, more reliable, more efficient.
Businessman: Slightly less annoying, but still entirely arbitrary, restrictions on how you can what you already paid for.
Next time you wonder "what the hell has gone wrong us as a species", ask yourself which of those two run the world.
That's not the only reason they have cable boxes. (Score:5, Insightful)
A standard is good for consumers, not for cable companies.
Who needs TVs these days (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lovely... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess I just don't see what the point of two-way TV is in the first place, but then I haven't had cable for over a decade now. If I don't want PPV, what else would 2-way TV give me that a simple digital recording of a TV show doesn't?
I'll be annoyed when my analog antenna stops working, but hopefully by then a digital antenna + tuner will be $20.
Re:Species traitors (Score:1, Insightful)
Businessman: Because people want it.
Just in case you were wondering why businessmen run the world.
Re:That's not the only reason they have cable boxe (Score:5, Insightful)
Too Little Too Late (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this good? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah. I get it now.
Re:Lovely... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Java based? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of stuff runs Java just fine. Your DVD player runs Java. You should worry less about it being Java based and worry more about what the Java programmers have made it do at the behest of companies known to install rootkits, intercept selected packets, and in general spy on everyone.
Re:Species traitors (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit...
They run it due to greed, period.
Ppl are upset and raise hell over it, ppl find Dilbert
hilarious because they see relational irony in it.
The only ppl that want that are the corrupt paid off power
brokers in DC that got elected on false promises, and
by screwing the American ppl.
Ask the "people" in India if they wanted the Union Carbide Disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster [wikipedia.org]
Engineering things well costs more, and all the DRM crap is
just so they can extend control, and maximize profit.
If things stay as they are we will never see a Star Trek like
civilization because we are too wrapped up in making money
and actually engineering things to NOT last so they can sell more.
The disposable lifestyle is on a collision course with
sustainability, and humans are not going to like the outcome.
Government leaders in the US have meetings voicing huge concerns
over the monster landfills, and running out of places to dump
all the garbage.
If we do not start engineering EVERYTHING for sustainability,
we are going to have some serious issues down the road.
I know ppl working in the oilfield who are paid to research old
wells so they can go back and try to drill deeper even though
the vast majority of the time they find NOTHING.
You don't do that unless there are serious problems looming.
In the next few years you will see the price of food double
or triple, and anything made of plastic will as well.
"Suits" are just like the carpetbaggers that took advantage
of ppl after the civil war, and they have no soul, and don't
care who is screwed over in their infernal quest for share
price, and revenue.
Ppl like this are more and more prevalent in business:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken [wikipedia.org]
It's time to fix this pump and dump shell game of billion
dollar white collar crime for all eternity.
The price of oil isn't just $135/barrel, add on the cost of
Team America - World Police, and these so called businessman
are in power due to "The Good Old Boy Network"
Re:Species traitors (Score:5, Insightful)
Businessman : Because I can
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Species traitors (Score:5, Insightful)
Businessman: Because people want it.
Just in case you were wondering why businessmen run the world.
Re:That's not the only reason they have cable boxe (Score:5, Insightful)
Cable companies DESPERATELY want to force cable boxes on everyone for 3 main reasons.
1 - it allows them to cut their installer workforce by 2/3rd's. if you can leave the CATV connection to every home live and use cable boxes to disconnect service you save way more money and can increase profits and executive salaries.
2 - It allows demographic data collection. right now they pay Nielsen and Scarborough for Demo data. this is expensive and old data (last month, Last quarter). By forcing the use of cable boxes I can gather and monitor demographic data hour by hour and minute by minute. I can tell advertisers that 65,000 people in the #23 market saw their ad. This allows my sales people to pressure the customer (not you, people that BUY ad's are the customer you are the product) to buy more.
3 - Content protection. By going cable box only it eliminates these damned Tivo's and other PVR's thjat allow commercial skip. Fast Forward is OK because you still view the commercial and the company's name get's imprinted. with more and more content companies buying voting shares in cable companies they also want to protect their assets from you damned consumers.
THOSE are the only reason they want the cable box forced upon everyone and in that order. They will save a CRAPLOAD by getting rid of a huge chunk of their workforce. and then being able to generate their own demographic data instead of buying it is next in line.
every bit of it is about making them more money and none of it is about you.
Re:CableCard not disappearing.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Originally, CableCards only had one directional transmission capability. This prevented services such as on demand, pay per view, and guide data.
So, being a developer who writes software for tru2way stacks, let me point out where my understanding differs.
The purpose of the CableCard was to separate the specifics of how pay-per-view, subscription channels (like HBO) and encryption from the cable box. This would allow things, like the next HD TiVo box with the 2 CableCards, to handle subscription channels without a settop box. Guide data is not tied to the CableCard in any way.
The fact is, the cable industry moves slowly, and if you think about it, it has too because of the millions of installed devices. One can't simply swap out 10 million of anything with updated hardware without significant cost. So the first versions of the CableCard spec had 1-way (broadcast only) capabilities, while the next generation had 2-way and then 2-way with multiple simultaneous connections. Not all these versions were deployed, but there were specs, transitions testing and so on associated with each revision. Frankly I think that when the form-factor was chosen, the technology could not fit all the hardware for 2-way communication and multiple connections into the device, which caused the phased development.
The hardware complied with the CableCard 2.0 specification but the software for each card did not.
The CableCard is a hardware/software combination that provides a specified interface to the proprietary network encoding that the cable companies run on. The proprietary nature is not from the cable company, but the hardware vendors that provide that equipment. The CableCard provides a bridge, through the CableCard standard, to that network. This allows the TiVo to run all the TiVo software (just like the original boxes) but also directly access subscription channels if you've subscribed with them. The cable company then talks to the CableCard to control what channels are authorized and the TiVo talks to the CableCard to get a decrypted stream for authorized channels.
The cable companies didn't want manufacturers to use their own software in the boxes/televisions/DVRs that would be using the cable cards. No, the cable companies wanted them to use OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP). Of course this isn't an open platform at all.
Picture your Tivo now, with its great recording software. Compare that to the crappy software your cable company uses on their DVR. Well, the OCAP part of the CableCard 2.0 standard requires all hardware be running the cable company's software. In other words, your Tivo would have to be running Comcast/Cox/whoever's horrid interface instead of the standard one. At least, that's how I understand it.
This part is where you are way way off. The tru2way (OCAP) specification is a Java VM and library. That technology allows a company (like TiVo) to write their own Java applications that do what they like, look the way they want etc etc.
The difference from what TiVo (or the cable companies) do now and under tru2way, is that tru2way the hardware is replaced with a Java VM. That Java VM is then implemented by whatever hardware vendor (TV, TiVo box, set top, DVD player). The app runs in the Java VM. This way the cable application displays guide data, or TiVo's functionality, could be written in Java and run on any compliant hardware.
Something that gets left out is that tru2way requires CableCards to work, in the same way the TiVo box required CableCards to plug directly into a digital network.
Consumer electronics companies didn't like this at all. So they fought and protested, allowing the CableCard standard in general to slowly die. That's why most new TVs now don't even have card slots.
That's a little off-base. The CEA wants the same access it had when everyone had analog cable - that you could
Re:Species traitors (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
the bother anyways? The real problem is that all of this BS is making it
impossible for 3rd parties to interesting recording devices. This whole
DRM nonsense has effectively killed off the VCR or any device like it
with few exceptions.
It creates too much of a bother and an expense for young innovators with
strange new ideas that might scare content providers or content owners.
The path between "cable" and the TV should be unencrypted.
You still bought their line.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't entirely true. Cable companies still rent out the cable cards, so they don't lose the fee. The real reason they don't want you to adopt it is that they want you to be trapped in their "interactive TV" system, instead of seeing somebody else's screens.
This also misses the big point that most people miss when it comes to CableCARD 2.0. Specifically that there is no reason for the card to support bi-directional communications for any of the services that the cable companies claim it will be used for. Switched digital video, video on demand, pay-per-view, etc... Those can all be supported with any device at all doing the transmitting. Since the CableCARD is supposedly a decryption device primarily, there's no reason that outgoing communications need to pass through the card. This is especially true since in a CableCARD 2.0 bi-directional device, the DOCSIS hardware is in the CableCARD compliant device, and not in the card itself. The only reasons to have a bi-directional CableCARD are so the cable company can choose what data to send back (things a third party box might not choose to send, like what channels you're watching, etc..), and to lock you into their screens. A bi-directional CableCARD is essentially a PCMCIA form-factor cable box.
This will never happen. The cable industry has tricked the FCC into a back-door in the integration ban. You will have a cable box, but it will be tiny, and unlike old-style cable boxes they can now also dictate what you can attach it to. This is why this new spec is suddenly getting more support. They are claiming more control over their customer's use of their signal, while claiming openness.
Re:Lovely... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no need to make it something java-like. The
technical requirements for this stuff is really quite
basic.
No, all of this is just an excuse to lock up the path
to the TV so that no other devices can sit in there and
add value to the customer.