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."
Does it run linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lovely... (Score:5, Interesting)
From any BBC channel you can get information such as the latest news, weather, and tv schedules by browsing a text based menu.
They also use it for large events such as The Olympics, and music festivals to allow you to choose what you want to be watching at the moment.
During Wimbledon for example you were able to pick which match you wanted to watch out of three or four different options.
Re:Lovely... (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be amusing to see all the people who claim they don't skip commercials on their Tivo come screaming out of the closet.
A little Clarification needed: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does it run linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
The short answer: No.
The long answer: Devices that accept CableCards and their bi-directional successor must be certified/keyed by CableLabs, the cable industry's R&D house. Part of that certification process requires that the entire device chain meets their security and DRM requirements; it's very similar to how BluRay players require all devices in a digital connection chain to be HDCP compliant. Anyhow, a homebrew application like MythTV will never be certified because someone could just program MythTV to ignore the DRM, and I don't think I need to explain CableLabs' problem with this. Without certification you don't have a key, and without a key the next device in chain won't pass you the data.
Now this doesn't entirely preclude this from being used with Linux, someone like Motorola for example could build a set-top box using Linux that would run all of this, but that's as close to a "yes" answer as you'd get. Cable devices will need to be a Trusted Platform to be certified.
SDV is the problem, people... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is being rolled out even now, and creating chaos for users of cable cards, TiVo, Media Centers, Myth, etc. Why is this a nightmare? Because SDV is *INCOMPATIBLE* with *EVERYTHING* out there that doesn't belong to the cable company. I bought a new HD TiVo months ago and it worked great. I had access to everything I wanted, and in ways far superior to the Cox-rented "DVR". Then Cox suddenly, without warning, without TELLING anyone, without even training their support staff, rolled out SDV and all the new HD channels were suddenly unavailable to anyone that didn't have "approved" Cox-owned equipment.
I was FURIOUS! SDV totally defeats the ENTIRE purpose of cable cards. There was nothing TiVo could do about it. And I wasted countless hours on the phone with clueless "support" techs at Cox and with them coming to my house. Their only suggestion? Throw away all my equipment and rent the "wonderful" Cox "DVR". And after weeks of this nightmare, Cox suddenly stopped using SDV on the new HD channels and everything returned to normal. Why? Who knows? They wouldn't say. Perhaps a lot of people like me were complaining? (Every person using anything with a cable card was affected). Perhaps Cox even had problems with their own equipment.
But one thing is for sure, it is not going away... I am positive it will be back. Other cable companies are either experimenting with it now or have already ruined the experience of many of their customers by implementing it "permanently".
Supposedly TiVo is working with the cable companies to develop yet another "box" that would sit between the TiVo and the cable to address SDV. But how much will THAT cost? What other problems will it cause? And that does nothing at all for non-TiVo users.
The real kicker is that Cox didn't even really NEED to implement SDV, there was plenty of bandwidth to add all the new HD channels (as they have now proved). And if they were running low on bandwidth, why didn't they put only some of the obscure/(IMHO "stupid") channels on SDV, not things like History Channel, National Geographic, Discover Channel, etc?
My advice? Email your cable company's PR departments NOW and tell them you do not want SDV, especially in its current form. And if nothing else, they should act responsibly and tell all current AND FUTURE customers, EXACTLY what SDV means.
Re:That's not the only reason they have cable boxe (Score:3, Interesting)
Great... 6x more CRAP or 3x more CRAP at high resolution.
Neither of these is anything I care about as a consumer. I am not convinced that
anyone else really cares about this either. Although it probably is easy to "wow
the rubes" with absurd claims about how many channels you have.
Re:CableCard not disappearing.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll just comment on one choice quote:
The licensing agreements for CableCARD (which all cable companies are required to agree to essentially by FCC mandate) requires that a technician install the card. This is to prevent the card from being paired to an unauthorized device.
Your description of the technology is spot on, but your description of the motivations behind the technology are a little naive.
you missed a big one (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting side-thought: SDV allows cable companies to perform their own demographic data collection even from subscribers (love the way they use that term instead of "customers"!) who are using a CableCard host or Tru2Way host. Your comment on the value of in-house demographic data collection suggests that cable companies have an economic incentive to move a majority of their channels over to SDV even, or especially, if those channels are high-viewer channels such as the broadcast networks or ESPN.
I am sure this is just OCAP. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the cable box vendors are already standardized on DOCSIS3.0 and OCAP. OCAP is an OpenCable Application Platform that is based on Java and most cable boxes already are using it, this is why they are so darn slow when pulling up channel guides and flipping channels, and let's not forget the occasional crash.
Cable TV people don't do anything fast or radical, I don't know if I'd call them conservative as much as lethargic.
So now the marketing people have invented a new pretend technical term "tru2way" and we are supposed to believe they have done something innovative, while really they are just starting to roll out 5 year old technology. Yawn...
These cable boxes really are terrible.
At some point far enough out in the future we will just have a flat TCP/IP network for everything and everyone will live on the same even playing field.
Then I will be able to watch Star Wars IX on opening day using 3D video goggles in 4K Digital Cinema resolution on my Google IPTV Set top box streaming live in real time.
Re:Species traitors (Score:3, Interesting)
Def 1)'I want money'
Def 2)'Fuck everyone else I want MORE money then I need by any means.'
Def 1 is fine, everyone needs money to live. There is nothing wrong with getting a job so you can make money to survive. The second one is the problem. It's when greed hurts others.
I get the feeling that to most people greed means def 2 but when they try to describe greed they say def 1. So it's very easy to come along a convince someone that working for a living is evil because logically 'you work to make money', 'wanting money is greedy', and 'greed is evil'.
My point? Just because someone wants to make money does not make them evil greedy. I am aware that Ford, Edison and many others did some nasty things, But this does not mean that ALL progress is motivated by greed(def 2). Just look at GNU software and just about anything that came out of university research. Nearly all of it was started by people who had no plans of becoming rich off of it.