Obama Urges Opening Cable TV Boxes To Competition (npr.org) 75
An anonymous reader writes: President Obama is publicly supporting the FCC's proposal to help viewers buy cable boxes to spur competition and help subscribers save money. Basically, the proposal would require TV channels to sell their content to third-party groups, like Google and others who would sell their own devices. The president's backing of the FCC proposal is part of a broader White House initiative to spur competition. In a Yahoo News interview, Obama compared the cable box issue to earlier moves by the government to open up the telephone system in the 1980's. Obama said, "Across the board, if we have more players who can potentially participate, fewer barriers to entry, the rules aren't rigged, then you get more people trying to get your business and you get better products at cheaper prices."
Gonna be hard to do this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just about every ISP is a media distributor as well. Don't have any draconian usage caps? This is one way to get slapped with them.
Hard to force them to open up the market with the lobbying they do. If the FCC succeeds and forces it to open, good luck when you start realizing your cap does not go very far when you add all that programming to your monthly bandwidth and the cable companies look get their profit in overage fees.
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Also, at least where I live, most if not all cable companies are ISPs as well so they will figure a way to make it work out for them.
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It's in the best interests of the country. TV is a means to inform people and educate them. It also is recreational, which can improve the morale of people. An informed, educated, and entertained populace will also be more productive. Competition and open standards also encourages innovation. Congress and the President have the time to work on this issue. The government has become less productive in carrying out its legislative duties, as indicated by the decline in the number of bills passed by Congress an
Re: Why? (Score:2)
It's in the best interests of the country. TV is a means to inform people and educate them.
I see that you're of mere average intelligence (if that)...
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It's called bundling, and forcing customers to buy extra services is illegal in most countries. Of course, if one does buy the extra services, it is sensible that a higher cap, or un-metered consumption is part of that service.
That works when they can charge what the market will bear. With data services, variable costs are low: Laying fibre optic costs the same whether it carries 10 Gb/s or 1,000 Gb/s. So they can allow people to consume more data for the same cost: Which will bring them more customers
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Re: Gonna be hard to do this... (Score:1)
Eliminate Cable Boxes Entirely. (Score:5, Informative)
Eliminate Cable Boxes Entirely. If you want Cable, it should be an entirely Clear QAM Affair with channels that make logical sense.
The reason Cable boxes exist, is that when a cable came into being, TV was split between VHF and UHF. Cable was "more VHF Channels" that went beyond the number 13. You could tine 2-13 on any Analogue TV set. If you wanted 14 or higher, you needed a Cable ready TV, or a Cable Box.
Then sometime in the 1990s, it became: Cable Boxes are the Gatekeepers to the Premium Channels.
Now it's: Cable Boxes are required to access cable at all.
The requirement should be clear. Universal Clear QAM. Flat Rate Neutral Pricing.
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In an increasing number of cases cable is just IPTV, so there should be no need for a special cable box. Just provide an app for Android TV, Apple TV or any mobile device in the home. In the meantime I am using over the air, because everything else has more advertising than I should be paying a cable fee for.
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this will solve itself in the next 5 or 10 years, at most. I know of only 1 person that actually HAS cable for tv use. everyone else is ip-only and downloads content or get it some other way. no one but one guy has catv (I needed something 'taped' on a very rare occasion and really had to beat the bushes to find someone who still did have cable tv).
everyone young that I know, downloads (you know what I mean).
watching tv - with commercial - on their time or even using their recorder? nah, we've given tha
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3 years ago I had a DVR and Comcast, and while I dislike the company, this combination was the one I was happiest with. Without the DVR there's "nothing on" ever, but with it, I had too much to watch and never really got through with it all before deciding it was more important to live in a safe neighborhood than it is to have cable.
I made my choice, but honestly, I miss missing out on the latest shows (especially cartoons), when they come out, and the current cable pricing scheme makes it make less sense t
That's not what this is about (Score:2)
The cable box (or cable card) functions to limit the channels to the one you subscribe to. Channels in the basic package are usually transmitted unencrypted and can be tuned into without a cable box (I have my parents' TV set up this way). Pay channels and channels in higher tier packages are encrypted, and the cable box (which stores the decry
Open CITIES to cable competition (Score:1)
We are past the transitional period when a company should be able to get a city to sign up for a monopoly provider.
The cable should be open to anyone that wants to provide programming.
You should literally have a choice of cable providers on the cable to your house like you do to the roku in your house.
Opening the cable box to competition is a joke- a mockery.
It should no longer be legal to allow one cable company to have a monopoly over a geographical area.
All On-Premise Equipment Should Be Purchasable (Score:2)
Too many providers and ISPs are going back to the old Bell model of leasing the equipment to the user for huge markups like they used to do with telephones. For example AT&T U-Verse ADSL or VDSL modems can only be leased from the company at what is now $7 per month, when it was $4 originally, and it is soon going to $9 a month I've been told.
This is the same scam that the Bell companies did with telephone leases by inching up costs until you pay hundreds for the same piece of equipment.
You cannot purch
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Too many providers and ISPs are going back to the old Bell model of leasing the equipment to the user for huge markups like they used to do with telephones.
Its no surprise that a business with a monopoly acts similarly with other businesses that have had monopolies.
Legislate away a towns right to grant exclusive access. Legislate away a businesses right to legal remedy when they lose that exclusive access. Done.
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We cut our Verizon bill by about 50$/mo by switching out the five Verizon boxes for a bunch of TiVo boxes. All we needed from Verizon was one cable card (which we still pay something like 3$/mo for).
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Yeah, I tried that. Verizon prices their DVR at $20 per month rental (California). TiVo DVR = ~$99 plus $15 monthly fee (For what, I don't know) + $5 month CableCard from Verizon.
Coincidence that both = $20 per month? I think not.
Just cut the cord, buy an OTA DVR for $50 and subscribe to Netflix or Hulu for the rest. Sorry about Walking Dead, but you will be a season behind.
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comcast does the same thing with there static ip plans you have to pay like $10-$15 to rent there hardware.
These bastards killed the CableCard (Score:4, Interesting)
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CableCards still exist - we just got one a few months ago from Verizon to work with TiVo.
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5$/month for Verizon. But with the Tivo boxes, we only need 1 for 5 TVs.
The downside is buying a bunch of Tivo equipment, but the payback period is about 3 years.
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Before the upgrade we had 1 Verizon DVR and 4 Verizon non-DVR boxes, and that ran about 54$ a month just for equipment rental.
After the upgrade, the fees are 5$/month for one cable card. Over 3 years, that's around 1800$ savings.
Upfront hardware costs are the Tivo Roamio, plus 4 minis, and a lifetime subscription. The minis are relatively cheap and have no subscription fee - they all run off of the Roamio (I think the Roamio has something like 6 tuners in it). I would have to look it up, but my recollect
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I'm using the evil Comcast / Xfinity or whatever they are now calling themselves.
My cable card I use in my Tivo costs be -$2.50. That's right, they are crediting my account every month for not using their box. And I only need one card since I have Tivo minis for my other TVs which use the tuners and card in the main unit.
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Comcast uses cablecards. I have one in my TIVO.
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Cost of tearing up the roads (Score:2)
Unless the city planned ahead and buried extra conduits in advance, the cost of 'just adding another wire' is the cost of tearing up and rebuilding the roads and/or sidewalks, as well as the cost of the inconvenience to commuters affected by the construction.
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You can foot the bill for the infrastructure, or you can pay the monopoly price.
Either way, you should hold your local officials accountable if they've fucked you this badly.
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Why do you imagine the city cares? One year a few years ago, the city tore up the street in front of my house three times, to put in new lines for public utilities. If anything, tearing up the same street again and again means more work for city employees and more money handed out to contractors, both of which the city likes. A city tha
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If anything, tearing up the same street again and again means more work for city employees and more money handed out to contractors, both of which the city likes.
Not if the city is running out of money due to tax cuts.
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When "cities are running out of money due to tax cuts", they use that as a justification to raise taxes again. Cities (and governments in general) have no incentives to save money and operate cost efficiently because they are not rewarded for that.
GOP values cost-efficient mayors (Score:2)
Cities (and governments in general) have no incentives to save money and operate cost efficiently because they are not rewarded for that.
By whom? I was under the impression that Republican voters valued a mayor who runs a city like a business.
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You apparently are just chock full of wrong impressions and naive beliefs. You actually seem to believe that mayors have the power to cut spending over the wishes of administrators and unions, or that what voters want matters to politicians of either party.
Stop seeing politics through your stupid and narrow-minded Republican-vs-Democrat lens. The biggest political affiliation in the US is "independent",
Some voters value fiscally conservative council (Score:2)
Correcting errors that you identified in post #51931939:
Cities (and governments in general) have no incentives to save money and operate cost efficiently because they are not rewarded for that.
By whom? I was under the impression that more fiscally conservative voters valued members of city council who run a city like a business.
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Again, your statement is full of erroneous assumptions. In fact...
(1) Fiscally conservative voters tend not to live in cities in the first place.
(2) Fiscally conservative voters tend to be a small minority in cities, so they have limited political influence.
(3) City council members that run on fiscally conservative platforms aren't necessarily fiscally conservative.
(4) Eve
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or upgrade the plant Comcast still has systems at 650 MHZ or even 550 MHZ that need to work to go higher.
This is the US (Score:2)
We could do better than this (Score:2)
But this is just one part of the raw deal customers are getting from the cable companies. Without real competition
Confused priorities (Score:2)
Obama clearly said that health insurance will be cheaper than the cable television bill (meaning less than $100). Is he trying to reduce the cable bill, expecting that healthcare insurance will just follow?
In reality, it is the healthcare system that needs real competition and deregulation. It looks like his teleprompter made an error.
P.S. I am biased. I have never had cable television service in my adult life. Internet has everything, even television streams
Who cares what he "urges"? (Score:2)
When he signs some legislation on the subject, I will give a fuck what Obomber thinks about CATV boxes. Until then, he's just flapping his face in the wind, kind of like when claiming to give a shit about human rights while we bomb hospitals and drone strike children.
If only they would invent a small card ... (Score:2)
that the cable company provides that you could insert into your own cable box. /sarcasm
screw the box (Score:2)
Fastest way is to say that no gov can proclaim a monopoly for fiber. In addition, we should break apart the monopolies and require that any transmission over a monopoly be split off from the non-monopoly part.
deja vu all over again (Score:3)
what and why. (Score:3)
i wrote a comment about this for the red site. [soylentnews.org]
The FCC is essentially trying to create a software-based replacement for CableCard.
CableCARDs were an olive branch from the FCC to cable companies to let them still control the signal transmission protocol but have to have a standard interface for TVs (CableCARDs). Cable companies resisted the proliferation of CableCARDs so much that it killed them before they ever became a thing, just like cable companies wanted. The FCC seems to understand that cable companies are unwilling to act in good faith so now they are standardizing mandating the protocol that set-top boxes use. By mandating the use of a standard open protocol, anyone can implement the equivalent of a CableCARD. However, now that TVs are coming with serious processors in them, i think the new generation of TVs will be decoding this standardized protocol on their own. While a good thing, this also means a tighter integration of network based streaming video services which sounds good but has proven to be poorly implemented on "Smart TVs".
If you are skeptical about the effect this might have then you should just look at what happened with cable modems. Before the DOCSIS standard, cable modems were all ISP specific, expensive and slow which is what happened with the set top box. After the DOCSIS standard, things got faster, more compatible and far less expensive.
Typical Obama bodge instead of proper fix (Score:2)
Typical Obama policy, a bodge instead of the proper fix for the actual problem.
The right solution would be to get rid of cable boxes entirely by forcing cable companies to provide homes with an unencrypted signal that we can just tune with the tuners already built into our TVs.