FCC To Allow Cable Companies To Encrypt Over-the-Air Channels 376
alen writes "The FCC is now allowing cable companies to encrypt free OTA channels that they also rebroadcast over their networks. 'The days of plugging a TV into the wall and getting cable are coming to an end. After a lengthy review process, the FCC has granted cable operators permission to encrypt their most basic cable programming.' Soon the only way to receive free OTA channels via your cable company will involve renting yet another box or buying something like Boxee."
Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)
well there goes my HTPC build. For those that like to build their own media centers, dvr's, etc this is utter crap. Of course I can spend $200 to get a tuner card that will accept a M-type cable card but then that is yet another piece of equipment that I have to rent from said cable company.
who wants to bet said FCC people have coushy jobs lined up at some major cable company.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Interesting)
NO you are just using the wrong recorder....
eztv.it, set up the RSS feed and your torrent catcher.
Screw the cable companies and dish companies. Best $12.95 a month I spend is for a VPN outside the USA to get all the TV shows I want to record off of my DishTV.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)
My recorder is fine. I cut the cord long ago. But since the line is still active to me having a cable modem this solves the issue of getting a decent antenea in order to get the OTA's. Currently I can just plug my system / TV into the wall and still pickup those said channels as they are broadcast in clearQuam as required under current regulations.
This is just a move that gives me the finger and forces me to put an ugly ass antenea on my roof in order to get semi decent reception as my town of 20k people is at least 50 miles from the nearest broadcast towers which causes all kinds of issues with reception.
Now if they can also encrypt those channels over the same line even though they are free (as i don't need a subscription to get them). Guess i go netflix only and just do the over the interwebs route.
THERE GOES CABLE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Look! TV just killed itself!
I have two tween kids. They don't know what Cable, satellite or OTA are...
There's YouTube, NetFlix, Amazon and PutLocker.
They also know some suckers who pay for HuluPlus, to watch the unwatchable.
Sports and political talk (Score:4, Insightful)
There's YouTube, NetFlix, Amazon and PutLocker.
Do these services have live sports or political talk shows? In my survey sample, one head of household, would rather go back to dial-up than drop ESPN and NBCSN (formerly Versus), and the other would be lost without MSNBC.
Re:Sports and political talk (Score:5, Interesting)
These are kids he was talking about. Political talk shows are out.
As for sports, that is the only real thing holding back a lot of guys I know from switching.
That being said, Cable Companies keep raising the costs year after year above and beyond what people are receiving in cost-of-living raises . ESPN, especially. They can go fuck themselves.
Young people are cutting the cords faster than ever, and in the case of kids, never accepting the cord in the first place. That's why the Cable Companies will die.
1) No incentive to younger people to shell out $50-$60 per month (base rate). It's hard enough for younger people to find money in the first place, let alone spend it on stupid shit. It's basically a cell phone plan, or Internet plan in terms of cost. What does it deliver that is as attractive, or more attractive, to younger people than Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu or pirating ?
2) Pricing themselves so high that older people are increasingly looking to save costs by switching to something else. Guys that need to have sports are really just buying it for sports then. That's not an audience that will keep revenue streams at the levels they are now, which means sports would need to increase their revenue streams even more.
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These are kids he was talking about. Political talk shows are out.
As for sports, that is the only real thing holding back a lot of guys I know from switching.
That being said, Cable Companies keep raising the costs year after year above and beyond what people are receiving in cost-of-living raises . ESPN, especially. They can go fuck themselves.
I would agree with this but it's not the cable companies that are the problem -- it's the employers. You can replace the phrase "cable companies" with any number of other groups, "grocery store chains" and "oil companies" being the first that come to mind. The real issue is the "cost-of-living raises" people are getting (don't know who this is btw, I haven't gotten a raise in over four years) aren't meeting the actual increase in said costs. It's supposed to be a reactionary adjustment to compensation. The
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ESPN should be frightened, because I doubt this is limited to a single sport: It's simply not worth watching a sport on TV anymore without the ability to skip the commercials and the boring bits.
Re:Sports and political talk (Score:4, Insightful)
Lost without MSNBC? Seriously they are about as reputable as Fox News.
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You could only stream the Olympics (in the U.S.) if you had cable (they required a log in). Even if you could watch it OTA, you couldn't stream it.
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I bought a $5/month VPN and streamed every single event I wanted to see directly from the
BBC Olympics site. Fuck NBC and fuck cable.
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TV broadcasting has 10 years to unfuck itself. That's when their NFL contract expires.
Re:THERE GOES CABLE! (Score:4, Funny)
Tourette's (noun, medical) Definition:
Re:THERE GOES CABLE! (Score:4, Informative)
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My recorder is fine. I cut the cord long ago. But since the line is still active to me having a cable modem this solves the issue of getting a decent antenea in order to get the OTA's. Currently I can just plug my system / TV into the wall and still pickup those said channels as they are broadcast in clearQuam as required under current regulations.
This is exactly why they are doing this. What you are doing currently is considered theft of service.
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Seriously? I pay the cable company for my Internet access and they throw in Basic cable for free (which is, plug my TV into the wall and I get basic channels). Depending on where I lived would determine just which channels I'd get. Just a bit south of here, I would get some HD tv. Where I am now, I get all low def but I get the channels I want to watch (Local News and Big Bang Theory).
My ex picked up a cable box and HBO so she could watch True Blood (I think, or Breaking Bad or some other cable show). Now t
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Cable companies...generally don't PAY for [local channels]. So they don't get to CHARGE for them since the originator of the programming gets nothing from them.
For what it's worth, this used to be the case, but is not any more. Many local channels have switched from "must-carry", where the cable company has to carry them, but doesn't have to pay, to "retransmission consent" where they can charge the cable company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry#United_States [wikipedia.org]
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Why bother with a VPN? That of which we do not speak is $50 for 1TB. That's lasted me over an entire year of just my TV shows. I max out my home cable connection. I don't have to deal with seeding.
Just use Sickbeard [sickbeard.com] and XBMC.
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Don't give up on the HTPC, give up on cable instead.
Get yourself an OTA tuner, amazon/netflix/hulu plus and go for it. Unless you are addicted to some sport that is not OTA it really is the way to go.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Informative)
Don't give up on the HTPC, give up on cable instead.
Get yourself an OTA tuner, amazon/netflix/hulu plus and go for it. Unless you are addicted to some sport that is not OTA it really is the way to go.
HDHomeRun is the way to go; install it in your attic (where the signal is probably strong enough even if you are a ways from the tower) and enjoy it on MythTV...
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Highly recommend this setup. Have digital antenna up in roof, feed comes down to HDHomeRun in basement, and from there hooks into my Mythbox via ethernet. BTW, OTA digital quality is better than cable, since the cable companies re-compress the datastream and thereby degrade it.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Informative)
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I put together my HDHomeRun with a small antenna about a month ago & dropped my DirectTV sub.
MythTV skips a little bit during playback while to MediaPortal works just fine on my old P4 machine. Windows Media Center does an excellent job as well.
My only problem is some FM interference from a local WISP. It works quite well.
I wish I could have installed the antenna in the attic. Unfortunately, whoever ran the cable decided to run it through the wall instead of the attic. I mounted it to the same pole
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Interesting)
OTA (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's not an option for some, but I live where I can get New York OTA channels, and even Philly stations if I want, with my roof antenna and rotor. I record everything we watch on a MythTV system with a TB of disk space. I haven't had pay TV in 25 years.
I have cable for internet only. Every time the cable company calls me trying to sell me a TV package, I tell them exactly what I'm currently using, and exactly why I want no part of their any-consumer bull shit. I wish more people would do the same thing.
What sucks of course is that, because all the available internet providers are TV providers, you pay a premium for internet when it's not part of some fucking package. The whole situation just blows to put it mildly...and the fucking FCC, whose supposed to be working for us, can go straight to fucking hell too.
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Yep. FCC went too fucking far this time.
I'm putting a big fucking antenna right on the roof of my condo, laws and bylaws be damned. Anyone who tries to take it down is in for a fight.
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Aside from the fact that this decision is crap (I agree), and you'd have to spend $$$ to get a tuner card, you might not have to pay your cable company anything for a CableCard. For example, I have Comcast (sucks, but beats my other local cable company in every way: price, channels, and quality), and they include the cost of a tuner box in many of the packages. I have a TiVo instead of one of their boxes, and I get a $2.50/month credit for customer-provided equipment.
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Cable company's DVR won't skip ads, and I value my own sanity.
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not to mention way better storage options. Plus I built my box almost 2 years ago and still running strong. Most of it was off spare parts I had from prior systems lying around.
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Anecdotally, I have Charter's DVR and it makes no distinction between program content and commercials recorded from standard broadcasts. I can easily fast forward through ads - it's certainly no "ad-skipper" but the interface is nice and with quick reflexes, you can minimize your exposure to advertising (press play the instant you see program content come back, and it will back up a few seconds and start playing from there - it actually feels very responsive).
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Any MythTV will automatically flag commercials and let the user either skip them automatically or do it in one button press regardless of the length of the break (useful when commercial detection produces false positive or negative once in a while). Oh, and skip lists in the stored recording can be edited, so everyone after you will see it with no commercials even if autodetection was wrong.
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How much are you spending on computers these days?
$10 a month would mean in two years a fairly reasonable HTPC would be paid for.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that when people build or buy an HTPC, it's usually not just for recording TV shows, it's also for playing games, music, ripped DVDs or Blu-Rays, Netflix, and other uses. The cable company's box won't do that.
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Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Interesting)
For the money you were going to spend on that HTPC, you could easily rent the cable company's latest greatest DVR's for literally years before you got back to even. If you want to roll your own to satisfy your inner geekiness that's one thing, but if the cable company can rent you a box that does the same thing for cheaper, you will receive no sympathy from me.
Sorry, but the cable company's DVR isn't all that powerful. Aside from the stuff they just outright don't do, like:
ability to skip commercials
archive shows indefinitely
export the files to disc to be played anywhere
stream to a phone/tablet/laptop, including live transcoding to a reduced resolution to fit device capability and bandwidth limitations
ability to combine multiple cable/satellite/OTA systems into one interface
web interface for scheduling new recordings remotely.
the things that they do handle they don't handle all that well:
Typically only 1 or 2 tuners
They're inferior at handling programs moving around in timeslots and conflict resolution
Recording rules aren't very flexible.
The recording rule flexibility is a biggie to me. Some shows change their name each season and thus need to be continually tweeked to keep recording. Some shows have no non-generic guide data at all, and thus they either don't get recorded. Some shows have guide data that is just....wrong. Curiosity is an example that comes to mind. Discovery channel refuses to actually title the show "Curiosity" in the guide, so each episode ends up looking to be it's own standalone show with it's own title. Most DVRs would have to have that handled manually, but with mythtv I can say create a rule that looks for a combination of day of week, time of day, and program genre that gets the episodes with minimal effort.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4)
> Simply use the net and get all the shows you want WHEN you want and with less commercials to boot.
Oh, really? And where, pray tell, is this magic IP-based virtual cable network that offers realtime IP feeds of the show that's literally running for the first time *right this second* -- as opposed to stuff that's either old (or at least non-realtime), low video quality, openly pirated, or some combination of the three?
There's no technological reason why CNN/MSNBC/Fox/TWC and the rest can't stream HD in realtime, and deliver encrypted copies of the shows you've already tagged for recording in advance & let you have the decryption key the moment the episode officially airs for the first time... but content providers just won't do it. And unfortunately, nothing can make them do it. Maybe the refusal of Dish and others to deal with AMC will prod them to do an end run around them and offer service directly to end users over the internet... but I doubt it.
As much as I'd like to believe that someday, someone will offer a boundary-free service over the internet that works like of like U-verse at the nuts & bolts level, but furnishes 19.2mbps content at original resolution in the native mode, and has a UI that's fully open & customizable by end users with programming backgrounds, I'm sufficiently nihilistic about the American content industry to know that when all is said and done, my monthly "TV-related" expenses would probably end up doubling compared to now anyway. Never, in the history of American TV, have prices genuinely gone down.
Competition from satellite HAS been nice, if only because it brought us Voom 5 years before Comcast even heard of HD, and brought us 200 HD channels on DirecTV when Comcast was still subjecting customers to "death of a thousand macroblocks" 10 new channels at a time, but don't kid yourself. One way or another, the industry is going to find ways to charge us a LOT more for a LITTLE more content, quality, and/or flexibility. And it'll probably compress the hell out of it, too.
Years ago, I laughed at my dad when he told me that color TV pictures were sharper in the 1960s than they were in the 80s and 90s. Then I saw my first DVD, and it sank in for the first time just how badly quality had been completely pwn3d by cost-cutting over the years. Now, the content providers are doing the same to us all over again. We have "HD", but the "HD" we have today via U-verse, Comcast, Dish, and even DirecTV is total and complete crap (minus 2 or 3 showcase channels) compared to the old days of Voom, where the SD channels had bitrates higher than U-verse uses NOW for its HD channels. MPEG-4 is good, but beyond a certain point, you can't fool mother nature. She's going to make sure you get blotches of red sparklies on areas that are supposed to be creamy white, just to remind you that someone is recompressing recompressed 12mbps video down to 6mbps. 10 years from now, we're going to be sold on "Super HD" with 3200x1800 resolution that, if we're lucky, will be indistinguishable from 60fps progressive 1920x1080 encoded at 25-40mbps, and basically just be oversampling with extra marketing and hype.
I'll take a third option... (Score:2, Informative)
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Me too. Most stuff is streamed plus an HD antenna for the OTA channels. Works even better because the "OTA" basic Comcast isn't HD.
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Works even better because the "OTA" basic Comcast isn't HD.
You need a CableCard, but you can get OTA channels in HD with basic Comcast service... although my understanding is there may be differences in some regions.
CableCard, to the rescue! (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, 99% of TVs sold today don't bother supporting it... Shit!
So ... why not use the OTA signal directly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or you could just use an antenna to receive the free OTA channels directly without involving the cable company at all. You can get some pretty diminutive aerials these days for inside use if you can't mount one outside.
Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly? (Score:5, Informative)
There are many places in this country that the OTA signal is not reliable unless you have a massive antenna due to LOS issues.
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There are many places in this country that the OTA signal is not reliable unless you have a massive antenna due to LOS issues.
Funny... that old 1950s analog technology for beaming TV signals worked just great. No LOS issues, or anything else. But then, there was something about being able to make a ton of money selling off that bandwidth, then changing around all the protocols, technology, etc., so that consumers had to pay a fortune to get less and less... and now you can't even find something that can do what a VCR did in the 80s.
I suspect that lack of reliability is quite deliberate.
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Any good antennas you can suggest? Indoor or outdoor would be fine. I would prefer not to have to move it though. Multiple would also be better than having to move one.
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Here [amazon.com] ($20) is a great one for indoor/outdoor use. I have mine mounted indoors on the pole of my TV stand.
It's is a clone of the Antennas Direct DB2. There's also a 2-panel DB4 and a 4-panel DB8 [amazon.com].
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Any good antennas you can suggest? Indoor or outdoor would be fine. I would prefer not to have to move it though. Multiple would also be better than having to move one.
OK, truth time: I was trying to find some ridiculously massive, hopefully homemade mess of an antenna to post for kicks, when I came across this gem:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005US5M50?tag=wppk-20 [amazon.com]
Motorized, 360 degree rotation, multiple outputs, and comes with a remote?
Count me in!
Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, in this case an understanding of the laws of physics would have taken care of it. Anybody claiming 150mi reception of TV signals is a bald-faced liar. The curvature of the earth, and the propagation of the frequencies involved simply makes that impossible in the general case. The standard numbers are 60mi for UHF and 100mi for VHF. It's along the same lines as all those 12v air compressors that claim to produce 250psi... twice what high-end shop compressors are able to produce. They're lying, and once they're lying to you, who knows how many other nasty things they're doing, like cutting corners on build quality.
But to answer your question, we did a few things... First, we shopped at stores we could trust. These days retailers will stock any PoS they think they can make money on, and take no responsibilty for the items they stock, but it doesn't have to be this way, and it wasn't the norm, even just 20 years ago. I personally avoid Walmart, because they intentionally stock inordinant amounts of crap, because they want to advertise a lower price, and don't care that they're screwing their own customers for the sake of a few cents price difference. My favorite retailer is Sears. While they're not perfect, they still have some traditional values and try to stock products that aren't complete junk, and they usually do so at about the same price as the junk dealers like Walmart and Home Depot. Kenmore appliances are nearly as cheap, and put the low-end brands at Home Depot and other to shame in a big way, but for some reason, people haven't wised-up.
Second, there were brands we could trust... It was only 10 years ago or so that well-known brands decided to cash-in their reputation and start selling complete crap. You can see this in cheap HP printers, Levi's, Sony branding on DVD Burners and other devices they don't make, and much, much more. The brands used-to mean something, and people were caught off-guard when things suddenly changed.
These days, I've adopted a dual strategy. I still believe paying more for a good product is eminently good strategy, but I no longer just trust that a given brand is selling high quality products.
Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly? (Score:5, Informative)
First you should go to http://tvfool.com/ [tvfool.com] and check your address for OTA digital signals.
Note the "Real" channel on the tvfool chart. If it's 7-13, you'd need a VHF-high antenna, if it's 14-51 a UHF antenna will pick it up. If it's 2-6, you're probably in Alaska, and sadly will need an old, full-range VHF-lo/hi antenna.
Any channels that are Green or Yellow will likely work with a simple, cheap, indoor antenna (preferably in your window, facing towards the transmitter). The simplest old indoor antennas seem to work the best... better than more expensive indoor antennas that are tunable or have a useless (for short cable runs) amplifier. Nice long "rabbit-ears" at a 45 degree angle will do a good job for VHF (real: 2-13) channels, while a nice big "loop" antenna will do very well picking up UHF channels.
If you're in the red, or worse, you MIGHT be lucky and receive the station(s) with an indoor antenna with minimal dropout, but at this point, you're probably at the point that you should invest in a roof-top antenna.
VHF is pretty simple, and easier to receive over longer ranges, and around obstacles like mountains, buildings or trees. For antennas, you have a couple choices which are both about equivalent in reception and price (about $40):
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=Y10-7-13&sku=716079000994 [slashdot.org]">Antennacraft Y10-7-13 100mi 120" VHF-high
or
Winegard YA 1713 100mi 100" VHF-high [solidsignal.com]
For UHF channels, reception is a bit tougher, as curvature of the earth, and any obstacles cause more issues. There's some debate over how the top 8-bay antennas should be ranked, but it's an easy choice when you see one of the contenders costs nearly half as much as the rest:
Winegard HD 8800 8-Bay 60mi UHF [solidsignal.com]
Now, if you need both UHF and VHF-high antennas, connecting them with a splitter will cause you to lose a significant amount of signal strength. Instead, a purpose-built VHF/UHF splitter/combiner will perform much better. Just about any one will do, but here's a link for an in-stock $2 model:
Pico Macom UHF/VHF Band Separator/Combiner [solidsignal.com]
And finally, if you're going to run the coax a non-trivial length, or if you are going to connect the antenna(s) to a splitter to serve multiple TVs or just multiple tuners (eg. TV+DVR) then you'll get a big benefit out of a mast-mounted pre-amp. The key is to get the lowest "noise" figure you can. There are a range of ridiculously expensive options that will get you a just-slightly lower-noise signal, but once again Winegard is much cheaper, and close enough:
Winegard AP-8700 VHF/UHF Pre Amplifier [solidsignal.com]
Thanks to FCC regulations, you can put this all up on a mast as high as 12' above your roof line, without anyone being able to require you to get a permit or similar (unless you're in a historic area, or there's serious safety issues like overhead power lines). And if you happen to NEED to go higher to get reception of local stations, they MUST grant your permit request for minimal cost and in a timely fashion.
To deal with the risk of lighting starting fires or blowing up your TV, you need to ground your mast and the coax. A coax grounding block costs about $1, and like your mast, just needs to be wired to metal water pipes, or a grounding rod. Some more advanced coax surge suppressors exist, but I would never forego the simple task of grounding everything first.
That should be all the equipment you need, and the information on tvfool will tell you EXACTLY which d
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Do you think this unit would be suitable to place in the attic?
I would prefer not to put it on the roof so there is less wife opposition.
Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly? (Score:5, Informative)
Go here http://www.antennaweb.org/Address.aspx [antennaweb.org] to evaluate how your location in relation to your local transmitters.
WHOA...watch out for UHF only! (Score:5, Insightful)
These so-called "HDTV" antennas were sold for years with the incorrect assumption that digital TV would stay on UHF and it most assuredly did not!
In the New York area for example, several of the UHF digital networks moved their digital signal to their original VHF frequency when the switch over occurred.
Don't buy one of those unless you're sure that all the digital networks in your area are on UHF. If any are, you'll need a combination UHF/VHF antenna.
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Sorry, I've got a DTV antenna, live outside of the downtown area of the largest city in my state, and OTA TV still breaks up every time a car passes by. I watch SD analog cable even when I get the same channel in HD OTA, it's that bad.
Re:So ... why not use the OTA signal directly? (Score:4, Insightful)
My folks still do this, and it's what we had the entire time I was growing up (personally, I rely on Netflix, Hulu, etc. these days exclusively). They work great most of the time and can save a load of money on a medium where no one with sense should be investing big bucks at this point. I was surprised how clear the reception was with the relatively small, indoor antenna my parents had directly above the TV last time I visited them.
Strangely, it seems that many people are unaware that it's even an option. My folks told me about a husband and wife in their early-to-mid 40s that came over for dinner awhile back. The wife made some comment about how she only watches the major U.S. networks yet cable TV is so expensive. When my parents pointed out that they get those channels for free with an antenna, the wife was dumbstruck. Apparently she started insisting that it was illegal to watch TV without a cable subscription. After several minutes of reassurances from both my parents and her husband that it was perfectly legal and had been around since television was introduced, she was left feeling a bit sheepish. Even more so after her husband pointed out that most of the homes she grew up in didn't even have access to cable TV since it wasn't in widespread use at the time.
An Antenna... (Score:5, Insightful)
And this helps the consumer how? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And this helps the consumer how? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And this helps the consumer how? (Score:4, Insightful)
give all the money to the rich people and they'll hire us to wash their car
you can get angry, laugh, or, like me, weep at the fact so many morons actually swallowed this crap, as they lose their job
Re:And this helps the consumer how? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, +1 Internets to the first person who can put a positive spin on this one. Wow. Just wow.
By requiring all TVs to use one of our new Freedom Choice cable boxes we can provide a better over all customer experience, features such as our on screen channel guide can now be utilized on all your TVs. Think of it as an upgrade for your TV.
Sincerely,
Your friendly local cable company
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Check Boxee's twitter account & blog and you spot one atleast one person behind it thats happy about this ..
They even claimed that they had influence on fcc that ruling turned out like it did.
http://blog.boxee.tv/2012/10/14/boxee-welcomes-fcc-rulemaking-that-opens-door-for-innovation/ [boxee.tv]
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Why does it have to help the consumer?
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So when will I be getting that check for their line that crosses my property?
They can do what they like when they start paying their own way.
Also this is not a free service, merely a requirement that any OTA channels they carry for their subscribers be broadcast without encryption.
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Wish there was a "-1 Stupid Shilling for Corporate Moochers" mod. 'Cause you just earned it.
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Innumerable? I doubt it, we stole 0 from the muslims during the crusades.
What about all those legitimate cable watchers who don't want to rent a box?
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Have you paid your license fees to ASCAP for those songs you will be singing?
Google for girl scouts happy birthday.
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Pardon me. Google for
girl scouts happy birthday copyright
Equipment fees (Score:3)
So, after two years they can charge an equipment fee. If you have three televisions,each with a decoder and a $5/monthly fee, the cable company starts taking in $180/year in extra revenue from the lowest paying customers.
Still Waiting (Score:4, Informative)
I'll get cable when they make good on their original promise: Pay for TV, so no ads. Part (most) of the money you pay goes to the show to replace their ad income.
For all you young-lings, TV used to be completely free. To get people to pay for cable, their sales pitch was that you wouldn't get any ads.
They can pry my torrents from my cold dead heads or stop being lying, greedy assholes. Their choice.
Cable companies racing for irrelevance (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.
Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.
Comcast = Earthlink in ten years.
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Meanwhile, Verizon has halted most FiOS buildouts, is trying to get out of more, and is requiring copper removal where they're doing it because the install costs are so high. Hybrid fiber/coax with DOCCIS 3 will push 300Mbps and is cheaper to install and maintain. Cable isn't afrid of FTTH.
Fuck (Score:5, Informative)
This move will only make pirating television more appealing.
Thanks for nothing, FCC. I'm tired of every last fucking thing on Earth being monetized for no reason other than greed, and the so-called "regulators" doing nothing as the are getting huge sums of money from the parties behind the changes.
Piracy: The Better Choice(tm) (Score:5, Informative)
That is all.
It seems most have missed the other part of this (Score:5, Informative)
The way this was agreed was if the cable company is encrypting their channels, they have to make them available unencrypted over IP, so devices like Boxee and others can still receive them, or work with PVR makers to make "Software updates" available so they can decrypt the streams.
Given that the daddy of all open-source PVR projects, MythTV, already supports IPTV systems (after a little careful setup), this is actually a good thing. And while it is basic channels only for now, hopefully the practise will expand into premium channels later on.
Re:It seems most have missed the other part of thi (Score:4, Insightful)
Making money off the elderly and out of touch, the way God intended.
Re:It seems most have missed the other part of thi (Score:4, Insightful)
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Is it worth it for them? (Score:2)
Well, it'll be interesting to see if Comcast does this in my area. I'm not going to buy/rent a cable box. If they encrypt my channels, and thus make it so I can't watch their cable with my setup, then I'm dropping my service (both the $7 basic cable, and the $55 internet). Over the air and DSL will be good enough.
I guess I should write them a letter. As if anyone would read it or care.
Dish, Direct, Antenna, or cut the cord (Score:2)
We switched from Comcast for TV and net, and now use qwest (centrury link) for FASTER internet, and dish for TV. However, once my kids get older, I want to kill even dish. In the meantime, we will never go back to comcast. Just a plain evil company.
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People like to complain a lot about Netflix content (or lack there of), but they actually have quite a bit of kids content.
Two points (Score:3)
1. When I was buying my first flat-panel TV, I went into a 'high-end' retailer (no, not Best Buy) and wanted to see the picture on one of the midrange sets. After realizing there was no OTA cable atached, the salesperson admitted they couldn't show me a picture. I found a paper clip, stuck in the jack, and got 3 channels. OTA is not always to hard to get.
2. MY cable box now is an SA Explorer 3xxxHD something. It has, for a tuner, you guessed it. A CableCard. Next tiem I hear Cox jerming someone around for getting their CC working, I'll send them the spec. Cox knows CableCards, they USE it.
So I guess I am getting satellite after all. And OTA. Almost everything we want to record is OTA anyways.
Glad I live in an area with good reception (Score:2)
90%+ from a DB4 in the attic. I wonder how much my cable bill will shrink when I switch to just data and voice?
Oh, right. It won't shrink at all, will it.
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If you have a cell, drop the voice.
It should shrink quite a bit though. I used to have cable and internet then I went just internet and it saved me about $30 a month.
Understandable, but need software cable card (Score:4, Interesting)
I can certainly understand why the cable companies want this. They have too many Internet-only customers who are getting local TV access without paying for it, and they don't want to have to send out trucks to install and remove filters. This is a perfect solution for them.
As a consumer, I don't terribly mind, as long as I can decrypt the signals. (Yes, it's a bit frustrating that my QAM tuners are now junk.) I don't want to pay a monthly fee for a cable card, along with expensive tuners that accept them. What would be much more reasonable is a software-only cable card, and there's no reason we can't have that. This would allow any QAM tuner to still be useful. The FCC should require cable companies to support this, and toss out any copy restrictions--if we are paying for it, we should get the raw digital stream to record as we see fit.
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Except they already digitize these channels - they just must preserve them "in the clear" without encrypting them.
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Cable TV, for example, generally uses crappy video encoding technique and works around this by simply using a really high bitrate. For practical reasons - it's easier to just accept the higher bandwidth need than deal with the very complex business of non-realtime encoding, which involves coordinated extensively w
Re:My guess (Score:5, Insightful)
You can digitize without encrypting. That is what clear QAM is for.
What this is really about is that they won't have to roll a truck for a cable install. Heck, they can fire all the techs too, or at least most of them. They will leave all the cables live all the time and make you come get a box to do the decryption. When you leave you give the box back, or if you don't pay they deauthorize it on their end.
Re:My guess (Score:4, Informative)
Most comcast locations already fired all the techs. They use independent contractors. Most of the guys did dish installs, Direct TV installs and Comcast installs all in the same day.
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Well now those guys will only be doing dish and direct.
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They already do digitize all the channels and they already over compress them as is.
Re:My guess (Score:5, Informative)
Digitize for Clear QAM takes no more bandwidth than Encrypted QAM. Most areas have not had analog at all for 2 years now.
I used to work for Comcast in the headends and OTN locations, I know more about this than the CSR's or installers ever hope to know.
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That was my first thought as well. With the increase in On-Demand content, they're already running pretty low. (Ever come home and find a "this channel is temporarily unavailable" message?) It's also a good reason to start phasing out non-HD boxes (provided your provider doesn't still charge more for an HD box). Eventually getting rid of the low-res channels and carrying only the HD channels would free up a little more bandwidth.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Bring down prices! Hilarious!
No, seriously, hahahahahaha.