| No Cablecard for Low-Priced DTAs:FCC Good Government Work: |
Mike Robuck in CED reports Thomson and Pace will probably receive a 3 year waiver of the CableCard requirement. They meet the “low-cost, limited-capability” exception the FCC applied to the Evolution Broadband DTA. CableCards are required so consumers can choose different set top boxes, including those built into TVs. I don't think a market for better or cheaper DTAs will ever develop so there's not much point in encouraging competition while requiring CableCords would add significantly to the price.
Tony Werner's (picture) Comcast is using these $35-$50 digital to analogue converters to go all digital across their 25M homes. That's over 2 gigabits of DOCSIS capacity, about 200 HD channels, or some combination. They will need the room as more and more viewers move to unicast, mostly for timeshifting. Currently, Comcast is less than 10% unicast, but heavy use of network DVRs and video on demand will drive up that ratio. Comcast is also introducing switched digital, which will give them near-infinite channel capacity at low cost. This point to another goal for good government work: must-carry low power TV and minimal cost for any network that wants access to the customers. Most U.S. cablecos will be SDV by 2012-2013, which will drop the cost of adding a network to very low - $100's in many cases. Cable has fought hard to avoid taking on these additional channels, claiming the cost and bandwidth needed were prohibitive. They are telling the truth, as U.S. cablecos are tightly squeezed because they have been adding HD channels to meet the competition's claim of 100 HDs channels. (Few worth watching, of course.) Michael Copps told me last year that adding LPTV "was the right thing to do." Jonathan Adelstein would probably have voted for it as well. Copps and Adelstein speak eloquently and often about the need for more voices on U.S. TV. Kevin Martin towards the end proposed this requirement, one of several initiatives that should have been supported by the Dems as well. Broken relations prevented that, and Copps didn't move on this during his term. The requirement would still be onerous today. But in a few years, most large cablecos will be switched and able to inexpensively meet a government mandate. There's a good compromise: Must-carry LPTV and independent channels in 2012-2014, ideally with an easy opt-out for the smaller cablecos. http://bit.ly/ZwbCC |
