Paul Schomburg wrote: > Hi. You might find interesting CEA's comments (7/16/07) in > the must-carry proceeding (CS Docket No. 98-120): http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_doc ument=6519558007 Interesting and recent document (16 July 2007). I find the tone of it to be disingenuous, however. Especially the part about the CEA urging the FCC to "think outside the box": "So while some may respond to this Second FNPRM with conventional closed-system, proprietary solutions that cause consumers to pay for the same programming and devices again and again, CEA urges the Commission to think 'outside the box.'" It was in fact the FCC, under Michael Powell, that finally suggested (years ago) that the ATSC mandated "tuner" could and should be coupled with a digital cable receiver. And left the latter up to the cable and CE industries, to do on their own, without govt mandate. So here we have the CEA urging the FCC to "harness marketplace forces" to achieve this goal, which the FCC had already expressed years ago. If I were the CEA, my approach would have been to encourage the FCC to stick with what it had already stated in the past, rather than pretend I was suggesting something brand new. Recall that if anything, at that time, the CEA strongly opposed anything like a "tuner mandate." And it took Michael Powell, rather than the CEA, to "think outside the box" and tie in a digital cable receiver along with the "tuner mandate." The FCC did this for exactly the reason these CEA Comments give. Which is, to make the built-in digital tuner also of value for cable customers. BTW, we had been through all of these ideas on this list already, even before Michael Powell came up with the CE-cable agreement concept. I don't remember the date, but it was early 2000s for sure. Also, for those who believe that consumers prefer to buy monitors and then rely on proprietary STBs for the receiver function: "The Commission notes a statistic that has been a constant for decades, and which connotes a solution rather than a problem: fully 50 percent of all cable subscribers do not take a proprietary set-top box, even in the age of digital cable." Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.