[opendtv] Re: FCC rules for cable after the OTA TV digital transition
- From: Frank Eory <frank.eory@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:55:20 -0700
John Shutt wrote:
Why would the FCC care if cable systems ever go digital? That's purely
a business decision for the cable systems, not any mandate from the
government.
Yes, it's purely a business decision and cable is headed toward
all-digital anyway, for market-driven reasons. My point was that it
seems strange that here we have the FCC forcing broadcasters to go
all-digital whether they want to or not, and at the same time
interfering with cable's voluntary migration to all-digital. I predicted
a long time ago that cable would be the last bastion of NTSC
broadcasting, but I didn't expect the FCC to issue an order that
mandates this outcome.
The MSOs would have to foot that bill regardless. If an MSO is anxious
to ditch analog, they have to provide their customers with something
to view programming with.
Funny, the broadcasters don't have to foot the bill for all the new
receivers when they "ditch analog," and the government isn't footing the
bill, although they are offsetting the pain with those STB coupons. But
again, the broadcasters are being coerced to do this by the government,
whereas cable is doing it voluntarily.
Of course MSOs need to provide their customers with a way to view
programming, and I'm sure they're not anxious to anger their subscribers
and push them toward satellite. But so far digital cable subs have been
voluntarily paying more for digital cable, at least in the form of STB
rental charges, because digital offers something they want, for which
they're willing to pay extra. Many MSOs are now in a transitional phase
where the extended basic tier is offered in both NTSC and QAM form, and
are deploying STBs that only have QAM tuners to their new digital subs.
Eliminating the NTSC tuner eliminates cost. Keeping the CA embedded
eliminates cost.
With some of the low-cost 'cable adapter' boxes that have come out in
recent years, some MSOs may have been contemplating a giveaway of these
adapters, to enable them to eliminate NTSC simulcast once and for all.
At some level of digital cable penetration, the economics of recovering
NTSC channels on the cable plant vs. the cost of giving away cheap
'cable adapter' boxes to the analog die-hards just make sense and the
all-digital cable transition can be completed. The earlier FCC order
banning embedded CA prolongs that transition by significantly increasing
the MSOs receiver costs, and now this new order further restricts the
MSOs' freedom to pursue their digital transition in their own way.
in the long run requiring CableCards would reduce the number of STBs
the MSO would have to maintain, not increase the number. Which costs
more, a CA card or a Digital STB?
Cable subs have so far not shown great enthusiasm for CableCards. As for
your question, I have a hunch that the cost of a CableCard and the cost
of a cheap digital cable adapter (low-end STB) are not much different.
By the time you add in the support burden on the MSO of dealing with
multiple makes & models of CableCard-ready DTV sets and retail STBs
running different software stacks, etc., I suspect that the CableCard
ends up being much more costly for the MSO than the low-end STB owned
and maintained by the MSO.
I realize I'm mostly complaining about the earlier ruling here, but this
latest one just seems to add insult to injury by basically mandating
that MSOs cannot leave their analog subs high and dry after February
2009 -- as if an MSO would want to do that to his customers anyway.
I'm also anxious to see the final order and to understand what this
means for broadcasters that opted for must-carry vs. those with retrans
consent agreements.
-- Frank
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