Why The FCC Chair Says Set-Top Box Reform Proposal Could Change (fortune.com) 33
An anonymous reader writes: Hardware costs are down yet fees still seem to climb. The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said he might change his proposal to allow tens of millions of U.S. pay TV subscribers to ditch costly set-top boxes and access video programming online. At a Senate hearing on Thursday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler defended his revised proposal, which is scheduled for a final vote on Sept. 29. The plan, announced last week, lacks some of the most controversial aspects of the original proposal unveiled in January but includes a new licensing body to ensure that pay-TV companies do not enter into anti-competitive agreements. The plan is aimed at ending the cable industry's long domination of the $20-billion-a-year set-top box market and lowering prices for consumers. Nearly all pay-TV subscribers lease the boxes from their cable, satellite, or telecommunications providers at an average annual cost of $231. Those fees have jumped 185% since 1994, while the cost of televisions, computers, and mobile phones has dropped 90%, the FCC has estimated.
Re:Just give me Google Fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
Hard to watch sports on the internet without a TV subscription.
I pay $130/yr to watch all the NHL games. That's a great deal.
I'd do that with NFL, but their streaming option doesn't do live! Unless you have a TV (DirectTV) subscription.
MLB is $120/yr to watch all out of market games. That's a decent deal.
Good luck watching anything on ESPN without a TV subscription. Streams are either virus infected, taken down in a few min, or just plain suck.
All the TV companies saw this coming, and tied up as many sports as they could before it got here.
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And the NFL can go BF each other for not firing Kaepernick.
It is his first amendment right to kneel during the national anthem. I may not agree with his decision to do so, but why do you think he should be fired?
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Want no blackouts? Use Yonder.TV. $3/mo for DNS relocation. Basically, set up account on computer, then enter DNS on AppleTV/Xbox/whatever.
Re: Just give me Google Fiber (Score:2)
Try http://slingtv.com/ [slingtv.com]
It's not free, but if you truly just want ESPN, it's the cheapest way to get it. And if you're a Tmobile customer, it's only $14/month.
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I actually saw that. Interested, but not sure yet. $20/mo for espn is a bit much. Gotta make sure it works w AppleTV. Looks like it does.
sony vue is needed to WGN 9 and CSN CHI (Score:2)
sony vue is needed to WGN 9 and CSN CHI
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Sports!? Good God man...! Do you not know where you are posting??
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I know.
But the real world does sports. And they're a $10+ billion driver of tech. If nerds can't acknowledge that, they don't belong in the conversation.
Almost changed my mind on Wheeler (Score:3)
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To be fair, his is a political position. He's having to deal with the uncertainty that the Beltway media has thrown up around who the next president should be as well as the two jackass Republican members of his committee who are currently fighting with Congress about turning over public documents their offices generated.
I'd be coy about things in that position myself. I'd be trying to build a consensus and gaining as much political ground myself after the past few fights have landed in court. Not that they
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I don't think you have to fish this hard for a motive. He's the most obvious one to bribe if you're opposed to net neutrality and have $Billions at stake. The most obvious sign of him being bribed would be basically an about-face on some or another of his his previous core policy decisions. You can make a line here by connecting far fewer dots than you have.
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Put a frog in boiling water...
Meanwhile (Score:1)
On the other side of the fence content costs are increasing faster than equipment costs decline.
What we REALLY need is an a la carte right! (Score:3)
The most important reform we could have of cable, satellite, and other programming bundle vendors (SlingTV, etc.) is that the consumers should be able to pick and choose (and pay for) only the channels they want, with no economic penalty for choosing unbundling. Right now, a fair fraction of cable bills goes for channels that almost no one wants or watches.
I'd love a service like SlingTV, but with the ability to select only the channels I want (for instance, to address the very real sports problem mentioned above, I'd take Fox Sports Southwest, so I could watch the Rangers, but I don't want a dime of my money going to the SJW Nazis at ESPN, which sucks huevos, anyway...)
There is no neutrality, and no real freedom for consumers, until we can CHOOSE what we actually want to buy!
This is the media programming equivalent of saying it's OK for a car dealer to force you to buy bogus upgrades like "paint protection", "upholstery protection", and "fuzzy dice package", or "dealer prep" (beyond ordinary make-ready) regardless of whether you want them or not. (This sort of thing has been such a problem that many states have outlawed this sort of chicanery in recent years...)
copy canada they have buy the box and la carte tv (Score:2)
copy Canada they have buy the box and la carte tv coming soon.
Comcast makes alot on rent / outlet fees (Score:2)
Comcast makes alot on rent / outlet fees and they don't want to give it up.
They need to ban the mirroring / outlet / device fees.
It's a joke the Directv makes you pay an TV fee to use your own TV RVU client. Or Comcast makes pay to rent the used to be free DTA's.
Be careful with statistics (Score:1)
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An annual cost of $230 is about $20/month. I am paying that for one HD DVR from Frontier. So I think this average certainly is from single boxes.