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Government Television Entertainment Hardware

Why The FCC Chair Says Set-Top Box Reform Proposal Could Change (fortune.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the http://fortune.com/2016/09/15/fcc-set-top-box-reform-proposal/ dept.
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.
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Why The FCC Chair Says Set-Top Box Reform Proposal Could Change More

Why The FCC Chair Says Set-Top Box Reform Proposal Could Change

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  • Almost changed my mind on Wheeler (Score:3)

    by interkin3tic ( 1469267 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @03:47PM (#52895943)
    I'm becoming concerned that Wheeler actually is, as feared, a shill for comcast et al. I'm wondering if the net neutrality issue he tried to push was designed to fail, I'm not a lawyer nor have I read much about it. Now he's backing down from opening up the cable industry to competition. Is it possible his job was just to lull us into not worrying about it, and letting the telecos get everything they want?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by H3lldr0p ( 40304 )

      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

    • 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.

      • It could also be that he is in an appointed position and his job is over in December. Sure, he could push harder to get stuff done in an attempt to change the M.O. of the telcos. Or he can back off a little bit, start the trek down that road, and hope that his successor doesn't do an about face.

        Put a frog in boiling water...

  • Meanwhile (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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)

    by dublin ( 31215 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @05:55PM (#52896771) Homepage

    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...)

  • 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.

  • I love statistics. It is amazing how they steer a conversation in any direction the user wants. I'm not saying that paying to lease set top boxes isn't BS. It is one of the reasons I built an HTPC/Media Server and cut the chord with the cable companies. But let's look at why the statistics here are what they are. An annual cost of $231 isn't for 1 set top box. It is for multiple. Remember when you would have 1 TV with the cable box and the rest would just get whatever the TV could tune in? Well, now

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )

      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.

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