CECB may be the next cable box

IN ENGLISH? I am confused here?

Link does seem to be working to the article

That makes no sense - why would they want that? How much money could they make from someone ordering the basic local sub at $15/mo? The reason many folks will have CECBs is that they don't want to pay for cable - they're OTA only.

The model going forward has already been established - they offer folks a cheap STB free (for the first year) to keep folks getting stuff they used to get directly from the coax (cause they're shutting off analog) and then they start charging for the STB. Plus the efficiency thing will trump things - they want to shove as many chs down the pipe as possible - QAM is the way forward.

Just the other day I was actually wondering if these boxes could work as a cable box. Has anyone tried hooking one up in a home that has cable? I know these boxes are primarily supposed to be for those who dont have cable but there are a few that use both.

I know people whose cable company is trying to lure their customers into switching to digital by giving them this tiny cheap looking digital cable box (about the size of and looks like the old external PC modems) and turning the digital signal on. The first box was free but I think to get more content and get it on other TVs in the home you have to subscribe to a package. The funny thing is they got a plasma TV for Christmas with a digital tuner built in, and b/c the digital signal is turned on, they're getting all this free digital and HD programming...including ppv movies on occasion.

I doubt that would happen with the CECBs, but still it would be interesting to see what they are capable of with a digital cable signal coming in.

Plugging a cable line into a CECB will yield you 0 channels. I placed by request for the coupons hoping there would be one hackable model that could tune QAM channels. Unfortunately, none exist.

If the cable companies are going to drop analog cable, it would be nice if they somehow utilized existing CECB's simply because the boxes are relatively cheap & there are plenty of models in the stores. My guess is this is unlikely to happen as it is more profitable for them if subscribers rent their cable box.

I'm sure Comcast would prefer to rent me THEIR box for $5 a month, pile the money into a giant bin, and jump into it during their lunch breaks.

Greedy monopolistic bastards.

'Nuff said.

It will never happen because it makes too much sense. Even without the government subsidy the cable companies could pick up such boxes for under 50 backs each in quantity. They just have to provide an unencrypted digital tier and there's no law that says they can't, they just don't want to.

After thinking about it overnight, I can envison a "consumer friendly" cable company deciding to provide 8VSB on the first 60 channels. That way all viewers need to do is run the wire direct into the set (thus eliminating an ugly box).

Of course that won't happen until after 2012, because the FCC still requires cable companies to provide analog service.

Apparently FIOS didn't get that memo since they no longer provide any analog service.

Again, there's no way this will happen - clear QAM of the locals is the most you'll get. Think of all the equipment the cable cos would have to get to just switch from what they already have - not going to happen.

IIRC, the ruling doesn't say cable/sat are required to provide analog, just to provide analog signal OR an STB. And it doesn't say who pays for the provided box. Comcast last Fall cut 5 analog channels off the standard cable lineup, charging the same price for digital with one STB, encouraging people to go digital. They don't offer analog standard service to new customers (still have the lifeline local/govt option), and once the number of analog viewers is reasonably low, they have their excuse to stop analog broadcasts.

Someone on this forum said their QAM was analog only, the HD was scrambled, with the cable compnay saying clear channels applied only to the analog state.

That's a load of farmers' fertilizer. What if I want to buy analog for my analog sets? Comcast will refuse??? _____s.

I think it's time for the Feds to break-up the Comcast, Time-Warner, Cox Cable monopolies the same way they broke-up the AT&T monopoly.

With modern technology, there's absolutely no reason why each urban home can't have 3 or 4 companies serving it.

And how are those 3-4 companies going to get their signal to each home? If you are lucky enough to live in an area with FIOS you might have coax and fiber to the house but no cable co will ever string a second coax or fiber. It took a lot of guts/risk for Verizon to roll out FIOS and I don't see any third co mixing it up in an area that already has coax and fiber. The leasing of the coax/fiber to the house by a third co is a non starter.

In areas with FIOS you do have 4 cos - cable, FIOS, E* and D*. You're not going to get more than that.

Well you could string 3 or 4 coaxial cables in parallel. There's enough room in the underground conduits. And then you let the homeowner decide which company he likes best (perhaps the one which offers A La Carte), and that's the one that is extended into the house. Competition will drive down prices and allow new features to be added, in order to entice customers to choose one company instead of another.

If we can offer customers choice in their electricity suppliers, natural gas suppliers, or local calling suppliers, we should be able to do the same with cable.

I'm sick of Comcast using their monopoly to charge people $800 a year.

Biggest disadvantage I see to using the CECBs as their "digital cable" tuners is that the CECBs are restricted to OTA channels - that means 2-69 - in ATSC ONLY ! (No QAM)

If you can think of a bigger disincentive to cable companies to use a CECB - I'd like to hear it.

The monopoly attitude doesn't go away with competition. I have my choice of 4 pay tv services. They all charge about the same, and bundle their deals, which requires a 1-2 year contract. They still lock you in, even with competition.

Which 4 pay tv services do you have?

Cellphone companies do the same thing, but fortunately competiton has allowed "pay as you go" services to arise. I have Virgin Mobile which costs only $5 a month, and I can quit them any time I feel like it. Imagine a cable company that operated like that.

Me and the wife are both Virgin Mobile users too - much cheaper for us considering our usuage pattern.

It goes beyond that. CECB are designed to tune only terrestrial channel assignments. The current boxes could tune only 12 of the cable frequencies and probably can't cope with the alternative channel spacing options.

Comcast, FIOS, DirectTV, Dish. And those are options, not services that I have. I have OTA.

Like I said there's no way they'll string another cable.

All those other utilities have one big diff - they all have two suppliers which can play nice with each other. Yes you can get the end product from different suppliers, but to get to the house you still have to go through the delivery method owned by someone else. The distribution model is different - you can't have two different head ends deliver video down one coax to the same neighborhood.

Very simple solution to high cable bills - drop the service.

The CECB boxes share the same 83 frequencies that cable uses. The only difference is that they are numbered differently where VHF 2-13 == Cable 2-13, and UHF 14-69 == Cable ~30-85.

That's why you can take a non-cable-ready television and still watch cable channels, albeit they are shifted to higher channels on the dial.
I keep hearing people tell me this, and I still disagree. I have a tube/conduit running under my street, and there's plenty of room there to add more cables:

- one cable for Time-Warner
- one cable for Comcast
- one cable for Cox

And then we customers living on this street could simply pick the company we like best. Easy. Simple. Beneficial.

Do the same for the rest of Greater Lancaster PA, and now you have a city with TRUE consumer choice, instead of a monopoly.

Like I said it would never happen cause the business case is not there - the companies are not in business to give you choice - they are in business to make money. Why do you think FIOS is starting to lock people into long term contracts where cable cos usually don't have them? Because they don't want people switching to the coax in the house - they lose their huge investment in installing the fiber. For the same reason you never had a second electrical line to the house, or a second telephone line, or a second natural gas pipeline you won't get a second coax to the house.

The frequencies are actually slightly different. Some tuners can handle the difference, but some cannot. (ch31 UHF=573.25 CATV82=571.25) I take advantage of the similarities all of the time on my Sony TV but other brands don't always work. (19=70, 25=76, 31=82, 43=94, 47=103 are my local equivalents)

I just think that's how Verizon works. You buy a Verizon cell phone... you get a contract. You buy a Verizon DSL... you get a contract. You buy a Verizon FiOS... you get a contract.

I don't think Verizon knows how to do business except via contract.

Still: When the contract expires, you can easily switch to Comcast or Dish if you don't like Verizon and/or if the other companies are offering cheaper prices. Competiton benefits the consumer, because it's pro-choice. It gives power to the people.

I am currently getting comcast cable tv(dumped comcast broadband), Signed up for verizon dsl(as soon as verizon started running fiber optics lines on my street) for a month then I was able to upgrade to fios and keep my dsl rate's and I could add fios tv to verizon fios internet. But I would loss my low rates. So I could have comcast cable tv and verizon fios tv at the same time. Verizon ran it's own lines into neighbor hoods for fios (from the fiber optics mains or trunk lines* that were left unused after the .com bust)

*not sure what you call them

Scooper: Presumably, the proposal to offer ATSC via cable would only apply to the "limited basic" or "lifeline" level cable service (local OTA broadcasters plus public access, education and government channels). In most systems, the "limited basic" service tier constitutes 20 to 30 channels. In any event, cable ops are fully capable of migrating channels to whatever ATSC frequency they would like to use within the CECB's channel range. Here are examples of how they could handle the 'government' and 'educational' cable channels in ATSC:

25.1 Municipal Government
25.2 County Government
25.3 State Government
25.4 C-SPAN

Or how about this for educational channels:
26.1 Local school district
26.2 Community college district
26.3 University of Hard Knocks

I seriously doubt you'd see popular cable network channels cablecast in ATSC - those would be bumped into QAM.

Migrating the remaining (limited basic level) analog cable channels to ATSC digital would actually make good business sense, since it does allow the cable op to free up a lot of bandwidth while not totally "shoving an expensive digital upgrade" down the throats of their limited-basic-cable clients. These "limited basic cable" users would be able to use the government-subsidized CECBs. At the same time, cable cos could still conveniently sell their digital programming packages and digital boxes to anyone wanting more than standard-definition "bare bones" programming.

One drawback: some existing cable-company digital boxes might need firmware updates to correctly receive the ATSC "limited basic" channels.

I'm not saying that TECHNICALLY, it's certainly possible - it's the business point I was trying to make.

Cable companies are unlikely to pursue the idea.

The article, "Bullpen: DTV Transition: 8-VSB + QAM = Win/Win" raises many points:
Knowing the bureaucratic politics of cable companies, it'll never happen.

Most QAM boxes and decode 8-VSB or 16-VSB without problem.