A new era of cable TV competition is dawning--one in which consumers will enjoy "exciting and innovative features" thanks to the requirement that cable companies must use set-top boxes with removable CableCards, according to Kevin J. Martin, chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
Problem is, cable companies don't seem to have gotten the message.
Last week, the FCC ordered cable companies to stop distributing "integrated" cable boxes, and instead to offer only those that use the separable, PCMCIA-size CableCards to decrypt the cable signal. The intent of this directive is to allow consumers to pull the card out of the box and use it in a CableCard-ready television, third-party cable box, or digital video recorder that might have a greater range of features than the one sent by the cable company.
"All set-top boxes going forward have to be set up with separable security," says Mary Diamond, an FCC spokesperson.
No Boxes Yet
When I called local offices for Comcast and Astound Broadband and a national office for Time Warner, however, none of three yet offered cable boxes with removable CableCards. At each service I had the option of a standalone card or the same old integrated box that the FCC now bans.
If you're a Comcast customer, the card doesn't cost extra, but it won't save you any money, either--even if you return the cable box you've been using. In addition, you'll have to schedule an appointment to have a technician come out and set up the card. And if you want two cards, it'll run you an extra $1.75 per month.
By contrast, Time Warner charges $1.75 per month for one card, though if you return the old box you can knock off $6.95 (for a regular box) or $7.95 (for an HD cable box) per month, and end up saving about $5 or $6. You can pick up the card at a local Time Warner office and call the company to activate it when it's installed.
Astound, which took over RCN's cable business in San Francisco, offers only high-definition CableCards, priced at $5 per month, as opposed to the $7.95 per month that it charges for an HD cable box.
Plenty of Waivers
Though these companies appear to be violating the FCC's order by continuing to issue customers cable boxes that don't use CableCards, they may be taking advantage of a waiver or a rules loophole. Though the commission denied a blanket request from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association not to apply the ban to cable operators, it did grant an "omnibus waiver" for any company that either is currently all-digital or plans to become all-digital by February 17, 2009. Verizon received a waiver under this ruling, as did many other companies.
Other businesses got a pass because they demonstrated that compliance with the FCC's order would cause them financial hardship, or because they had already ordered nonintegrated cable boxes that had not yet arrived from the manufacturer. Anyone willing to wade through government documents can get more details from the FCC's site (see the available documents from 6/29, 5/4 and 1/10).
Getting a nonintegrated set-top box seems much more convenient, since you can just pull the card out if and when you buy a CableCard-ready device, such as the TiVo Series3. But if you can still get a CableCard from the cable companies, maybe this "new era" of feature-rich set-top competition really is around the corner?
No On-Demand
Maybe not. The generation of CableCards that appear on existing devices can pull down a cable signal and decrypt it for display. But they can't send information back up to the cable company, which rules out using such services as the on-screen interactive guide, pay-per-view, or on-demand.
As one Comcast customer service rep told me, "I wouldn't recommend it, to be honest with you. You lose features."
If you want to use a card and yet retain the ability to gorge on 6 hours' worth of HBO's Entourage from your cable provider's library, you should probably wait for still-in-the-works devices that use the CableCard 2.0 standard, which may begin to appear in 2008.
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