Microsoft figured prominently in the FCC’s decision last year to ...

But Microsoft since has said little about DCAS. The company didn’t file comments at the FCC on the NCTA’s Nov. 30 progress report that said a DCAS was feasible and will be ready to deploy nationally by July 2008. But Microsoft remains “very much engaged with all parties” in the DCAS debate, a spokeswoman told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily. Microsoft is reviewing the NCTA report and comments filed Fri. “to determine an appropriate response,” she said. Replies in the docket (97-80) are due Feb. 6. Meanwhile, the MPAA, weighing in on the NCTA report, told the FCC it has been involved in talks with CableLabs to improve the content protection available for the DCAS technology and license. MPAA and CableLabs have reached agreement on important issues such as incorporating a “redistribution control trigger” bit in the specs and explicit rules for generating CGMS-A signaling to fill the analog hole. Talks are planned questions including improvements in the DCAS robustness rules and further steps to plug the analog hole, the MPAA said. Verizon submitted comments agreeing “in principle” with the NCTA that downloadable conditional access “presents distinct advantages over other methods of separating security and non-security functions in leased set-top devices and other devices offered at retail by consumer electronics manufacturers.” But Verizon, like others said it can’t fully evaluate the NCTA proposal because it lacks access to the DCAS requirements document being developed. Moreover, “to the extent that the DCAS proposal is crafted to meet cable-centric technological standards,” Verizon said, it would “present a framework that would unfairly and unnecessarily advantage the traditional cable companies over new entrants that use alternative technologies to deliver video services.”