Comcast now has no plans to use the optional USB port on the Pace...
Comcast now has no plans to use the optional USB port on the Pace Chicago set-top “for home networking or any other purposes,” the cable provider told the FCC in an ex parte letter. The box is one of…
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4 low-cost, limited-function set- tops for which Comcast wants a CableCARD waiver. The letter addressed Media Bureau staff queries on the box’s potential for home networking. “As technology develops, the USB port might be used at some future point to support the networking of video and audio content within the home,” Comcast said. It restated a “scenario” from its waiver application describing video programming delivered from a “server device” -- such as a PVR-enabled set-top -- to a “client device” such as the Pace box, using the USB port. But “such an implementation does not currently exist and, even if it did, the server device in this architecture would have separate security once the integration ban goes into effect,” Comcast said. The Pace box only would receive standard-definition content from the server device, “just like it would receive VoD and linear programming from the network,” Comcast said: “Such a development, should it occur, would add to the options available to consumers and would serve the public interest.”