Home Network Tool Needs FCC to Buck Cable, Says Booster
CUPERTINO, Cal. -- FCC hardware mandates will boost CE- friendly networking technology HANA -- but only if a rerun of CableCARD is avoided and the FCC firmly enforces its rules in the face of cable industry resistance, said a senior Samsung technologist. The FCC is requiring the IEEE 1394 connectivity used by HANA -- High-Definition AV Network Alliance technology -- in all HD set-top boxes, said Dir. Jack Chaney of Samsung Information Systems America’s Digital Media Solutions Lab. The Commission also is requiring ATSC tuners in TV sets, he noted at a meeting Tues. night of the Silicon Valley chapter of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society.
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HANA adds great value to built-in tuners, usually useless to most TV buyers since they duplicate cable and satellite box tuners, Chaney said. TV makers can’t profit on tuners they must include, he said. But with 1394 connectivity, sold as FireWire, set-tops, DVD players, PVRs and other devices no longer need decoders built in because they can use those that are required in ATSC tuners, Chaney said. “You don’t have to build everything into every device,” he said. When that promise is realized, “the boxes the consumer can buy are cheaper.”
HANA reliably handles up to 63 simultaneous AV streams, provides security for content owners and lets all electronics in a room be run from one remote control, Chaney said. Of manufacturer resistance to gear interoperability, Chaney said: “That’s what HANA’s all about, is interbrand connectivity, and Samsung’s all for that.” It means wider consumer acceptance of CE products, he said: “You don’t want a Beta versus VHS format war.”
But the cable industry is a different story, Chaney indicated: “Just like the telephone companies, they're resisting as much as they can… They don’t want you to use it, because it gives away their service.” HANA enables use throughout a home of functions like those of a PVR without paying cable providers for them, he said; it also provides programming without a cable subscription. “They don’t want to lose their business… They want to control everything.” An NCTA spokesman responded: “Several cable companies are members of HANA, and cable companies are constantly seeking to adopt new technologies to promote and distribute innovative services to their customers. All cable companies do include 1394 on HD STBs and 1394 is an approved digital output for cable content.”
At the same time, midsized cable providers Charter and Cablevision are top-tier “promoter” members of HANA, along with Chaney’s Samsung, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, JVC, NBC Universal, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments and Warner Bros. Technical Operations, a corporate affiliate of Time Warner Cable. Cablevision recently joined the Alliance, Chaney said. “The 2 things are relatively unlinked,” he said when we asked about cable memberships in light of his comments on the industry. “The writing’s on the wall,” Chaney told us. “Eventually the Congress and the FCC will succeed” in breaking cable’s hold on subscribers’ homes. “More rational people, instead of fighting back on a day to day basis” recognize that eventually cable providers “do need to have consumer electronics connected to the cable box,” he said.
But the FCC needs to follow through better than on the CableCARD mandates fought by cable, Chaney told the meeting: “Maybe the FCC will stand up and mean what they say.”