Lobbying for and against letting cable operators scramble basic programming...
Lobbying for and against letting cable operators scramble basic programming continued last week, filings in FCC docket 11-169 show. Hauppauge Computer Works doesn’t want encryption because it would end clear quadrature amplitude modulation digital cable, while RCN said scrambling is…
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necessary to protect the company from having its video stolen by people who don’t subscribe. “After the over-the-air transition to ATSC digital TV in 2009 and the reclamation of analog cable TV over the last year, eliminating clear QAM TV would be yet another change to the way consumers receive television in less than three years,” Hauppauge CEO Ken Plotkin reported telling a front-office Media Bureau staffer. The bureau is working out details of rules allowing scrambling, which cable operators say will cut down on the need to send out technicians, and their vehicles that use energy and emit carbon dioxide, to turn on and off service (CD Jan 25 p3). Whole-home systems that pay-TV companies are developing, when used with new generations of smart sets, “would reduce the power consumption of cable TV equipment in the home, which today is a big problem,” Plotkin wrote (http://xrl.us/bmpy4r). “These new whole home TV distribution systems being designed by Comcast and Verizon are much more energy efficient than multiple cable TV boxes currently being used. But until these new systems become widely deployed, using clear QAM to directly connect digital cable TV to clear QAM enabled TV sets without requiring a cable TV box is the best way to lower the power consumption of cable TV in the home.” Ending clear QAM means more set-top boxes will be deployed, boosting the energy usage of U.S. homes, the CEO said. “This is certainly contrary to our national interests to reduce power consumption.” RCN has no “feasible and cost-effective alternative to prevent service theft” other than scrambling the signals of TV stations and cable channels on the basic tier, the operator said. A lawyer for the company reported telling a bureau official and aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that the bureau should “act quickly on RCN’s waiver (which covers two of RCN’s systems).” The order “removing the ban on basic tier encryption also [should] be adopted quickly,” the lawyer continued (http://xrl.us/bmpy5f).