CableCard

What the FCC Waiver Means to Cable

Once upon a time, consumer electronics companies wanted to sell digital TVs that were “cable ready.” Meaning you attach the TV to power and cable, and it works. No set-top required.

 

Federal regulation ensued, which brought us the “CableCARD” – an expensive, removable form of security that could ostensibly be slipped into TV sets, thus making them “cable ready.”

 

As a federal law, it caused the cable industry to completely retool how it buys, warehouses, and installs set-tops. Only cable, mind you. Not satellite video (“too new to market,” at the time); not telco video (not in market yet, at the time.)

 

As of January, the count of cable set-tops outfitted with a CableCARD to secure video content stood at 39 million (at about $50 apiece, not including the box built with the CableCARD slot.)

 

Meanwhile, the consumer electronics industry completely stopped building TVs with CableCARD slots a few years ago.

 

Last Monday, something momentous happened: The Federal Communications Commission granted a waiver, requested by Charter Communications, to do set-tops without CableCARDs.

 

Part of what makes this topic confusing, on the surface, is the language. Double negatives lurk everywhere. Example, from a recent batch of notes: “Charter is no longer banned from not using removable security modules in the boxes it deploys to secure subscription video services.”

 

Remove the double negatives, and you get this: Charter can now (again) deploy boxes with built-in security. Which means we’re back to integrated security, at least for the two years the FCC gave Charter to make it happen.

 

The technologies involved in the Charter approach are blessedly visual: Key ladders. Roots of trust. It’s all about electronically establishing trust between devices and operators, so that a device’s “security personality” can be downloaded into it.

 

Charter agreed to make its approach royalty-free and available for commodity-grade chips, so that chip and device makers can get on board (see related piece, page XX.)

 

That’s (way, way) different from the last time around this block, when cable operators (specifically Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox) stood up an entity called PolyCipher, to make the secure microprocessors that would do an early version of downlodable conditional access, or DCAS. (The Denver-based company quietly folded in 2009.)

 

What does the Charter waiver mean for cable? It doesn’t exactly put a fork in CableCARDs – anything fielded needs to be maintained, and Charter committed to simulcrypt legacy security, to keep supporting CableCARDs.

It does means that the FCC at least tacitly agrees that the CableCARD chapter didn’t work.

 

Better, it means that the door is now open to work out “next generation security” in the open marketplace – not under a federal microscope.

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

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The Gateway and the CableCard

The “gateway” – half cable modem, half set-top box – is slowly advancing into American living rooms, as part of the gigantic transition to video distribution based on Internet Protocol.

That’s jargon for “through the cable modem, to screens that connect that way,” instead of through the old fashioned juncture between the set-top box and the television.

Which raises this question: Will cable operators be required to keep buying boxes with a CableCard slot, and spending $50 per CableCard, as set-tops morph into gateways?

Answer: Yep. It’s a law that’s still on the books, and it goes like this: If you make a two-way, high definition box, you need a CableCard.

And then there’s the “even thoughs:” Even though every TV maker in the land stopped making TV sets with CableCard slots. Even though the FCC itself is anything but hot on CableCards.

Even though there are deployable alternatives – like the unheralded but significant work Comcast did to make its digital terminal adaptors (DTAs) capable of firing up in either major security mode (Cisco or Motorola), without CableCards.

On the “What the…” meter, this registers somewhere between ridiculous and nefarious: You’re ordered by law you to do something you already do (secure content) — but differently, and in a way that you costs a lot more.

You do it. None of your competitors have to do it. Just you.

Later, the industry segment that initiated the law in the first place (consumer electronics companies) stops supporting it. The enforcing agency (FCC) repeatedly backs away from it.

What will happen? Keep an eye on Charter, led by the guy (Tom Rutledge, CEO) who led Cablevision when it got its CableCard waiver, back in 2009. Its November 2012 request for an FCC waiver could be granted or denied any day now, and could set the tone for what happens with CableCards inside gateways.

Also watch for proponents of “AllVid” (Best Buy, Google, Sony, TiVo, and others) to re-emerge, proposing ways to do things that are already happening, in-market — as though they aren’t already happening.

That’s a short look at the very long, complicated and expensive history of cable and CableCards. More to come.

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

 

 

 

 

Time Warner Cable ATG East: Jean Gauthier, Part 2

Jean Gauthier explains the challenges in QA assurance testing: Development, integration, and system tests. He also discusses the importance of a uniform footprint for efforts including ODN/MDN and separable security. Produced by the fabulous David Knappe with equally fabulous Joe Bondulich on camera and lighting.

Video courtesy Multichannel News.