SDV FAQ

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SDV just went in to effect here in Cincinnati today. They introduced ESPN2HD and placed a lovely asterisk next to it indicating that it was "Not available on one-way cable cards." I'm about to file my FCC comment now.

Others concerned about this may want to consider contacting their local cable franchise authority.

Here's the complaint I'm filing

 

I'm one of the bummed Tivo 3 owners in Hawaii ( http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=364085 )
So unless the USB Dongle comes out before sept 24th (unlikely) I will need to get a piece of junk SA8300 HD box to watch HD.
My question is about the Cablecards, If I return them on the 24th(they cost me $24.00 a month) will I need them back whenever the USB Dongle comes out?? TWC says they are phazing the CableCards out, so I am worried down the road they may not re issue them.
Anyone out there have any suggestions? Thanks

 

"Phazing the CableCards out" is illegal. Write to the FCC.

 

'Phazing out' may have been the wrong term. they told me that they won't be issuing them after the 24th. A fellow hawaii forum member wrote to the local fcc regulator and they responded to contact the local regulatory commission or something because the fcc no longer deals with cable issues.

 

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I'm sure that the cable-card support group at TiVo would like to hear about this. The FCC may not deal with prices anymore, but the cable card rules are certainly still in effect.

 

I feel like I just lost on a horrible $600 bet. I come to find that ESPN2HD is SDV in Cincinnati on the day AFTER my 30 day window expires. I honestly feel sick over this and just how helpless we really are. All this comes after we must have invested like 20+ hours in getting our signal right (still isn't) and cable cards installed.

Between this and the pixelation, I think I'm done. I don't have the energy to fight the monopoly. I think it may cost me my marriage after how much time my wife put in getting the CC's working, but this feels like a slippery slope where TiVo and the CableCo's play cat & mouse, and we're caught in the middle.

 

So, are you also going to complain about the sat. co's having a waiver and not opening up their network? Are you going to complain when the cable co says "ok, you can have ESPN2 HD, but you will NEVER get another new HD channel because we are out of bandwidth?'' Quit your crying, SDV is the future, it is the only way cable has to compete with D*. You are part of a very small minority, like .001% of cable co's customer base. The rest of the customers want more HD channels.

 

amen, more channels is all i have to say.

 

ebay?

 

More channels sounds good to me.

Let me ask a question: ESPN HD is a linear channel? Only ESPN2HD is SDV? If so, then I'm not disappointed yet. As long as they only put the less important channels on SDV, I'll be content.

 

Sighs, well. I was just searching the web to see what the status of Comcast and SDV in this are is. Now, I didn't find anything that said if any channels were in SDV yet, but found way to many articles stating 400 hd channels by years end, 800 hd channels by the end of 2008 and hints at massive roll outs of SDV in nearly all comcast markets in the coming months to support this=\

I really hope that this does not happen. I would much prefer to see comcast use another option they will be testing in Chicago this fall. They plan to turn off all analog cable channels except local networks and providing 1 free set top box to every house hold to compensate for the loss of analog channels to the digital teer. That sounds like a much better solution then SDV to me.


Also when searching comcast and sdv I found this article on satelliteguys.us which really ticks me off. They must really not like Tivo. But some of the points they bring up about tivo support would not be good if they hold any truth. Does anyone know if their points could warrent anytruth?

 

There isn't anything technically wrong about the article, it just leaves out the crucial fact that including the 2 way bits would have forced them to be OCAP compliant, which means that the cable company would be able to download their own OS onto the box and overwrite the Tivo OS.

The link that needs to be broken is the 2-way=OCAP bundling crap that exists today.

 

I didn't know that issue. And that is a crucial issue. What is a Tivo Box with a cable companies OS? Just another paper weight useless box with a crappy interface, lack of features and add banners.

Why is that OCAP thing a requirement of 2-Way? With that there can be no real third party competition, doesn't that alone warrent a fcc complaint or possible legal action that can stand ground. It's not that Tivo is not in compliance its the fact, they need to be one way to have a box that differs from the cable companies.

 

Quit crying? There's a much easier solution to the problem - turn off analog! SDV is not the only way to add HD, it is just the most convenient way to continue to collect STB rental and pimp PPV to me. The sat-co's are subject to competition - thus they have consumer choice. Sat-co's also do not use public right-of-way's and public infrastructure. They are inherently private enterprises. Cable companies are granted monopoly status by gov't franchise authorities, and thus should be held to a higher standard of openness and consumer choice.

I see your point, but I respectfully disagree.

 

Because the cable companies do not want to give over control of the boxes. The CEA is lobbying against it and so far as I know the FCC hasn't gotten involved yet. That's where my heartburn with the FCC's half-implementation of the '96 telecom act that was supposed to fix all this crap.

 

Re the often made statement "SDV makes more channels available."

I fail to see the logic here. If the cable company says they have, say, 10 HD capable delivery channels, but they offer 30 HD channels available, then they can only deliver 10 HD channels at a time. If the 10 HD capable delivery channels are already in use, and you want to watch one of the 20 HD channels not being transmitted, you are out of luck.

It makes no difference how many HD channels they say are available, 30, 50, 1000. Eventually the 10 HD capable delivery channels will be in use with the 10 most popular HD channels, and the other 20, 40, or 990 HD channels are unavailable to you.

They still can only deliver only 10 HD channels at a time. SDV does not allow them to increase the number of deliverable HD channels.

Now, if you want to watch unpopular channel 29, at, say, 8:00PM Wed evening, you might be able to get up at 4:00AM Wed morning, tune your STB to channel 29, and leave it there until 8:00PM Wed evening, and channel 29 will still be being delivered. But good luck in being able to tune in unpopular channel 29 at 7:55PM Wed evening! Unpopular channel 29 will be essentially unavailable for prime time viewing!

 

Tip for those in the SDV nightmare.

Get your friends and neighbors to tune their STBs to the most unpopular channels they can imagine. Lock the SDV system into delivering all the unpopular channels. Then let the cable companies start getting the complaints from customers who find that the popular channels are "Not Available".

 

Like I want to set my TV to some unpopular channel? Who in their right mind would agree to this?

 

Question.

If all the delivery channels are in use, and somebody wants to watch a PPV movie, will the cable company knock off one of the free channels being delivered, and replace that programming with the PPV movie in order to reap the PPV fee?

 

Yes, you scenario is correct, but if they size the SDV pool of channels properly as well as the node sizes the chance that a user will want a channel and no slots will be available should be a six-sigma event (well maybe not that rare, but rare).

Also, future systems will be able to re-claim bandwidth by increasing the compression on the lesser watched channels to squeeze in the new request.