Sage, allvid and the FCC

[wayner]

If you were the cable companies, wouldn't you fight this tooth and nail? The ARPU for cable in the US is around $70/month - Netflix is $8/month.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by wayner

If you were the cable companies, wouldn't you fight this tooth and nail? The ARPU for cable in the US is around $70/month - Netflix is $8/month.

That's a separate issue from cable companies fighting AllVid.

In any event, its pretty clear those prices are not sustainable. The big cable companies are certainly making decent profits, but not that grossly high. You're still going to need Comcast giving you your fast pipe to the Internet, and you're still going to need content creators making the TV shows you want to watch.

As streaming video becomes a more viable alternative to cable TV, the prices will go up, both for Internet access and for the streaming service.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by reggie14

That's a separate issue from cable companies fighting AllVid.

In any event, its pretty clear those prices are not sustainable. The big cable companies are certainly making decent profits, but not that grossly high. You're still going to need Comcast giving you your fast pipe to the Internet, and you're still going to need content creators making the TV shows you want to watch.

As streaming video becomes a more viable alternative to cable TV, the prices will go up, both for Internet access and for the streaming service.

And that's why cable companies are also trying to throttle or give priority to internet traffic.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

And that's why cable companies are also trying to throttle or give priority to internet traffic.

Perhaps. I don't really look at streaming video as being a particularly viable alternative to cable right now though. I suspect the current push for throttling/caps is more for network management (rightly or wrongly), like they're saying.

Under an all-you-can-eat plan, the ISPs have every incentive to limit your usage. Moving forward, I think we'll need two big changes to internet service: 1) increase competition, possibly through mandatory line-sharing, and 2) metered pricing.

[Tiki]

Could someone please summarize what they think this new "AllVid" concept is most likely to look like and why it would be better than the current cable card concept?

When I first started reading about AllVid, I heard the term "Gateway" thrown around. This brought to my mind a particular image, but I don't think my image is really what AllVid is likely to be...

My thought (and what I would really like to see), is a single gateway box that would be installed in my house and connect to the cable line or Satellite Dish. This box would communicate to all the TV's, DVR's, or other similar devices in my house via a standardized interface (possibly over Ethernet). This box would handle all the decryption for multiple program streams, along with controlling any SDV stuff. This would allow us to back to the days where TV's and tuner cards could tune cable channels directly without a separate STB at each TV (as long as the TV or tuner card was new and designed to implement the AllVid interface).

From what I am reading now, it's not really this at all. It sounds more like just a new and improved STB. I would still need one at every TV and for every tuner card. Is this really what we're talking about here?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Tiki

My thought (and what I would really like to see), is a single gateway box that would be installed in my house and connect to the cable line or Satellite Dish. This box would communicate to all the TV's, DVR's, or other similar devices in my house via a standardized interface (possibly over Ethernet). This box would handle all the decryption for multiple program streams, along with controlling any SDV stuff. This would allow us to back to the days where TV's and tuner cards could tune cable channels directly without a separate STB at each TV (as long as the TV or tuner card was new and designed to implement the AllVid interface).

Yep, that's pretty much my understanding too. What makes you think otherwise?

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Yep, that's pretty much my understanding too. What makes you think otherwise?

That's just it - I haven't seen an article that gives a clear explanation of what the AllVid Alliance is proposing...

This article says:

Ideally, the gateway would also allow consumers to buy a fancy set-top at retail and be assured that it would be nationally portable and work with any MVPD's service

Where they are calling the AllVid device a set-top (As opposed to "a home gateway" or something similar).

I've seen several other articles, but none really explains the details of how AllVid would really (possibly) work.

I would really like this thing to be more like a cable modem (I just have one plus a router for my whole house, I don't need a separate modem for every computer).

[wayner]

Would this use ethernet? How many people have ethernet connections running to all of their TVs? Many of us geeks do, but the average person won't. So then how would you distribute to each TV? Over coax with some sort of MoCA implementation? Wireless? Powerline?

[Tiki]

I just found another article that gives a better explanation:
All About the FCC's AllVid

From this article, it appears that the intention really is to have a single gateway device that would do all the decoding for aproximately 6 simultaneous program streams. It would then send the signals out to the TV's either over Ethernet or Coax. Each TV would then have a very small and cheap adapter that communicates back to the main gateway and spits out the signal to the TV.

The interface between the cheap adapters and the gateway box would be standardized. It sounds like they want to make the gateway boxes compatible with as many formats as possible (cable, satellite, FiOS, possibly even OTA).

With this model, it seems that future TV's could be built with the cheap adapter built-in, and maybe we could buy Capture cards for PC's that had this adapter built-in.

Using Ethernet as the distribution media actually makes a lot of sense. I think they would also like to bundle the cable modem into the gateway device, so you would then have one network to send around your internet access and your TV programming. Devices like GoogleTV could get everything they need over a single cable.

I'm not sure how this would work if you want to have multiple services (e.g. broadband from the cable co, plus Satellite and OTA for TV). Do you get multiple gateways, or do they have a super gateway that connects to all these sources (like a fance AV Receiver that has lots and lots of inputs)? I guess these are some of the details they would still need to work out...

[reggie14]

I'd look at the gateway like a bridge between your cable/satellite provider's (potentially) proprietary network, and your own internal, standards-based home network. I would expect that a gateway device for cable TV would end up having to be owned by the cable TV provider.

While the network layer protocol would be standardized as IP, the CE companies seemed to have already convinced that the FCC shouldn't specify a physical layer interface. As wayner pointed out, its not clear whether ethernet, MoCA, powerline, or wireless should win out. The CE companies, and the FCC, seem to think that issue could be left to the marketplace.

DTCP-IP has been proposed as the DRM scheme at this point, but that wouldn't really work for PCs. You can imagine an approach like CableCard/OCUR where PC-based DRM schemes are approved at-will by the certification authority.

[Fuzzy]

Ideally, the gateway would also allow consumers to buy a fancyset-top at retail and be assured that it would be nationally portable and work with any MVPD's service

What this is saying is that the AllVid gateway would allow you to purchase a fancy stb (AllVid capable SageTV server), and move it between different AllVid based systems. What isn't mentioned is that it is entirely possible that allvid can be built into tvs as well, so you wouldn't need a stb at each set just a single gateway on the home network.

[panteragstk]

Do you guys know of any regulations the FCC has regarding DRM? Are there any standards to DRM at all or is it completely open to what the content provider/creator wants it to be? Could the FCC step in and say "you have to mark everything copy freely unless it is a premium channel, and those have to be copy once or you get fined?"

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I'm not sure how this would work if you want to have multiple services (e.g. broadband from the cable co, plus Satellite and OTA for TV). Do you get multiple gateways, or do they have a super gateway that connects to all these sources (like a fance AV Receiver that has lots and lots of inputs)? I guess these are some of the details they would still need to work out...

The protocol is currently described as an upgraded version of DLNA UPnP streaming. Each gateway should be able to simply show as a different upnp device on the network. Simple devices (TV built in client) would probably have to switch between gateways actively. More advanced clients (SageTV server) should be able to aggregate the content together.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Do you guys know of any regulations the FCC has regarding DRM? Are there any standards to DRM at all or is it completely open to what the content provider/creator wants it to be? Could the FCC step in and say "you have to mark everything copy freely unless it is a premium channel, and those have to be copy once or you get fined?"

That's a good question. My understanding is when the courts through out the FCC's regulations on the broadcast flag, they basically also threw out the FCC's ability to regulate industry-sanction copy-protection flags. That's essentially what the current CCI bits are.

My understanding is that the FCC basically intended to say broadcast TV had to be copy-freely. Non-premium cable TV (including free, but access-restricted cable TV, but probably not rebroadcast network channels) had to be no more restrictive than copy-once. Premium channels, like VOD, PPV and channels like HBO and Starz, could use copy-never. (Though, somewhat interestingly, Starz didn't fought that, saying that if it were an option, content creators would make them choose it).

But as I said, I think these rules were effectively thrown out when the broadcast flag was thrown out. I'm guessing that ruling would also prevent them from getting too prescriptive in future regulations.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Could someone please summarize what they think this new "AllVid" concept is most likely to look like and why it would be better than the current cable card concept?

I really don't know, the problem with CableCard is licensing and DRM, not the technology/hardware. I don't see how AllVid will be any different. It will just be new/different burdensome licensing/DRM.

Guess I just don't see the FCC making anything better at this point.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I really don't know, the problem with CableCard is licensing and DRM, not the technology/hardware. I don't see how AllVid will be any different. It will just be new/different burdensome licensing/DRM.

Guess I just don't see the FCC making anything better at this point.

The real problem with CableCard is that the vast majority of people don't mind renting DVRs from the cable company. But after that I basically agree, although I think certification is probably more of an issue for most companies than the licensing fees are.

I have a hard time imagining a plausible significant change to how CableCard works. I think a DRM-less system is implausible. And once you care about DRM it seems like there would probably need to be some sort of certification program. Netflix mostly avoids that, although they can just make up rules as they go alone and approve devices as they please. If this would be an industry-wide program I think you would need a formal approval process. I also think that if you care about DRM, you'd want to be a lot more careful with devices that record and store video, as opposed to devices that just stream video. To me that suggests AllVid would have certification costs roughly comparable (maybe higher even) to CableCard's licensing/certification costs.

That's why I don't understand why Google seems to care about AllVid. They must realize its faults, and that it isn't likely to see the light of day for several years. If they really want cable TV in GoogleTV, it seems like they ought to be able to work with their hardware partners to get CableCard-certified host devices.

[mechling-burgh]

I thought one of the things that was talked about was using a water marking system so if a recording was released on the internet it could be tracked back to the allvid gateway system that was used to create it. This would mean only the allvid gateway would need to be certified because it would do the marking.

[reggie14]

I think Sage may have mentioned watermarking in their comments to the FCC. I don't think anyone else did. Watermarking isn't that advanced of a field. I don't think we could create a video watermarking scheme that wouldn't be broken very quickly or that wouldn't impact video quality noticeably. Also, watermarking is going to be a pretty computation-intensive process. Probably much more than something like encryption, which can more easily be designed for speed in hardware and software. Gateways would need to be pretty beefy to watermark 5 or so streams at once.

Even if technical hurdles could be overcome, I think there are still other limitations that prevent it from being a viable option. The lawsuits against P2P file sharers show you can't rely on the threat of lawsuits to stop infringement.

Then there's arguably the more evil side of DRM. There will be times when the content providers actually want to restrict what you can do with material. Take VOD or PPV material. The business model there is far closer to renting than it is buying. They're pricing the material with the basic idea that you can watch it once. You would need DRM to enforce that. Maybe, as the MPAA is saying, they're interested in renting movies on-demand before they're available on blu-ray. And maybe they think a combination of DRM and plugging the analog hole will keep high-quality copies off pirate sites, at least temporarily (which seems plausible, if they can deal with insider threats).

I think cable/satellite TV in general is far closer to a renting model than a buying model. You don't honestly think you're buying nearly unlimited rights to everything that's airing on TV for $50 a month, do you?

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I don't think we could create a video watermarking scheme that wouldn't be broken very quickly or that wouldn't impact video quality noticeably.

Cinavia is only on the audio track and, so far, seems to be holding up pretty well. Watermarking only the audio track would take much less resource than re-encoding the video track.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Cinavia is only on the audio track and, so far, seems to be holding up pretty well. Watermarking only the audio track would take much less resource than re-encoding the video track.

That would actually be pretty cool, as long as the watermarking was only used as a deterrent. However, if they tried to use it in more traditional DRM-ish fashion to limit playback and/or copying, then it opens up the whole bag of DRM hurt we have now with cable-card. Eg, PITA, expensive cable-labs style device certifications, inability of users to access files and use them how they wish, putting users at the whim of cable companies / broadcasters, etc.

Drew