[Bo102010]

Yeah - the idea is that the cablecos could avoid sending a truck to activate or remove services.

But this isn't mentioned in the article, and the article is actively wrong in the ways I mentioned above, plus others (e.g. "There is no reason to change this policy now just because the cable companies want every home and apartment to have one of their set-top boxes..." No they don't. They want people who don't want more than basic packages to have a settop at all, and avoid that up-front investment).

[wdewind]

I assume by the last sentence you mean they DON'T want people who don't want more than basic packages to have a settop. Considering everyone usually "leases" their cable box from the cable company (at least in NYC) for something like $10-13 a month, it seems like in a matter of months the boxes have paid for themselves and then they are making profit. I've had my box for 2 years. Do they really not want people to have settops in their houses?

[Bo102010]

They do eventually pay for themselves ($13 per month! Geez.), but they (a) cost more than you might think to begin with, (b) require a lengthy setup and provisioning process that is quite labor intensive, (c) lock you in to old technology - you can't move to, say, MPEG-4 or IP delivery if you've got a million legacy boxes to deal with.

Similar to how phone companies wish they wouldn't have to subsidize new phones, there are lots of people in the cable industry who wish that every TV had a CableCARD slot and IP connectivity (for PPV/VOD services), or that there was a peripheral you could plug into an Xbox or something that would let you get/decrypt cableco signal.

Obviously opinions will differ from company to company, and we are all actually evil.

[pasbesoin]

As I read it, they want to "leave the pipe on", but with an encrypted signal.

If/when you sign up, they send you a box (or boxes). Perhaps with newer equipment, they can/will be able to program/enable it remotely (without requiring one of their boxes).

The change is that there will be no unencrypted channels. So, if you are not a customer, you can't "steal" any signal, despite their never rolling trucks to physically disable (filter) individual lines.

For my part, I see it as another effort to push/exceed the boundaries of their previous agreements/commitments with the FCC et al. But then, that's the way they roll (pun intended).

EDIT: I should add that, if and as they change distribution from multi-cast to content-switched individual channels, it also frees up space on their pipes. Essentially, they get to dump the present distribution model for "basic cable" (multiple, simulcast clear QAM channels) and instead dedicate one channel having upstream-switched content, to each TV. (Said dedicated channel likely only defined at the last leg of distribution.)

My terminology may not be correct, but I think that's the gist of it.

Note that this also allows them to know what each TV is displaying, 24/7.