Cable Companies Have Launched A Massive Attack Against Boxee Over Set-Top Boxes

[AminB]

It's gonna get there, now in Canada, the 2 biggest (Rogers/Bell) IS/Cable P. are actually owing most of the TV channels, their content (all shows and sport games)and its delivery to your home or mobile phone.

[canuckle]

Good article on the whole thing on GigaOm

http://gigaom.com/video/boxee-upcoming-products/

[Denny]

But the cable companies can`t stop internet TV from happening.

Because it`s NOT Boxee who`s making the content available.

It's ABC. It's NBC. It's CBS. It's Fox. It's National Geographic. It's Discovery. It's A&E. It's THE CONTENT OWNERS who are putting the material on the internet. The cable companies all put together don't have the pull to stop those media companies from doing what they want with their property. And it would be a bad idea to antagonize the sources of all of their content by doing so.

They may vent their spleen by taking a swat at Boxee. But Boxee and other such companies have been careful to make it very difficult to use their product to obtain illegal or pirated content. So it'll be impossible for cable companies to shut them down.

As far as cable companies encrypting their signal so you need their box for even basic cable? Let 'em do it. They're already hemmoraging subscribers due to the expense of their service. Trying to squeeze more money out of people will only speed the exodus. They should be searching for ways to make themselves a more affordable choice, not overpricing a luxury item in these tight financial times...

[iRoNBiLL]

Who are the "big boys" these days?

I ask because I get the impression some of you chaps in the US appear to think that US cable companies are uber alles, so to speak. I don't know why because a) there's a big wide world out there and b) Apple could buy them all with pocket change.

Boxee will be crushed by the Big Boys, but those Big Boys won't be the companies who deliver cable TV in the US, nothing else nowhere else.

Sorry to disappoint you my friend... AminB is not from the states and cable companies in the U.S. are "big boys", regardless of how hard their earnings are marginalized with words... Comcast made $2 billion dollars in their 3rd quarter for 2011... I would hardly call that "chump change".

Seeing as how they also distribute internet services, iptv services, cable programming, phone services... all the stuff Apple needs to run on, it's pretty clear who's the dog and who's the tail. Last I checked, the tail doesn't wag the dog. Combine that with their resources in Hollywood, Washington D.C., and how they have former politicians like Chris Dodd running the MPAA, on top of all the other strings they pull with the FCC... yeah, they're "big boys" over here. Read the latest BS about Boxee vs. FCC trying to encrypt ClearQAM channels and pretty much turn Boxee's investment into a hunk of poo... I'd say they seem very capable of making things happen.

iRoNBiLL

[Denny]

Sorry to disappoint you my friend... AminB is not from the states and cable companies in the U.S. are "big boys", regardless of how hard their earnings are marginalized with words... Comcast made $2 billion dollars in their 3rd quarter for 2011... I would hardly call that "chump change".

Seeing as how they also distribute internet services, iptv services, cable programming, phone services... all the stuff Apple needs to run on, it's pretty clear who's the dog and who's the tail. Last I checked, the tail doesn't wag the dog. Combine that with their resources in Hollywood, Washington D.C., and how they have former politicians like Chris Dodd running the MPAA, on top of all the other strings they pull with the FCC... yeah, they're "big boys" over here. Read the latest BS about Boxee vs. FCC trying to encrypt ClearQAM channels and pretty much turn Boxee's investment into a hunk of poo... I'd say they seem very capable of making things happen.

iRoNBiLL

Bill,

Companies like ATT are stepping into the internet service industry in a big way. Cable companies do not have a stranglehold on it. So they're losing their footing as "the tail that wags the dog." And even if cable companies DO encrypt their QAM channels, that doesn't render Boxee's dongle "a hunk of poo." It STILL works with OTA broadcasts. And that's a quietly growing piece of the TV industry. The subchannel syndication market is developing with new "networks" like MeTV, etc. People are getting sick of paying cable companies hundreds of dollars a month for a selection of channels that is largely dreck.

I personally have put up an OTA antenna and can receive over 50 channels (including subchannels) in the Orlando-Daytona broadcast market. That's actually MORE than my local cable provider offers in their basic package. And broadcast HD quality is actually far better than the overly-compressed crap that the cable company squeezes thru their coax.

Attaching Boxee to my TV gives me back almost all of the specialty programming that I lose by cancelling my cable package. And I'm saving over $100/month. That's $1200+ per year.

The only REAL loss is the cable-only sports programming. I'm a bit of a sports fan, so that hurts a little. But I'm not willing to pay $1200 a year for ESPN...

[AminB]

> http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/807...f48c2jv3slvqr3

[AminB]

Did Boxee team told FCC that they want to charge monthly fee up to $15 for 300 hrs DVR capability, or they thought about it on the way back on the train ?

[AminB]

In Response to the Cable Companies Misleading Arguments to the FCC
By Avner Ronen

Last week the NCTA sent a formal letter to the FCC in response to our meeting with the Chairman and followed up with a brazen “social media” campaign. In both cases, the NCTA made factually incorrect statements in an intentional attempt to mislead the FCC.

Here’s a summary of the arguments and our rebuttals:

ClearQAM requires consumers to wait for hours for the “cable guy” to setup service - Not true. Waiting for the cable guy has nothing to do with ClearQAM. Today the leading cable companies, Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, Charter and Cox, all offer self-install kits that do not require a cable guy to come to your home. All of these companies continue to offer ClearQAM, so the two issues are not related. A quick call to their customer support lines easily validates this and falsifies their claims.

ClearQAM requires consumers to wait for hours for the “cable guy” to disconnect service – Not true. When you disconnect from Cable (which we certainly encourage you to do if you have good antenna reception) you don’t have to wait for a cable guy to come to your home. If the cable company wants to block you from getting service they actually do it outside of your home.

Last week NCTA PR people actually posted the following tweets trying to smear Boxee:

“Like waiting for the cable guy? #Boxee is looking out for you – from the NCTA blog http://cble.co/AmtbcG” from @NCTACable

“If you like taking time off work for cable service calls, Boxee is on your side!” from @BrianDietz (Vice President, Communications for NCTA)

Seriously??? As we noted above waiting for the cable guy has nothing to do with encrypting QAM, it has everything to do with cable companies’ poor customer service, a pretty common phenomenon among monopolistic enterprises.

Boxee is asking the FCC for a “one off”, Boxee-specific solution – Not true. Encrypting QAM impacts any consumer that connects a cable directly to a TV or a standalone tuner. It could mean millions of consumers. Our position is that if the FCC ends up letting cable companies encrypt QAM they should do so on the condition that an alternative, standards-based IP solution will be made available. One which would not force the user to rent new hardware from the cable company, and would not require device makers to certify their solution with each individual cable operator.

Nothing we’re pointing out or suggesting is “one-off” or Boxee-specific.

Boxee should adopt CableCard instead of QAM – Implementing a CableCard based solution would have made the Boxee Live TV tuner 2-3 times more expensive for consumers, would require a CableCard from a local cable company, and an extra monthly rental fee. In addition customers have had a lot of bad experiences with CableCard installs (here is one, and here’s a former installers comments), meanwhile the cable companies are all moving towards IP delivery anyway. So it is pretty obvious why we don’t believe CableCard is the right answer. (btw, off the record even cable executives will tell you CableCard does not make sense for what Boxee is trying to do).

Conclusion

The NCTA took 12 pages to make these arguments. It’s pretty repetitive and not a great read. They seem to subscribe to the doctrine that if you repeat a falsehood enough times, people are bound to start believing it. We encourage the NCTA and cable companies to spend less money on lobbying the government and more on improving their overall customer experience.

[yur_maker]

Makes me wish I was a Canadian, but those folk look upon an American as we look upon a Mexican....'It's a sad day'

[marginal]

For those who missed the boat of recent events...

Yes... the internet television industry is under attack in a major way. They are beginning to line up an onslaught of legislative proposals this year to reform what they see as a rising problem when they should be looking at "inclusive" solutions... but because the tail likes to wag the dog, they are condemning folks like us, criminalizing us and trying to prosecute us for problems they don't know how to resolve properly.

It's time people take a stand and more importantly do something to combat the rising effort to crush something they don't understand...

It's sad when America lets men, women and children die of starvation in the streets, while they are working hard on legislation for the highest bidders like Hollywood and corporate greed... I hate to bring politics into it but ALL OF THEM don't care about people like you or me... money talks and that's it.

iRoNBiLL

I couldn't agree more with you.
The sad thing is, this is not only a US issue, in Canada, it is almost the same, only the names are different.

I believe, while we (the ones that can count to 200, like it is better to pay once $200 for a BB and $8 a month for Netflix and watch whatever we like whenever we like, innstead of paying over $50 every month and wait for this and that to start at that specific time) are getting more and more, we'll win in the end.
I don't believe the system can be stronger than 90% of the population (unless it is a fascist or a communist one).