ClearQAM - What It Is And Why It Matters | Hacker News Reader

ClearQAM - What It Is And Why It Matters

avc.com

39 pointsjimminy21 comments

I work in the industry, and this article is quite... misinforming.

For one, the sentence "Getting rid of QAM isn't a bad idea in the long run" is crazy. QAM is a general-purpose modulation technique used in numerous technologies. It has nothing to do with the evil cablecos trying to lock down their signal, or something.

Next, the sentence "the cable industry is currently lobbying the FCC for a rulemaking that would allow them to encrypt QAM" is hopelessly misinformed.

If you plug a QAM tuner into a cable subscriber's coaxial outlet, you'll be receiving data for a few hundred cable channels, but all but a dozen or two are _already encrypted_. The ones that aren't encrypted are you local ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, etc. The ones that are encrypted are "expanded basic" services.

Why are these encrypted? In part to prevent signal piracy to protect revenues, but also in part because the content providers require it. If you're a cableco, you can't offer ESPN or HBO without encrypting the signal - ESPN and HBO won't let you.

I can't speak for my cableco employer, but I have never had a conversation in which someone said "I wish we could encrypt our clear QAM channels" - it's always been the opposite. It's much easier to offer service if you can get the signal to a customer without having to buy some crappy converter box or spend a lot of money on a high end settop.

The whole point is that cable companies are lobbying the FCC to remove the requirement that lifeline be unencrypted, with the ostensible purpose of "reducing truck rolls".

So, maybe your cableco isn't one that is lobbying, but several of the major ones are actively currently lobbying the FCC to remove the clear-lifeline requirement.

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).

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?

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.

This comment is one of the best demonstrations of why an Apple TV set will be such an easy sell to cable providers.

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.

Your edit isn't quite correct - if 100 people in the same building (service group) are watching the same TV channel, there's no bandwidth savings if they're all getting an individual stream. See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_digital_video) for an example of a hybrid approach.

Also, there are already technologies that know what TVs are displaying.

Thanks for the response. I'm still a bit fuzzy this morning, and I think I was conflating a few things.

I think:

~ They want to get rid of the existing "basic cable" distribution. Which is still analog. Digital signals consume less bandwidth, don't they? So, if you are knocking off relatively few basic/analog subscribers on a segment (the rest are already digital), you can more from the elimination of the analog signals -- even though they are "shared" -- than you lose to the additional digital signals. (All the more so if those viewers don't often view TV, e.g. with Comcast those who have "basic cable" because their pricing models essentially make it "free" when you subscribe for residential internet service.)

~ In going all-digital for TV, by not putting the basic channels or some subset on clear QAM (instead, everything is encrypted), they don't need a physical presence to enable/disable TV service -- even for "basic cable". You get a box in the mail, or you have a smart enough / new enough TV, and then upstream controls whether or not you can decrypt.

~ As for my "FCC" comment, as I somewhat poorly understand it, as part off the "digital conversion" negotiations, cable TV companies agreed to maintain the "status quo" until... I believe sometime in 2013, was the date finally settled upon.

But they've pushed the boundary. In my area, forcing everything above an ever-shrinking channel set of "basic cable" to be digital, with digitally switched (if "free", in limited quantities) set top boxes required. So, your old VCR or DVD recorder or perhaps some older models of Tivo (don't know, don't have one) no longer work fully in that they can't pick the TV channel. They're dependent upon this digital box and only get whatever one channel it is manually set to output.

I'm one of those people who has "basic cable" basically because of the Internet pricing. My parents had "extended basic", but found themselves forced to upgrade because these "freebie" digital boxes meant that e.g. the Tivo stopped working.

Now they pay more, and have some POS Comcast DVR all because Comcast was allowed to skirt the edges (exceed, in spirit if not in (re)interpreted letter, in my opinion) of this "it stays the same for cable customers until 2013" agreement.

FWIW, basic cable isn't analog (well, some channels can be delivered in analog), so your points based on that line of thinking don't follow. It's typically not switched-digital because the basic services (such as the major broadcasters) are heavily watched, so there's not much benefit to going to switched-digital.

Ok. But here, basic cable is still analog -- as my nice but rather old Panasonic 27" can attest.

My parents had extended basic. My father's understanding was that Comcast's mandate that they switch to a free, deck-of-cards sized set top box, and/or rent a Comcast DVR, meant in part that the digital signals being delivered are switched. Perhaps that's switched for smaller viewer share, and multicast for those channels with heavy viewership -- that's what I understand you to be saying.

This week's been my week to repeatedly reveal myself for the fool I am. So, I might as well make a thorough job of it in this thread.

P.S. As I recall, his thinking was in part that to keep the "deck of cards" transceiver small, power efficient, and cost effective enough, it must be receiving a single switched signal rather than trying to handle multiple signals. But perhaps it is picking amongst multiple signals, but only handling one of then at a time. (So, e.g. not producing multiple outputs that would enable a old Tivo to keep working.)

Sorry if this subthread is going on too long.

P.S. Thanks again for the explanations/clarifications.

Glad to help inform!

It's generally accurate to say that basic cable isn't _switched_ digital, which isn't the same as saying it's analog.

It's not accurate to say that basic cable is analog - that is, a single channel can fit into a 6 MHz space. Some providers may put their whole basic lineup in analog, but this is decidedly not a technical requirement.

There's a difference between the little Comcast DTA (for receiving clear QAM digital signals that aren't switched) and a tuning adapter (for receiving digital signals that are switched).

For my company, some markets have no analog channels at all - basic cable services are delivered as clear QAM, and customers use a QAM TV, a DTA, or set-top box to receive them.

Other markets have some analog channels and some digital channels as part of basic cable - if you have an analog TV, you can only see the analog ones, unless you have a DTA.

Then I'm confused. If you need a settop box to get encrypted channels, and the cable companies want to save money by not providing settop boxes, why are they lobbying for permission to encrypt the remaining basic cable channels? There's a leap I'm missing.

I also work in the industry and I can confirm all the discussions I've heard on the ClearQAM issue come back to the cost of delivering services and contracts with programmers. Each one of these service calls to install/remove a signal trap that blocks out the frequencies of the programming you are not paying for is expensive. Having huge portions of your available spectrum gated off by signal traps also limits flexibility for future changes.

The issue of encrypting broadcast channels goes back to broadcasters who are demanding a fee to carry their signals. If you have to pay the local ABC affiliate $2 per subscriber to carry the channel they are not very happy to have you turn around and give it away for free without compensating them for every customer who can run a ClearQAM scan. This is an issue as more customers drop all video service in favor of only purchasing Internet service. The same wire that delivers your DOCSIS would have these channels available unencrypted unless a signal trap is installed to block it out.

So effectively the cable industry has always, and always will, be able to block services you don't pay for. The switch to encrypting these channels is just a far more practical way of doing it. Boxee is against this because it's not good for their business model. Cable is for it because it is good for their business model. So let's just be clear this issue is about self-interest either way. Both sides could argue their position is better for consumers for different reasons.

I do think we should have a simple fixed key encryption system so customer's can use their own hardware without the need for set tops or CableCARDs or an IP based system but this is still a ways off. For one thing the entire TV industry would have to adopt this new fixed key encrypted QAM standard which would add some expense to TVs and require customers to buy their own fixed key encryption set tops or buy new TVs that support the new standard. On the IP side new standards would have to be established as well that presently do not exist.

"Putting direct IP access to the broadcast channels on the cables is a much better approach"

And how is that supposed to work? Everyone needs a DOCSIS box/router and some kind of multicast-IP-to-HDTV converter? That seems a lot more complex and equipment-heavy.

Or is that where portfolio-company Boxee steps in to save the day?

without pretending to speak for Boxee or anybody else (I have no affiliation with the industry), I think they would like to see every TV network to make their signal (along with ads, etc.) to be available over IP, just like NASA and some others do today.

This will allow for ultimate a-la-carte subscription, something the cable companies are overwhelmingly opposing: it's much more profitable for them to send you a package of 200 channels when you only need 5, even if you're willing to pay a much higher price per channel for these 5.

Not necessarily. This could be done through most of the existing equipment customers own. An iPad app just needs the right IP address to tune a digital video stream that's arriving via your existing cable modem / router. Same thing for a stand-alone IP set top. I saw a demo a few years ago at Cisco on this exact configuration that was part of their early 'TV anywhere' development. The box they were using was about $50 and available on NewEgg.com at the time. Worked beautifully.

First sentence in the article:

"There are millions of homes and apartments around the country that have a TV connected to a cable but have no set-top box and no video service from their local cable provider"

If we need to provide these users with boxes, fine. But that's not what we're talking about here.

Also from the article:

Putting direct IP access to the broadcast channels on the cables is a much better approach.

I agree it's a better approach and offers more benefits to consumers in the long run.

I wonder, how would the author change his argument if he was talking to people who take the position that the faster the TV industry dies, the better?

If people get cut off from traditional TV, they will seek other media, likely through the Internet. This is a good thing.

As much as I'd like to see the cable co's die, not the TV industry entirely. The internet is not a truly viable alternative for now.

I'll say this as someone who lives last mile (half or even a quarter if you want to be technical). Television provides higher quality(lower latency) and more stable transmissions. Unfortunately, we're situated just outside of the cable co's reach, so have to deal with a satellite provider for TV and a Telecomm for phone/internet.

We spend $80 a month on a 756kb/s ADSL line and phone service. At one point, we had 4 rooms with televisions, this isn't something that could be handled with internet speeds such as that. When the digital transition happened we went from 7 basic channels down to 2 OTA; up until that point we had no need for an outside provider. If we could access the cable co's infrastructure, the bills would be much lower, 60-70%, and the internet access would be much better.

We need to fight against the communications industry for adequate infrastrucure before dismantling them under the assumption people already have adequate access.

Edit: I'm not the author of the post, I just shared it.

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