[mythtv-users] Network terminals, regulation, and regulation avoidance

[Daniel Kristjansson]

On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 18:17 -0400, John Drescher wrote:
> > What they need to do is to make a "Network Terminal" box.  This box would
> > sit on the outside of your house (like the phone company) and connect to
> > their network.  There would be a few connections off this box.  One would be
> > an ethernet jack, the other would be an RG6 coax, and the last would be a
> > phone jack.  The coax jack would output Clear QAM and connect to the cable
> > in your house.  The cable company would then be able to control which tier
> > you get through the Network Terminal box (just as they do now on the DVR
> > boxes).  The NT box can be rented for the same cost as a DVR / month, or not
> > at all.  It'd be so much cheaper for them to manage one box per household
> > versus 2 or 3 DVRs per household.
> >
> 
> That would be extremely expensive, much more than a set top box
> because it would need to simultaneously decrypt every channel the user
> gets.

Actually these "Network Terminal" boxes exist and in the late 80's
they replaced some of the manually placed trap filters David Brodbeck
mentioned. There is no encryption/decryption, they are just remotely
switched filter banks. They sit on the pole and will completely block
any 6 Mhz range from entering your home at a detectable levels. You
can also build really cheap versions that don't block specific 6 Mhz
blocks, but instead block whole swaths of spectrum to create tiers
of service.

The main "problem" with these devices is that the cable operator
can't charge the customer extra for them. When they can force
their customers to rent a box and the remote control for that box
they can advertise a service for $29.95/mo and then bill the
customer $76.83/mo when all is said and done.

I'm not of the mind that the Cable companies should be regulated,
in fact I think municipalities should just make their monopolies
mostly irrelevant by planting fibers to the home and leasing them
to all comers at or below cost, much the way city streets are
handled. Then a number of information aggregators could compete
for my business, just like multiple sellers compete for my business
when I go buy my oranges and tomatoes via the city streets. But
I'm of a libertarian bent, regulation would be better than the
current state of affairs; if that is the only viable option,
I'd go with the EFF plan, no encryption allowed on "standard cable"*
and below (with "Network Terminals" to handle access control for
more basic levels of service), but allow box requirement for
premium content and allow encrypted outputs for super-premium
content (like say Pay-Per-View programs that cost more than $50.)

* "Standard Cable" can be defined various ways, but a decent way
is to group all the lowest priced packages until you hit a threshold
of 80% of the subscriber base. That tier is "standard cable", any
more costly packages are premium. This prevents the companies
from creating some fake tier between the most basic and the real
standard plan to subvert the regulation. (They could still do it
by creating orthogonal plans, but an active regulator can respond
to those types of schemes as the they occur; but again this is
why I would prefer the bypassing of regulation. It will eventually
be subverted politically, but facilitating a market via low cost
city provided roads requires much less on-going attention.)

-- Daniel