[mythtv-users] Letter from Hauppauge president regarding cable card

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Simon Hobson <linux at thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:
> Thomas Mashos <thomas at mashos.com> wrote:
>
>> Anyone got a form letter we can send?
>
> Much better to write your own - no matter how inarticulate you may feel.
> If ${representative} gets a lot of identical letters, they often either disregard them or just count them all as just one.
>
> That's on the basis that these days it's just so easy to organise a mass "letter" writing by providing a form letter and getting people to "just click to send". Thus if they gets lots of identical letters or emails, they are likely to assume it's a load of people just clicking without necessarily having considered what it is they are "writing" about. That's the downside of the ease of contacting them these days.

It is also why sending "real" letters (not email) is considered
by most of your congress critters to be more significant than
flooding in-boxes or posting to their pages.

My personal problem with this "campaign" (other than it
is really about corporate spin) is that I am not wedded to
CableCARD as a technology (it works, I use it, nothing else
is out there yet).  I would rather see a FCC ruling that
consumers have access to the content (at reasonable
cost/availability) for *all* providers.  That means Cable,
Satellite, and Video over IP providers (and any other
content providers).  It should be noted that the Cable
industry is moving to a pure IP delivery platform, so
CableCARDs are on their way out for everything in the
longer term anyway (we are mostly talking about when, not
if) and the current CableCARD content rules do not apply
to Video over IP providers (talk to the u-Verse subscribers,
or the Google Fiber subscribers).  So this should not be
about preserving a CableCARD portfolio, but about insuring
access.  TiVo has already been working with Comcast for
alternative delivery solutions (which do not include
CableCARDs).  That *might* be a way forward in the long
term.  The issue with most of the current solutions is
that they tend to be focused first on protection of the
content, and only secondly on accessibility (eliminating
options that include open source, non-DRM implementing,
platforms).  Focus on what we want, not on how it is
implemented.  That is a much harder campaign to run,
especially for those that want a 2 second sound bite
(the 10 second sound bite is so last decade).

Gary