Cable and consumer groups agree on digital TV

Faced with pressure from the government and consumers, as well as self-serving issues in a flagging economy, the cable and consumer electronics industries have buried their digital hatchets--surprisingly, not in each other’s backs--and cooperated on a set of specifications that allow both new and existing digital TVs to connect to digital cable networks without set-top boxes.

The agreement, which results in a national “plug-and-play” standard between digital television products and digital cable systems, was part of a Memorandum of Understanding [MOU] signed by 14 consumer electronics companies and seven major cable operators. The cable operators represent 75% of all cable subscribers. The MOU was forwarded to the Federal Communications Commission with the combined industries urging the adoption of a national standard that corresponds to the package.

The process resolved the thorny issue of how cable networks would connect to consumer electronics equipment via a connector with “no selectable outputs,” said Mark Coblitz, senior vice president of strategic planning for Comcast, who worked on the agreement.

“That was very important to the consumer electronics industry. The other side of that is that we, as a cable industry, find ourselves at parity with other multichannel video distributors,” said Coblitz.

Both industries expect to benefit from the agreement. Consumer electronics manufacturers, who could no longer ignore cable’s presence in 70% of American households, now have connectivity without the cable box. Cable, which has been battered in retail with its proprietary systems, now gets a presence next to DISH and DirecTV, and, better yet, a presence in the television set.

“When these devices come to market, consumers will go into a Best Buy or Circuit City or Sears or other consumer electronics store and find, right next to the traditional satellite display, equipment for digital cable services where consumers will not need a set-top box to receive many of our services,” said Robert Sachs, president-CEO of the National Cable Telecommunications Association [NCTA].

The specifications work with existing digital TV sets, as well as future products, said Gary Shapiro, president-CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association [CEA].

“Policymakers, both in Congress and the FCC, have come to us and asked us ‘Do you have a plug-and-play TV set? Can you buy a TV set at any store in the country and have that TV set play with any cable system?’ this agreement, when fully executed, will do that,” Shapiro said.

It will also focus the resources of two industries that have, almost from their inception, worked at cross purposes.

The agreement also proposes rules for encoding content that provide “balance between allowing consumers to have what they reasonably expect to record” while allow content providers to determine what is appropriate for recording, said Coblitz.

“There’s innovation in product; there’s innovation in service; there’s innovation in content that is all part and parcel of what we have done today,” he concluded.