NCTA’s protests against video device interoperability rules highlight...
NCTA’s protests against video device interoperability rules highlight the work needed to achieve interoperability, said a coalition of technology companies, makers of consumer electronics and Internet firms that backs a so-called AllVid FCC rulemaking. A “proprietary ‘app’ approach described in…
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NCTA’s letter” that association CEO Michael Powell wrote FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (CD Feb 7 p3) doesn’t fly with the AllVid Tech Company Alliance, said the alliance’s lawyers in a filing Tuesday in docket 97-80. The tack “by which only selected devices are connected on a system-specific basis” would “further entrench cable operators’ methods and devices as the only means by which consumers can access and experience the programming and services to which they subscribe,” wrote lawyers Robert Schwartz of Constantine Cannon and Patton Boggs’ Monica Desai and Jeffrey Turner. “NCTA’s compilation of non-standard, isolated approaches to connection illustrates how far the Commission remains in the IP era from fulfilling Congress’s instruction to assure” availability of retail equipment used to access pay-TV programming, they wrote. “The FCC should take steps now to assure that consumers have the choice of accessing their cable programming through innovative user interfaces not dictated by cable operators.” A 2010 AllVid notice of inquiry “compiled a sufficient record” for an NPRM now, said the alliance that has included Best Buy, Google, Intel, Sony and TiVo.