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The FCC Media Bureau shouldn’t grant Buckeye Cable’s...

The FCC Media Bureau shouldn’t grant Buckeye Cable’s petition for a waiver of the integration ban until it acts on TiVo requests to reconsider the similar waiver already granted to Charter Communications and to clarify its CableCARD rules, said TiVo…

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in a comment filed Thursday (http://bit.ly/1dV1PDa) in response to Buckeye’s waiver petition (CD March 6 p18). “There is no policy or factual context for action on this petition” until those pending matters have been addressed, TiVo said. Buckeye wants the waiver so it can deploy its new set-top “Hybrid Box,” which it says will allow customers to receive digital video and easily transition to receiving IP video without having to get a new box. The IP portion uses downloadable security, necessitating the waiver. Since the Buckeye waiver petition’s “core legal and factual arguments rest directly on the Media Bureau’s grant of a waiver to Charter,” the commission should rule on TiVo’s application for review of that waiver before taking up Buckeye’s waiver, TiVo said. Similarly, since there’s still an open proceeding on which of the commission’s rules governing CableCARDs survived the EchoStar decision, the commission should clear up that matter before handling Buckeye’s petition, TiVo said. “The commission should clarify its CableCARD expectations, by acting on TiVo’s petition, before it considers waiving them,” TiVo said. If the bureau does approve Buckeye’s petition, it should require the company to submit for comments “a specific demonstration of why and how its system will support interoperability with other systems, and how it would support IP-based retail products on a national basis,” TiVo said.