Comcast says it’s “not feasible” to comply with FCC cable box rules • Hacker News Board

Re: Comcast says it’s “not feasible” to comply with FCC cable box rules

#51

Post by op00to » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

narrowrail wrote: post #42

iaw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who worked on the team to develop one of the 'next-gen' Comcast DVR units. The company is exactly what you'd expect but they apparently did have quite the competent engineering team. Not talking about IT here but the people that actually build the hardware and firmware for their proprietary boxes. That being said it is absolutely not in Comcast's financial interests to adhere to the FCC regs on this an…

I thought the Arris Group supplied the hardware? I haven't had Comcast in a while, but when I did, Scientific Atlanta was the manufacturer. Has Comcast switched to internal HW development?

Yes, the X1 platform is internally developed.

Re: Comcast says it’s “not feasible” to comply with FCC cable box rules

#52

Post by korethr » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #48

korethr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there are assumptions that they own and control the network end points is betrayed by the comment that you don't find credible. I agree that the comment is poorly worded, but to me, it indicates that the set-top boxes they're renting out are more complex than just than something that naively decodes whatever video codec stream(s) is/are thrown at it. I think it's a reasonable assumption that the set-top boxes th…

"I think it's a reasonable assumption that the set-top boxes that Comcast provides are loaded with at least some proprietary Comcast code that takes care of the various functions the TV box provides (scheduling/channel guide, on-demand, authorization, DRM-handling etc)" In other words a web app? Why does that require dedicated and proprietary hardware? What am I missing?

Maybe a web app, maybe not a web app. Whether the code running on the Comcast set-top boxes is a web app or not doesn't matter. What does matter is that is is that the code running on the Comcast set-top boxes is likely built with the assumption that it would only ever talk to Comcast's back-end, and Comcast's back-end is likely built with the assumption that it will only ever talk to Comcast's set-top box code.

In other words, they're going to be tightly coupled. Sufficiently so that decoupling them enough to provide an API compliant with the FCC's proposed ruling is going to be an expensive engineering task that Comcast would rather not have to spend money on.

Re: Comcast says it’s “not feasible” to comply with FCC cable box rules

#53

Post by jwatte » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

korethr wrote: post #36

bogomipz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not understanding your comment. A QAM tuner provides the modulating/decoding of the RF signal over coax. If they are moving away from this then fine but why does that design have "inherent assumptions" that "they own and control the network end-points that provide the video to the display device."? So they can continue to charge people $10 a month in perpetuity? That's about the only reason for that assumption. I…

That there are assumptions that they own and control the network end points is betrayed by the comment that you don't find credible. I agree that the comment is poorly worded, but to me, it indicates that the set-top boxes they're renting out are more complex than just than something that naively decodes whatever video codec stream(s) is/are thrown at it. I think it's a reasonable assumption that the set-top boxes th…

Maybe they even put "security through obscurity" in the endpoints.

Certainly, their comment makes it seem like they assume their own client code is needed and they don't want to provide and document a stable API for third parties.