Pay-TV programming encoding rules, not a “major concern...
Pay-TV programming encoding rules, not a “major concern to cable companies,” help consumer electronics made by other companies be compatible with the operators and so are important to consumers, said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. He told us…
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PK wants the FCC to reinstate encoding rules as they existed before a federal appeals court in January ruled for the company now called Dish Network and against the commission in reversing a decade-old order based on a cable/CE pact in which DBS didn’t take part. That U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision, EchoStar v. FCC, was the subject of an FCBA event Monday, where multichannel video programming distributor lawyers said new encoding rules are unnecessary because of what’s happening with innovation in third-party CE devices used by MVPD subscribers (CD Nov 19 p6). “The court’s decision was on procedural matters” and “so there is nothing stopping the FCC from bringing its rules on this subject -- not just the encoding rules but also CableCARD-related rules -- back into full force,” said Bergmayer Tuesday. The waiver Charter Communications got in April from having to use CableCARDs to separate security and navigation functions “was broader than what Charter asked for, and broader than what the court required in its decision on the encoding rules,” he said. PK supports a TiVo request for the FCC to bring back rules after EchoStar, commented the group on the petition in September (http://bit.ly/I3n8t7). “Encoding rules remain important for device interoperability."